Migration + Upgrade - Not a great start!

StevenFJSmith — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:51:34 GMT

I've had a Free-Online account for a looong time but, when I wanted broadband, the Plusnet deals available were not good so I went with Tiscali and maintained the FOL account as PAYG dial-up.
Thanks to Talk-Talk upping my bill by 61.5% without notice (try explaining to an Indian lady in the Talk-Talk call centre that sending a letter by post does not guarantee that it will be received....), I decided to upgrade my FOL PAYG to Plusnet Value & migrate the Broadband & placed the order by phone.
Had to pay the £20+ to TalkTalk to keep my broadband access until migration completed & waited for my e-mail from Plusnet that the migration had been completed.
On the morning of 3rd March, I found I could no longer access the internet. Looked at my router log & saw that the authentication for Tiscali was being refused. Having had no e-mail from Plusnet, I took a flyer & set the router to login name to <MyFOLUsername>@free-online.net as this is the dial-up name; no go. Thought of dialing up & discovered that my new computer didn't have a PPP agent installed and I couldn't get online to install one
So I phoned the support line & the handler had a look at the status & told me migration had completed on 1st March! So much for the e-mail, then. He activated the account & told me it should be live within 15 mins. After 30 mins, it still didn't work & I had to leave for work. When I got home in the evening, it still wasn't working so I phoned support again and after going round the diagnostic mulberry bush for a while, I mentioned the hyphen in the login name and was told it shouldn't be there. I later discovered that this was all in the Welcome e-mail I was sent but since that wasn't sent until after called Support that morning because I had no internet access....
Anyway, once the hyphen was gone & the router rebooted once again, it all burst into life and 2.5 times faster than the Tiscali access has been.
My joy was short lived, however, when I check 'My Payments' & found that I'd been signed up to 'Free-Online Anyway you want" (or something like that) and already charged £9.99 instead of Plusnet Value @ £5.99
So, I had to phone the Accounts line & try to get this sorted out. The operator was unsure how to handle this error without screwing up the system. He did, after some consideration, change the account to what I ordered but, so far, I haven't received a credit or refund for the £4 difference. Hopefully, someone is actively dealing with this on my behalf....
All of this could have been avoided if Plusnet had been monitoring the migration status more actively and, as soon as it was, had sent me an e-mail detailing
a) the fact that migration was complete,
b) the correct login name,
c) the service I was being signed up to and,
d) how much I was to be charged for it.
It should be noted that, under the terms of the Direct Debit agreement, Plusnet is supposed to give me 3 days notice of payment amount before taking the money but they did not as I'd already been charged before I was able to login in for the first time!
So, not a good start, but the broadband access is much improved over Tiscali\Talk-Talk & I'm actually allowed to access USENET at reasonable hours of the day!

Re: Migration + Upgrade - Not a great start!

pierre_pierre — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:30:00 GMT

Oh well welcome from another Free Online member
Yes the internet is usename@freeonline.net, but the e-mail is @username.free-online.co.uk most confusing

Re: Migration + Upgrade - Not a great start!

orbrey — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:17:33 GMT

Hi Steven,
I'm sorry about that, it looks like an incorrect payment was taken when the upgrade took place. Unfortunately I can't refund the £4 straight away as the direct debit transaction is still going through, but as soon as that's complete I'll get it refunded for you.

Re: Migration + Upgrade - Not a great start!

StevenFJSmith — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:42:32 GMT

Hi Matt,
Thanks for taking an interest!
Cheers,
Steve

Re: Migration + Upgrade - Not a great start!

StevenFJSmith — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:12:52 GMT

Having checked my payments, the refund has been made. Thank you.
I must also state that the Plusnet service has been trouble free and much more pleasant to use than Tiscali were.
It's particuularly nice to be able to access USENET when I want to rather than tryig to find the window when Tiscali unblocked the ports & servers (which they consistently denied they were doing but were so obviously lying)
Moving to Plusnet broadband has definitely proved a good idea so far!
Steve Smith

Re: Migration + Upgrade - Not a great start!

orbrey — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 08:18:21 GMT

Glad to hear it Steve, thanks very much indeed. Please don't hesitate to post if there's anything else we can look at for you, hopefully there won't be a need though

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Migration + Upgrade - Not a great start!

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Re: Migration + Upgrade - Not a great start!