topic Re: Really terrible customer service in Plusnet Feedback

Really terrible customer service

space — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:54:15 GMT

I signed up for the new unlimited fibre service at the end of last month. I thought I'd found such a good deal, I even posted about it on the popular HUKD website, where it was voted one of the top offers of that week:
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/plusnet-new-unlimited-76mb-fibre-broadband-9-99-a-month-13-99-line-rental-with-half-1416660?
I called to give my MAC code, and I was given my install date. The router arrived 3 days before install just as planned so it was all looking great and I was really looking forward to getting fibre. On the day of the install I booked the day off work, and I cleared a load of stuff in my house that was in the way of the install, and I then waited for the engineer. And I waited. And I waited.
The engineer did not arrive, so I called customer services. After sitting in a call queue for a very long time, I eventually got to speak to someone who told me that my install had been cancelled due to a member of your staff trying to book the engineer too soon. She said that I should have received a text message informing me of this, but it was obvious from what she said, that the text message was not sent and I certainly didn't receive one.
I told her that I wished to cancel my order as I had no intention of signing up to this kind of "service" for the next 18 months. She said that I had to speak to someone else, but that the call queue was over 30 minutes. I told her I did not wish to waste more of my time and asked if it was possible to get them to call me? She said no. Could I e-mail my cancellation? Again the answer was no. I told her I would write a letter instead as I wasn't going to waste another 30 mins+ sat in a call queue.
After the call, I went onto the online "Help assistant" to make a complaint about my wasted time and terrible customer service. That was 6 days ago. Have I received a reply? I'll let you guess.
Really poor show Plusnet. Rather than recommending you, I really should have waited. I most certainly will not be recommending you to anyone in the future - in fact quite the opposite.

Re: Really terrible customer service

tijara33 — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 11:28:07 GMT

Once you've calmed down, why bot give them another call & try & sort it out. Believe me, overall they are a very good company with an excellent produc. I joined in June from AOL & have received excellent service. I'm now on unlimited fibre & it's brilliant.

Re: Really terrible customer service

orbrey — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 11:34:56 GMT

Hi there,
I'm really really sorry about that - as I'm sure you can appreciate it's been a very busy time for both us and our suppliers, which has led to some complications like this. I feel doubly bad as it was myself posting in that thread and we're incredibly grateful to you for both posting the deal and for defending us all the way through it - only to have this happen!
If there is anything at all we could do to restore your confidence please do let us know, I assure you we'd like nothing better than to restore your confidence and gain you as a customer.
I'll see if there's anything I can do to hurry the complaint ticket along for you in the mean time, but please do pop back and let us know.

Re: Really terrible customer service

Strat — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 11:39:25 GMT

BT Openreach have been letting ISPs like Plusnet and hence their customers down frequently in recent times.
Plusnet will do whatever they can to sort out your problem as quickly as possible.

Re: Really terrible customer service

space — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 12:16:22 GMT

Quote from: tijara33
Once you've calmed down, why bot give them another call & try & sort it out. Believe me, overall they are a very good company with an excellent produc. I joined in June from AOL & have received excellent service. I'm now on unlimited fibre & it's brilliant.

I'm quite calm, but thanks for your concern If you think that it should be me "giving them another call" (current wait time 30 mins), then you have a different concept of customer service to me! I've been with almost all the major ISP's over the years and they all have excellent service once it's installed. It's tends to be the installation which is the problem, and that is the case here as well.

Quote from: Matt
Hi there,
I'm really really sorry about that - as I'm sure you can appreciate it's been a very busy time for both us and our suppliers, which has led to some complications like this. I feel doubly bad as it was myself posting in that thread and we're incredibly grateful to you for both posting the deal and for defending us all the way through it - only to have this happen!
If there is anything at all we could do to restore your confidence please do let us know, I assure you we'd like nothing better than to restore your confidence and gain you as a customer.
I'll see if there's anything I can do to hurry the complaint ticket along for you in the mean time, but please do pop back and let us know.

I'm quite understanding when things go wrong, and companies can actually turn a negative experience into a positive experience with good customer service. But when you have one bad experience, and then another, and then another - before the service is even up and running! - that makes alarm bells ring.

Quote from: Strat
BT Openreach have been letting ISPs like Plusnet and hence their customers down frequently in recent times.
Plusnet will do whatever they can to sort out your problem as quickly as possible.

I realise the situation that ISP's are in with BTOR, but I think it's a little disingenuous to blame them on this occasion. I believe the problem was caused by a Plusnet staff member trying to make the appointment earlier than BTOR allow. It was Plusnet who failed to inform me when it was cancelled. It was Plusnets call queues which I sat in. It is Plusnet that make it hard to cancel. It is Plusnet that have failed to respond to my support ticket for 6 days.

Re: Really terrible customer service

orbrey — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:19:47 GMT

Quote from: space
I realise the situation that ISP's are in with BTOR, but I think it's a little disingenuous to blame them on this occasion. I believe the problem was caused by a Plusnet staff member trying to make the appointment earlier than BTOR allow. It was Plusnet who failed to inform me when it was cancelled. It was Plusnets call queues which I sat in. It is Plusnet that make it hard to cancel. It is Plusnet that have failed to respond to my support ticket for 6 days.

Hands up. Unfortunately in this case it's true. All we can do is apologise - really sorry! - and feed back to the agents concerned in order to make sure we learn from this and to try and stop anything like this happening again.
As I'm sure you can appreciate it's been a very busy time since we released the Unlimited products, which will be the cause of the wait times and delayed reply from the complaints team, though I do want to look into the order further and find out how it came to be placed without the sufficient lead time - this I suspect is the root cause of everything else that happened.
I'll post back when I've looked into it a bit more and found out what happened there.

Re: Really terrible customer service

space — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 17:20:15 GMT

Still no phone call, no text, no e-mail, no message on the help assistant. But I can't seem to be able to log into member centre, so hopefully my account has just been unceremoniously cancelled now? I can't know for sure, so I'll just have to guess that that is the case - alternatively it may just be a fault in member centre, so I'll have to keep checking to make sure.

Quote from: space

I'm quite understanding when things go wrong, and companies can actually turn a negative experience into a positive experience with good customer service. But when you have one bad experience, and then another, and then another - before the service is even up and running! - that makes alarm bells ring.

I suppose I'll just add it to my growing list of problems with Plusnet. Btw it would be nice to be given some idea of what is happening with the £150 I gave you guys? I'm fully expecting a long wait for it, as well as no doubt a further attempt to take payment in a months time, but even so, some kind of acknowledgement that the money is being returned, would be nice.

Re: Really terrible customer service

orbrey — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 17:26:55 GMT

Hi,
The ticket was answered this morning so should be in the help assistant there? I can see the agent who picked it up has also refunded the payment, that should go back onto your debit card - shouldn't be too long coming through, should arrive back in your account early next week.

Re: Really terrible customer service

space — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:32:47 GMT

I can't see help assistant now my account has been cancelled, but yes, I did actually receive an e-mail this morning which I had missed. It confirmed that the account has been cancelled and that I will receive a refund in the next 5 days. Thanks for your help Matt.

Re: Really terrible customer service

joncooper — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 11:12:39 GMT

I know you feel you've had enough, and you've decided you're leaving
but I really think you should give Plus.net a chance to sort things out
I have been with them now for over 10 years, not always been perfect but usually better than most
I don't know of any other ISP where you can 'talk' directly to the guys who actually fix the problems
The 'great deal' you signed up for is still a great deal and you would benefit long term
I guess you've made up your mind, but just in case... plus.net really are very good (most of the time)

Re: Really terrible customer service

Anotherone — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 19:12:46 GMT

The face that 'space' could not log in to the Member Centre to access the Complaint ticket rather sounds like the same issue as someone else had a few months back. I thought that Plusnet assured us that this type of issue had been sorted so that it would not occur to anyone else in future!
Explanation please Plusnet!

Re: Really terrible customer service

jfrankcom — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 20:24:58 GMT

Quote from: tijara33
Once you've calmed down, why bot give them another call & try & sort it out. Believe me, overall they are a very good company with an excellent produc. I joined in June from AOL & have received excellent service. I'm now on unlimited fibre & it's brilliant.

You must be the saddest person in the world to spend your time defending a corporation on their website. Either that or you are a plant.

Re: Really terrible customer service

Luzern — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 20:32:23 GMT

You're the sad one!

Re: Really terrible customer service

Anotherone — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 20:45:40 GMT

@jfrankcom
I tend to agree with the last poster. Plusnet are an extremely good ISP/CP, however they aren't perfect (neither am I). That's not to say we wouldn't like them to be even better. We'll defend them when they are right and unfairly criticised, as I do also, and I will criticise them when I think it's justified.

Re: Really terrible customer service

tijara33 — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 21:01:15 GMT

Quote from: jfrankcom
Quote from: tijara33
Once you've calmed down, why bot give them another call & try & sort it out. Believe me, overall they are a very good company with an excellent produc. I joined in June from AOL & have received excellent service. I'm now on unlimited fibre & it's brilliant.

You must be the saddest person in the world to spend your time defending a corporation on their website. Either that or you are a plant.

You're the plant, cabbage like I would respectfully suggest. PN have given me excellent service & I'm delighted to say so. After years as a customer of AOL/ Talk Talk I can assure you that PN are the best.

Re: Really terrible customer service

w23 — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 22:01:28 GMT

OK, I believe that jfrankcom has a legitimate reason to be angry with Plusnet: http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,110782.0.html and does not seem to realise that this is a customer led forum and (generally) happy community.
I agree that their comments are not in keeping with the usual community spirit but I think it best not to add further fuel to the fire please.

Re: Really terrible customer service

tijara33 — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 07:44:14 GMT

W23, I fail to see why it's legitimate; if you don't pay you don't get the service, simples.
From the total lack of response to the thread, I guess that everyone else agrees.

Re: Really terrible customer service

CX — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 09:00:38 GMT

I never had problems with Plusnet taking payment by direct debit, at least that avoids even bigger issues caused by my own "screw ups". I'm happy with Plusnet, and shouldn't feel intimated by other posters on this forum when we want to give that kind of feedback in the feedback forum.

Re: Really terrible customer service

w23 — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 10:31:38 GMT

Quote from: tijara33
..I fail to see why it's legitimate..

If the customer says they paid and then posted about it then I generally assume that they believe that they have paid so their reason to complain is legitimate
Of course, there could have been a problem with the payment for whatever reason, that's not for me to judge.
Only on-duty staff are likely to be able to answer that particular query so I think the lack of response at the weekend is pretty much to be expected. Once they get through on the telephone or get an answer from a staff member then it will get resolved on way or the other.
jfrankcom's posts here (and others in other threads) were unnecessary and not really acceptable but I tend to allow for the 'red mist' factor when people feel they have a grievance, I'm not saying that any of the responses were wrong, just thought it better if things did not degrade further.
Peace and harmony restored I hope.

Re: Really terrible customer service

jelv — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 11:04:59 GMT

It's always interesting to find out how many ISPs people who are complaining have had.
I can't remember when I first went online with Compuserve (I was one of the early users and had an email of jelv@compuserve.com instead of the 7xxxx,xxx format) but it will have been around 1996/7). I then moved to Lineone, then BT and finally to Plusnet.
I recently saw someone with issues who had been through 8 or 9 in a fraction of the time and it appears he'd had issues with all of them. I just wonder to what extent the short term customers that post "worst service ever" type messages bring it upon themselves?