topic Re: Ticket response times in Plusnet Feedback

Ticket response times

EnglishMohican — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 08:16:48 GMT

Quote
At the moment we're averaging a response time of 36 hours 42 minutes 2 seconds for new queries.
If our Support Team need to contact another department or 3rd party then we may take longer to respond.

The above appeared when I raised a ticket this morning. For a service driven organisation to let things get to this state is utterly appalling.
Perhaps if you did not make work for yourselves by your utter incompentence at handling the simplest transaction (see http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,119216.0.html ; for an example of Plusnet's systems causing work rather than efficiently minimising it) then your lead times might reduce to something vaguely acceptable without the need for a Leeds office, the cost of lots of new employees and the need to put our bills up just to support eye catching deals for newcomers who stay 10 minutes and then leave to go to another introductory offer.

Re: Ticket response times

burrowsp — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 08:45:02 GMT

90+ hours since I raised a ticket (76502007) to get the upload cap removed from my Unlimited Broadband and the ticket hasn't been picked up as yet.

Re: Ticket response times

andyhb1963 — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 08:56:27 GMT

I have to put my penny's worth in too. The level of support from Plusnet at the moment is APPALLING. I have been waiting to have broadband connected to my new house for over two months now. Granted, some of that delay is due to the equally wonderful BT Openreach, but now the delay is 100% down to Plusnet. I cannot get through by phone because of the excessive wait times and they are not replying to my open ticket either. I entered some details on the 30th October and it is now 4th November.
Come on Plusnet, you are losing a lot of good will here. Get your support sorted out pronto or you WILL lose customers, if you haven't already.
Oh, by the way, please get my broadband sorted!!
My ticket number is 73173672.
Andy

Re: Ticket response times

burrowsp — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 10:22:15 GMT

I think I'll wait until it gets to 100+ hours (around lunchtime today) then raise another ticket as my original ticket has obviously got lost in Plusnet's system somewhere.
Not a good welcome to Plusnet!!

Re: Ticket response times

EnglishMohican — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 10:33:05 GMT

Quote from: burrowsp
........ then raise another ticket as my original ticket has obviously got lost in Plusnet's system somewhere.
Not a good welcome to Plusnet!!

Take care. If you add to your existing ticket then Plusnet's wonderful system puts the whole ticket back to the beginning of the queue - so you might just set your cause back another 100 hours.
If you raise a new ticket then that can also cause problems as I believe you can only have 4 tickets open at once (maybe that is visible at once) so after 400 hours, you will be out of tickets until some get closed.

Re: Ticket response times

burrowsp — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 10:40:54 GMT

This issue (my ticket) is also mentioned in three Forum posts but as yet no comment from Plusnet on any of them.
What more can I do to get this looked at...................without joining the (reported) lengthy wait in a phone queue?

Re: Ticket response times

Chris — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 10:51:41 GMT

We'll pick up your ticket shortly, sorry but Monday mornings are the busiest time of the week for us on the forum as we don't check officially work them over the weekend.

Re: Ticket response times

adamwalker — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 11:10:07 GMT

@burrowsp I've just replied to that ticket (76502007) for you.
@andyhb1963 I'm going to flag that ticket up to our provisioning team for you.
Adam

Re: Ticket response times

burrowsp — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 11:34:11 GMT

Many thanks Adam and Chris. I appreciate that things will be busy Monday morning on the Forums after the weekend.
Just out of interest is the Support Ticket system 24/7 ?

Re: Ticket response times

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 11:43:54 GMT

Yes - I have had tickets in the last year, answered at 02:26, 03:39, 04:11, and 05:02am - including weekends
but it still might have taken a week before getting even an initial response

Re: Ticket response times

EnglishMohican — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 12:16:23 GMT

If you worked efficiently and did not create unnecessary work for yourselves then Monday morning might not be so busy. I notice nobody has got around to looking at my post asking for you to restore a service that has been restricted despite me authorising direct debit payment on the 25th and your website saying it takes 5 to 7 days to take payment. Payment was taken on the 1st Nov at which point BACS says it arrives in your account instantly. BACS also says that you should get the money on the third day after asking for it - so 5 to 7 is very generous to yourselves. All this because your portal is crassly designed and does not warn of the implications of an action until after the action is committed. Now you have to answer a string of posts all because your systems are so out of date and awkward. See http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,119216.0.html ; for more detail - if anybody at Plusnet can be bothered.

Re: Ticket response times

burrowsp — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 14:43:44 GMT

I have to say that all the Plusnet Staff that I have dealt with have all been very good.
It just looks like they are being let done by their systems, BT Openworld (especially) and there just aren't enough of them.
Does anybody know why Plusnet cap the upload speed in the first place? Not doing this would take a bit of workload off the support staff straight away.

Re: Ticket response times

andyhb1963 — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 15:52:34 GMT

For my part, I just received a call from Plusnet regarding my ticket. Thanks for that. Hopefully, my broadband will be up and running on the 13th November as promised.
Andy

Re: Ticket response times

adamwalker — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 09:29:50 GMT

@EnglishMohican
Thanks for your feedback, we're doing what we can under some heaver than usual workloads at the moment, thanks for your feedback all the same I have responded to your original post.

Quote
Does anybody know why Plusnet cap the upload speed in the first place?

Our provisioning systems are built to order ADSL2 connections with a 448kbps upstream, we may be looking to change this in the future but we're happy to place orders to uncap this in the meantime where needed.
Adam

Re: Ticket response times

burrowsp — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 19:54:44 GMT

Thanks for the response, Adam.
I'm just curious - why, by default, place a cap on an 'unlimited' service? Isn't this a contradiction and a bit misleading, sales wise?
Plusnet may be happy for us, the customers, to place orders to have the cap removed, but it must irk many customers having to do this, especially when it takes several days to get this done (my personal experience).
Many thanks for your help.

Re: Ticket response times

jelv — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 09:02:19 GMT

Quote from: _Adam_Walker_
Our provisioning systems are built to order ADSL2 connections with a 448kbps upstream, we may be looking to change this in the future but we're happy to place orders to uncap this in the meantime where needed.

"may be looking"? Months (years?) ago we were told this was definitely going to be changed. I thought at one time you were running bulk jobs to uncap people.

Re: Ticket response times

Apprentice — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 09:22:38 GMT

Quote from: burrowsp
Thanks for the response, Adam.
I'm just curious - why, by default, place a cap on an 'unlimited' service? Isn't this a contradiction and a bit misleading, sales wise?
Plusnet may be happy for us, the customers, to place orders to have the cap removed, but it must irk many customers having to do this, especially when it takes several days to get this done (my personal experience).
Many thanks for your help.

My understanding is that the word "Unlimited" refers more to the amount of data that can be downloaded and uploaded.

Quote
but it must irk many customers having to do this

It doesn't apply to me as my exchange is still 20CN but I agree with what you said plus how many customers who might not be very technically minded know that their connection is capable of giving them a faster upload sync speed, as they probably think (hope?) that their ISP is "doing" them proud anyway.

Re: Ticket response times

burrowsp — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 09:35:25 GMT

Hi Apprentice,
Yes, I agree that the term 'Unlimited' refers primarily to the amount of data you are allowed to download per month.
However, potential customers will be drawn in by the title 'Unlimited Broadband' not aware that Plusnet, by their own default, actually deliberately 'limit' the upload speed, rather than this being determined by the characteristic of the phone line.
I still don't understand why they actually do this.
Hi Jelv,
Yes, I have seen posts from Plusnet from a long time ago where they said they were planning to stop capping the upload speed.

Re: Ticket response times

Kelly — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 09:50:35 GMT

Couple of quick points:
- We still uncap on request
- We have been bulk uncapping people. That paused for a little bit as we ran into a BTW problem where this was breaking some accounts, I think that's resolved now though. I'll check where we are up to.
- We are still provisioning people capped, but a request has been put into a project which is on running to change that to uncapped. It's likely that won't deliver till some time next year though.

Re: Ticket response times

jelv — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 11:44:48 GMT

Quote from: Kelly
It's likely that won't deliver till some time next year though.

Forgive me if I don't hold my breath waiting for this given some of the previous statements on the matter. E.g. this from a year ago:

Quote from: Kelly
The reason we are uncapping is because we can We've seen that our original stability concerns around uncapping are mostly unfounded, so we can give people that increase without too much worry of causing problems. Upload is more important nowadays with everyone sharing audio/video and uploading photos everywhere!