topic Re: Problems downloading bills in My Account/Billing

Problems downloading bills

rna2019 — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 16:29:35 GMT

I can see this is a recurring topic here but I can't see many recent posts about it - for some time now whenever I log in to see the latest bill, all I get after clicking on "View bills" is

Need some help?

Our handy video demonstrates how to check your bill.

Watch video

- and no sign of the bill.

It may be relevant that this is in Firefox on Linux (openSuse), but behaviour is identical when using User-Agent Switcher plug-in to masquerade as Chrome on Windows.

Is there some other way of accessing the bill? We are especially interested in reviewing closely given the huge price increase recently.

Thanks

Richard

Re: Problems downloading bills

djcjuk — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 09:27:14 GMT

I don't know what happens on the system you are running, On windows 10 pc you go to the bills section and view your bill. To download the pdf file you click on the date at the top and that opens you bill details . At the top right of that view there is a Download Button to save as a pdf file.

I hope this may help in your case.

Re: Problems downloading bills

rna2019 — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 16:19:59 GMT

Thanks djcjuk ,

That's the problem - from https://www.plus.net/member-centre/billing-payments I can select "View bills", "Change bill date" or "Change payment method".

When I select "View bills", all I get is a purple "Need some help" dialogue(*), with a "Watch Video" link which just takes me to an FAQ page (doesn't show a video). Nowhere is the bill actually displayed, let alone a PDF offered.

(*) tried to post a screen-shot inline, but character limit is exceeded.

I appreciate I'm not using Chrome on Windows or Safari on Apple, probably the only platforms the site is tested on, but wondering if anyone else who uses a less common operating system has similar problems? We must have some Ubuntu users here surely?

Cheers

Richard

Re: Problems downloading bills

jab1 — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 16:28:56 GMT

@rna2019 I'm a Linux (Zorin) user, and never had a problem with viewing my bills when I was a PN customer, using Ubuntu Firefox.

Can't try it now, obviously, but I can't see what is going wrong in your situation, unfortunately. FF will have been tested, as it is still a very popular platform, despite being overtaken, apparently by Chrome - which I can't get on with.

Re: Problems downloading bills

Longliner — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 16:42:42 GMT

I could never view bills with Firefox after version 70 (or around there). My problem was the same as yours. Around middle of last year we found there was so much fiddling with 'improvements', in particular the double line spacing of menus where we were given the choice of take it or leave it, so we left it after many years.

Vivaldi has proved a great success for our needs, it's fast and reliable and we like the absence of spying which is why we joined FF in the first place, Pnet bills and everything else run without a hitch. Maybe this would help?

Re: Problems downloading bills

rna2019 — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 16:46:43 GMT

Thanks John

Good to know it can work on a similar platform (or at least it did - sounds like you're no longer a Plusnet customer?) even though Longliner's experience mirrors my own.

It may be worth trying Vivaldi, or I suppose in extremis I could even fire up Chrome, much as I detest it. By using it in a single-purpose VM I can control much of the snooping.

I will try both (in that order!) and report back.

Cheers

Richard

Re: Problems downloading bills

jab1 — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 16:59:48 GMT

Richard - up to a couple of weeks back I could log in and view my old account with no problem - including the last few invoices - but today the PN system has decided that although I still have an email only account, it won't let me past the initial main page, and then defaults to a 'headings only' page. Don't understand it, and have updated a topic on the subject.

Re: Problems downloading bills

rna2019 — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 17:15:37 GMT

It seemed to work in Vivaldi (vivaldi-stable-5.3) - more info on the bill page, including contact details etc., but clicking on "View Bills" results in "There has been an issue; please consult your system administrator"

This was initially with the middle option for security, tried also with Minimum setting.

PS Marked in haste as Fixed - how do I reverse this?

Cheers

Richard

Re: Problems downloading bills

jab1 — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 17:12:24 GMT

@rna2019 It was @Longliner 's suggestion, not mine. As an aside, that is a seriously old FF release - even I have 100.0.2 on here, and Ubuntu are not known for being super-fast with update releases.

Re: Problems downloading bills

rna2019 — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 17:25:42 GMT

That is the opensuse way - the version looks old but has backports for security...

Re: Problems downloading bills

jab1 — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 17:34:36 GMT

OK - different distros work different - I understand.

Re: Problems downloading bills

rna2019 — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 19:37:39 GMT

Update after trying using Chromium in a VM with Mint Linux (used for sites I really need to get to that won't work in FF, and zapped regularly to sanitise): It worked (AFAICS) as intended initially, allowing me to download several recent bills as PDFs, then started behaving as Vivaldi (above) with the Error "There has been an issue; please consult your system administrator". I will try both Chromium and Vivaldi again over the weekend and see if that "issue" goes away. So "partially fixed" is probably the best way of putting it. It would be interesting to hear Plusnet's take on this issue, presumably after the holiday weekend. Cheers Richard

Re: Problems downloading bills

Longliner — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 12:05:42 GMT

Further to my post of Thursday I should add that when FF began non-display of PN bills I tried Edge and Chromium which worked fine on every occasion (like monthly!) In the end I moved to Vivaldi for stated reasons.

Re: Problems downloading bills

rna2019 — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 16:17:13 GMT

I can confirm Vivaldi seems to be able to download the bills as expected - thanks for the suggestion.

Chromium also seems to work but I really don't want to use software that I trust so little.

A shame Firefox no longer works properly in this respect.

Thanks both for your help in this.

Re: Problems downloading bills

Longliner — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 16:43:15 GMT

Glad Vivaldi worked for you. Really sad about Firefox which we used for years; incidentally, also found it would not run the bank's Rapport security software though Internet Explorer of the time had no problem. I posted a couple of questions on Rapport but general impression I gained was that Rapport was a rather dated IBM programme which could not cope with FF's latest programming.

Re: Problems downloading bills

Townman — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 10:54:41 GMT

Does this happen from a fresh login after a clean log out?

From empirical experience it would appear that the portal is an amalgamation of webservice technologies, each having its own logged in status and time outs. I have seen similar to what the OP reports, when I return to a "logged in" session which appears to be still connected, in that the UI of the portal behaves as though I am logged in, but "back end" components do not do what they should do.

Logging in again does not fix the issue.

Using the LOGOUT links in the upper right of the screen, does a forced log out of everything - on logging in again, what did not work, then works OK.

Re: Problems downloading bills

Longliner — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 11:07:43 GMT

@Townman Not sure if you refer to my post? If so, I did have the impression that some bug might be hanging onto the site in some way, so tried everything multiple times -- clearing cache and memory and restarting etc, even removing and re-installing Firefox, made no difference. When I use another browser, no problems. In fact the more I use Vivaldi since last year, the more I like it for its simple interface to this old codger, and its speed.

Re: Problems downloading bills

rna2019 — Sun, 12 Jun 2022 11:54:54 GMT

Hi Both

No, using a new private window in Firefox, logging in then actively logging out as you describe makes no difference - I login in again, click on "View Bills" and just get the image offering help as described earlier, no sign of the bills.

As per my previous posts it seems to work OK in Chromium

Cheers

Richard