topic Re: final chance to keep me as a customer in Plusnet Feedback

final chance to keep me as a customer

meem — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 14:02:33 GMT

The fact that I need to write this on a public forum to force a response is damning enough.. the reality is, if I don't receive adequate response today I will be cancelling all services with plusnet and moving forward with a new provider.
I don't want to go through old history, it's available by searching under my name. It is relevant for why I am at the end of my tether however, so I will briefly recap. Migrating to PN from Sky was a completely botched process that left me without either telephone or internet for several weeks, and trying to call customer support (0800 not being free on mobiles) with 30-60 minute queues was both expensive and frustrating. Eventually I had my service, and apart from one or two niggles, I cannot fault the service. It's a good job really, since the frustration involved in getting through the telephone queues is not one I wish to experience again.
So I had a year of mostly good service. Not perfect but I was happy, and I never complained. There was a credit for the first months bill as a nod to the installation issues - great, I can't fault it.
And then I moved house. Not due to my own decision, though that is irrelevant anyway. I was told to give PN a weeks notice - though infact the engineer date was two weeks beyond that date. Fair enough, I didn't quibble two weeks instead of one.
The install date was changed to another week later (via the PN message system) - which I replied to, and today, SEVEN days later it remains UNANSWERED.
BTOR were supposed to show up yesterday. They did not. I've raised another question today, but since I am still waiting for a response to a question raised seven days ago I won't be holding my breath.
The unanswered question is : 89088164.
And just to reiterate:
I will be cancelling my contract and all services with you TODAY if this is not resolved satisfactory. I don't even care that the line rental is paid in advance for several months, I will write that off to be done with your services.
PN, sort me out or I am gone and I will never be a customer again.
It is really that simple

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

AlexD — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 14:17:31 GMT

Hi meem,
Many thanks for getting in touch. I've just left you a voice message regarding the situation and hope to speak with you shortly.
Openreach have advised that the engineer attended the property and could not gain access. I have checked the engineers notes and I believe this to be incorrect. He has not been able to provide a fact about your property (door colour etc) or even advised what time he attended which indicates he did not turn up.
I have been able to re-appoint your order to Tuesday 12th between 8am and 1pm for you.
I shall try and reach you again later today and I've updated your home move today.
Once again, my sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

demonix01 — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 14:31:55 GMT

There is an alternative number available when you have to call from a mobile, but giffgaff is the only network (as far as I'm aware) that doesn't charge anyone for calling 0800 numbers so it might be an option to go for if there's problems in the future.

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

DaveyH — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 15:22:06 GMT

Quote from: demonix01
giffgaff is the only network (as far as I'm aware) that doesn't charge anyone for calling 0800 numbers so it might be an option to go for if there's problems in the future.

0800s are also free on three. An ofcom ruling introduced the end of last year means they'll be free on all networks by June 2015.

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

meem — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 16:18:21 GMT

0800 is only free on Three if you take out a new contract (and in doing so, lose any current tariff that includes unlimited data, since they have since rescinded these deals)
Alex - I have replied to you on the ticket. I got your voice mail - but the queue was too long to call back and I am leaving work.
meem

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

meem — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 15:11:07 GMT

Why do I only get updates when I make a post here?
Tickets remain unanswered from friday and again today... I'm still no closer to having an internet service, but not to worry, only 6 days till you next bill me, despite providing no service
I really have had enough now. When somebody responds to the ticket.. please provide the cancellation process along with a breakdown of charges/refunds applicable. I simply can't bare to deal with this anymore

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

meem — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 12:01:11 GMT

Currently on hold waiting for the cancellations department...
Thanks anyway to anybody that has replied to me or tried to help me. For 12 months now the queue for telephone support has been completely unacceptable - I'm sure it's not much fun for people working at PN to be so under resourced and no doubt deal with extremely irate customers as a consequence. The response in another thread about deaf callers was simply outrageous - I'm sure it felt uncomfortable even having to write what you did. Queue times of 30-60+ minutes are simply unacceptable, I am only glad I've never had to use such an intermediary when trying to contact PN.
The actual internet service was never an issue - dedicated IP, my own router - again thumbs up. But just the thought of ever having to contact support makes me unable to recommend PN to anybody. In fact, I would urge everybody to stay away. Being comfortable with technology I was lucky enough to never need support for anything interior to the telephone socket, I dread to think of the experiences that somebody needing more support has endured to date.

Luckily I am in a position to be able to afford the cancellation charges. I pre-paid a years worth of phone line that i'll be writing off 4 months of, £63.25 for cancellation of service under contract, and another £30 for a BS cessation charge... near enough £140 spend to be rid of plusnet. That's how bad you are, and that's how prepared I am to leave you.
So I finally got through and the order is cancelled. @Alex: Interestingly enough, he all but called me a liar with regard to the BTOR no-show that you responded to (i.e the lack of a call, and the lack of any details about the property to prove he was there) which is interesting, since we both know he did not show up, and yet a "third" person reading your internal message system seemed to draw a very different conclusion.

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

Townman — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 12:12:30 GMT

Quote from: alexdevine
I have been able to re-appoint your order to Tuesday 12th between 8am and 1pm for you.
I shall try and reach you again later today and I've updated your home move today.

Hi meem,
Do I read between the lines that the BTOR engineer did not show again - or did you not get the appointment confirmed?
Whilst one can understand your frustrations with the time it takes to progress matters with PlusNet support, it is BTOR (or their contractor) who has failed to turn up and deliver service. In some parts of the country BTOR is exceedingly bad in this respect, particularly where one well known sub contractor is used. I rather fear that you might fair little better with a different ISP, as they all have to use the same BTOR / sub contractor delivery service.
Good luck with your next "supplier" as it will still be the same BTOR / sub contractor who fails to knock at your door.
Kevin

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

meem — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 12:26:28 GMT

I understand which parts BTOR are responsible for and which parts PN are responsible for, so I'm well aware of what my next provider experience is going to entail.
The part that I simply cannot accept is PN failure to respond to tickets and failure to answer the phone within an adequate time period.
PN simply isn't worth the stress that raising a support issue entails.
Oh and BTW: if my phone service (paid until >November) disconnects today I will NOT be paying the £93.25 charge. Feel free to take me to court over it. I'll gladly counter with your early termination of a FULLY PAID UP service to me. I am happy to pay the broadband cancellation fee, I am happy for that to be immediate from today. But if you disconnect my phone today, well unless you offset those pre-pay months from the outstanding amount, you can kindly shove it

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

Acassim — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 14:07:45 GMT

Hi meem,
I'm sorry to hear that you've had troubles in getting through to us over the duration of the house move, please accept my apologies for this and any inconvenience this has caused you. I'm also sorry to see that this has now reached a point where you have cancelled the service with us, I can see this was due to a culmination of both the missed engineer appointments and the wait times we're currently subject to at the moment.
I see from the details on the account that a cancellation was arranged for immediate effect and this appears to have now been completed however there is an update from you on the support ticket around 15 minutes later to advise that you wished to keep the telephone service active. Was this discussed as an option when you spoke with the agent in the Customer Options team?
If this was something that was requested in the call then I would be more than happy to have the call recording reviewed to see why this hasn't happened and see what we need to do from there. If this wasn't discussed on the call and you requested the closure right away, it seems that the cease completed in the Openreach system at 13:03 which would mean that this had been done before you managed to get back in touch with us.
With regards to the contention on the final billing, I understand your stance on this however the pre-paid Line Rental Saver service is paid for a yearly product so unfortunately there isn't a refund due on this against the final charges due on the account as this is a one-off non-refundable service.
You're completely correct that you shouldn't have been billed for the full months broadband service given that the house move was in progress and as such I have made arrangements for a refund of this to be processed for you and have requested that this be for a full month instead of the partial month which was due.
If you need me to investigate anything further for you then please let us know, either myself or one of my colleagues will be on hand to pick this up for you. Again we're sorry that this matter has resulted in the cancellation of your service.

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

Anotherone — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 14:45:30 GMT

So this involved a home move - IIRC something that PN have managed to foul up before BUT the real source of the problem is yet again Openretch.
Not funny, and meem, did Alex not try to phone you again? And I guess that you aren't going to be overly happy with parts of Adam's reply..

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

meem — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:01:54 GMT

Quote from: Adam
Hi meem,
I'm sorry to hear that you've had troubles in getting through to us over the duration of the house move, please accept my apologies for this and any inconvenience this has caused you. I'm also sorry to see that this has now reached a point where you have cancelled the service with us, I can see this was due to a culmination of both the missed engineer appointments and the wait times we're currently subject to at the moment.
I see from the details on the account that a cancellation was arranged for immediate effect and this appears to have now been completed however there is an update from you on the support ticket around 15 minutes later to advise that you wished to keep the telephone service active. Was this discussed as an option when you spoke with the agent in the Customer Options team?
If this was something that was requested in the call then I would be more than happy to have the call recording reviewed to see why this hasn't happened and see what we need to do from there. If this wasn't discussed on the call and you requested the closure right away, it seems that the cease completed in the Openreach system at 13:03 which would mean that this had been done before you managed to get back in touch with us.

Hi Adam,
To think I thought things could not possibly have gotten any worse....
I've actually just got off the phone to PN support again, following an attempt to order internet with another supplier that failed.
I am beyond stunned and speechless at what has been done. I don't know if the notes convey just how gobsmacked/furious/upset/insert superlative of choice I am right now.
The message I submitted was not a change of mind, I was clarifying (being crystal clear) that I wanted the internet order cancelled (still no idea when that would have been installed anyway). I did not expect my phone service to be cancelled. Since I'm at work I actually didn't know it was cancelled until the chap I was just on the phone with tried to dial it...
I recall the problems when I originally moved from Sky to PN that a cease and termination was done instead of transfer,resulting in loss of all service (incl telephone number) for a period of time. I explicitly asked Nigel if I needed a MAC code to ensure I could get an order placed with another provider asap, and avoid the errors that happened first time round.

Quote
With regards to the contention on the final billing, I understand your stance on this however the pre-paid Line Rental Saver service is paid for a yearly product so unfortunately there isn't a refund due on this against the final charges due on the account as this is a one-off non-refundable service.
You're completely correct that you shouldn't have been billed for the full months broadband service given that the house move was in progress and as such I have made arrangements for a refund of this to be processed for you and have requested that this be for a full month instead of the partial month which was due.
If you need me to investigate anything further for you then please let us know, either myself or one of my colleagues will be on hand to pick this up for you. Again we're sorry that this matter has resulted in the cancellation of your service.

I wasn't expecting a refund of the line rental, I knew that when I did transfer the service elsewhere, I'd effectively be writing that money off - I just know that there's no way in the world I was going to pay £93.25 if my phone service was terminated prematurely.
The gent I just spoke to (I didn't get his name) basically said (and I genuinely appreciate the honesty): your phone is gone, your telephone number is gone, it isn't coming back and there is nothing that can be done to change this situation. You can write a letter of complaint (The balance, 2 pinfold street, Sheffield, S1 2gu), but the service is gone, the money is gone.. and that's just the way it is.
I can't begin to express my outrage at losing the telephone number.. I only hope that I find a suitable way to convey it in a formal written letter of complaint.

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

meem — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:07:12 GMT

Quote from: Anotherone
So this involved a home move - IIRC something that PN have managed to foul up before BUT the real source of the problem is yet again Openretch.
Not funny, and meem, did Alex not try to phone you again? And I guess that you aren't going to be overly happy with parts of Adam's reply..

No she didn't.
She left me one voice mail on Friday. I replied a couple of times using the support messaging tool and tried to call back on Friday until ~6pm, but since I was at work and had to leave the office, I never got through.
I sent another message at the start of the week, but neither that or Fridays messages were ever replied to.
Not overly happy is one way of putting it....
I really am speechless

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

Townman — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:15:49 GMT

Quote from: Adam
If this was something that was requested in the call then I would be more than happy to have the call recording reviewed to see why this hasn't happened and see what we need to do from there. If this wasn't discussed on the call and you requested the closure right away, it seems that the cease completed in the Openreach system at 13:03 which would mean that this had been done before you managed to get back in touch with us.

Quote from: meem
The message I submitted was not a change of mind, I was clarifying (being crystal clear) that I wanted the internet order cancelled (still no idea when that would have been installed anyway). I did not expect my phone service to be cancelled. Since I'm at work I actually didn't know it was cancelled until the chap I was just on the phone with tried to dial it...

Quote from: meem
The gent I just spoke to (I didn't get his name) basically said (and I genuinely appreciate the honesty): your phone is gone, your telephone number is gone, it isn't coming back and there is nothing that can be done to change this situation. You can write a letter of complaint (The balance, 2 pinfold street, Sheffield, S1 2gu), but the service is gone, the money is gone.. and that's just the way it is.
I can't begin to express my outrage at losing the telephone number.. I only hope that I find a suitable way to convey it in a formal written letter of complaint.

@CRT,
This looks like the phone line might have been ceased in error. I recall a recent issue where the subscriber was informed by Ofcom that there is an emergency escalation process to undo mistakes such as this. Did anyone ever manage to verify if this is indeed true (rather than a straw man idea)? If it exists, then could this be used to restore the line / retain the phone number?
Kevin

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

Anotherone — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:18:36 GMT

There is no doubt in my mind this should be immediately escalated to someone senior enough in Plusnet to get the line restored immediately.

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

Acassim — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:21:07 GMT

Hi meem,
Thanks for getting back to me on this one, I'm going to get this looked into for you now as this should be fed back on and the necessary action taken.
As for the line, I understand your frustrations here as this would obviously stop you from transferring the line into a new provider and taking up a broadband service with them. Once I've reviewed the call to work out what the agent has done, we could look at the option we have in front of us in order to move forward.
At present these would be:
1.) We reactivate the line free of charge for you in order to allow the transfer of your line to a new provider. This may take between 24/48 hours to activate if our supplier have cleared the order down (possibly longer if not) and then it would take 7/14 days for the line to transfer to a new provider where you could then have broadband provided between 7/14 days later (engineer availability dependant if taking fibre with them)
2.) Take up a phone and broadband service with a new provider from scratch and have both ADSL and phone activated within 7/10 days of placing the order
The second option would probably work quicker for you however I'm more than happy with getting the phone provided at our expense so that you at least have this back up an running as soon as possible.
Either way I'll update this thread for you as soon as my investigation has been completed. I'm deeply sorry for the way in which the cancellation of this service has transpired.

@Kevin - It was myself that looked into this a few weeks back however I haven't found anything that would allow us the facility to place an emergency re-provide.

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

Townman — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:26:00 GMT

Hi Adam,
Do not know if this is relevant, can be exploited. See https://www.btwholesale.com/pages/downloads/Products/Interconnect/IP%20EXCHANGE%20NUMBER%20PORTABILITY%20HANDBOOK%20v1.1.pdf section 7.7.
Seems like there is some form of emergency restoration (as opposed to re-provide) service (there ought to be one) but the "rules" might not permit its use here... but may be someone with some BTw clout might be able to stretch the point!
Kevin

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

Anotherone — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:29:03 GMT

Adam, with all due respect it needs someone senior enough in Plusnet to get hold of someone senior enough in Openreach. After all this is nothing more than a remote software job with someone at Openreach sitting at a keyboard typing in the appropriate things. There are no wires involved, I expect that there will still be dial tone at the end of the line as well. It's only the number that has been deactivated from the circuit and so can't make or receive calls.

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

Townman — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:35:05 GMT

Adam,
Also if it helps see section C3.9 here - http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDkQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fstakeholders.ofcom.org.uk%2Fbinaries%2Ftelecoms%2Fnumbering%2FGNPE2ECVersion12.rtf&ei=iITrU57GI6aQ7Aa8-ICABw&usg=AFQjCNEGm7AYnxN_ycaSZJC9X3-xdXlkxw&sig2=sPGuwiOtQ5P3OfWjz-UcAA&bvm=bv.72938740,d.ZWU
This is all to do with number porting cancelations - might one argue that PN cancelling this line is "porting the number back to BTOR"?
Kevin

Re: final chance to keep me as a customer

Acassim — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:47:23 GMT

@Townman & Anotherone - Understandably we are more than open to getting the line back up and running with haste however this will very much depend on the requirements of the customer at this stage. While this is the right thing to do it may no necessarily be the quickest way in which to get phone and broadband services with another provider.
Regardless of this though, I'll linger here to await a response and should be able to get the line back up relatively quickly as the order is now shown as complete.