topic Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware? in Plusnet Feedback

Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

Anonymous — Thu, 26 May 2016 13:16:38 GMT

Afternoon, I used to be AverageWhiteBloke on this community board but now I can't sign in because there's a 15 character limit on it. Hopefully I can get my account back.....

Anyway, back to the point. Are Plusnet aware that the phone number on their main page for sales sticks you in a loop? When it asks for residential or business and you press 1 for residential it flips you back to the same question and so on. Really needs sorted! If that's what you want potential customers to ring. Been like that for over two weeks now.

Is there an alternate number to ring? I had a sales call from PN to discuss my renewing options but I needed time to look into what I needed and compare packages with other providers, they said they would ring me back and haven't and I can't get in touch with them.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

HarryB — Thu, 26 May 2016 13:45:23 GMT

Thanks for flagging that up, I believe you should be able to get through to them on 0800 432 0080. Could you confirm which one is showing for you on the home page so I am flagging up the correct number (Currently shows 0800 073 1120 for me)

In regards to your other (Original) account, it looks like the email address was a googlemail.com address, if you've tried recovering it by entering gmail.com the system won't have picked up on that as it's worded differently (Although I appreciate sending emails to either address would both come through to the same place) I hope that helps.

EDIT: In regards to the 2 numbers I've mentioned above, I've just tried calling both and they seem to be working fine for me.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

Anonymous — Thu, 26 May 2016 14:35:19 GMT

If you are on the https://www.plus.net/home-broadband/contact/ and click on "contact sales team" this is the faulty number. Press 1 for residential and it loops back to the same question. I got round it by contacting the TV sales number.

0800 432 0080 (from within the UK)

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

Anonymous — Thu, 26 May 2016 14:52:49 GMT

Weird, appears to be from my landline. When I ring the number ending 0080 every time I press 1 it loops back to "Welcome to Plusnet, if you're a residential customer press 1" just tried from my mobile and it appeared to work maybe its not acknowledging the ket tone from the phone.

Regarding my account, how do I recover this if 15 characters aren't allowed? my email and username both have more than 15 characters. I notice all my previous posts have my username as AverageWhiteBlo, tried that but no good. Maybe would be easier to keep this new account but I've spent many, many years in this forum and it's handy when I forget how to do something to come back in here a re-read a post.

Nothing lost though, signed up for another contract so there's one sale recovered today I should get free BB by PN by now after over 15 years service. Maybe a letter off the Queen if you could sort that out.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

HarryB — Thu, 26 May 2016 15:10:07 GMT

Glad to hear you've managed to get signed up

@AWB70 wrote:
Regarding my account, how do I recover this if 15 characters aren't allowed? my email and username both have more than 15 characters. I notice all my previous posts have my username as AverageWhiteBlo, tried that but no good.

Sorry, should have probably mentioned in my initial response, but you'd need to reset your password if you haven't done that since we migrated to the new forums.

The forgot password page doesn't actually ask for the username, it would just go off the email address and then send a password reset link to the email address entered providing it can find an account on that email address.

I hope that helps get you back on the other account.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

AWB70 — Thu, 26 May 2016 15:47:22 GMT

Thanks, I'm back. however, I don't think AverageWhiteBlo has the same ring to it . I'm assuming it can't be changed or the two accounts linked?

If not I guess I'll just use the AWB70 account and have to login to this old one to find previous posts.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

HarryB — Thu, 26 May 2016 15:49:32 GMT

We disabled the ability to change username literally today (We initially said the permission would be available for the first 30 days)

We can't link the accounts, however if you drop me a PM I can change the username for you

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

Anonymous — Thu, 26 May 2016 16:15:23 GMT

Got your message via email Harry but can't login to reply because of the 15 limit but please go ahead and rename my AverageWhiteBlo account to AWB70 and delete this one if you can, many thanks.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

HarryB — Thu, 26 May 2016 16:27:13 GMT

Partially done. Just need to delete the temp account now.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

AWB70 — Thu, 26 May 2016 16:37:36 GMT

Thanks Harry, was having an identity crisis there. All is good again

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

Townman — Sat, 18 Jun 2016 13:31:54 GMT

@HarryB wrote:

Partially done. Just need to delete the temp account now.

@HarryB,

Is this another defect for reporting to lithium? The loss of (or a failure to maintain) database referential integrity? It ought not to be possible to delete a primary record (such a s a user account) whilst there are subordinate records (posts) which reference the account. The consequence is that there are now posts (as in this topic) with apparently no owner.

Maybe the correct process here might have been to assign the posts of the old user to the new one (a database update (set userID = newuserID where userID=olduserID) before deleting the old account or just lock the old account to inhibit its use.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

AWB70 — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 14:54:02 GMT

Whooooosh right over my head. Things seem to be working again so I'm all good.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

Anotherone — Sat, 18 Jun 2016 16:48:54 GMT

Right over my head too, whatever "database referential integrity" means (and over 3 weeks since the previous post!).
I suspect there is a bit of confusion here anyway. The "old" account "AverageWhiteBloke" which got curtailed to "AverageWhiteBlo" on the visible posts because of the 15 character limit was indeed renamed as "AWB70" and so he's got all his posts back - correct me if I'm wrong AWB70

The question that I find that really comes out of the comment by Townman is whether the temporary account that is now 'Anonymous' could have been assigned/renamed to "AverageWhiteBlo" before that was renamed "AWB70". Maybe @HarryB may like to have a play about with some test accounts on the test site just to see
Not that I think it actually matters two hoots as it was only temporary and only used for those above posts, where the related information is all in this thread anyway.

Also, I can think of reasons where it may well be desirable to delete the name/account associated with its posts but there could be good reason to leave the posts in place. In any event, not an issue in my book.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

MauriceC — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 07:45:57 GMT

@Anotherone wrote:

.......whatever "database referential integrity" means

Fairly standard database terminology? Wiki. Gives a simple definition and example which highlights the potential problem.

Not that I think it actually matters two hoots as it was only temporary and only used for those above posts, where the related information is all in this thread anyway.

Deleting the temporary account would be OK (ish?) as long as there were no links to other posts / threads. But deleting the old 'AverageWhiteBloke' account could generate a lot of problems. It did occur several years back in the PUG Forum where Users were allowed to delete their own account. One significant User had a 'hissy fit' and deleted his account and all his posts causing lots of failing links to appear across numerous threads. Lots of effort required to make the system stable / reliable again after removing the capability for other Users to cause similar damage.

The lesson learnt was carried forward into the the *New* (as it was then ) SMF forum. So, unless the deleting a User process is aware of AND capable of intelligently managing the links - let's not test it.

A response from Lithium will be interesting and hopefully informative

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

Anonymous — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 08:13:53 GMT

In instances like this it is now normal practice not to physically delete an account but simply set an account flag to say it's deleted, to maintain the integrity of the database. This reduces the chances of orphaned entries in the database eluded to by townman.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

Anotherone — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 09:49:12 GMT

Thanks for the detail guys. Whilst I'd sort of guessed what it meant (never really had anything to do with databases), I was too lazy and a bit short of time to research it after reading.
Whilst the whole thing is of academic interest to a few of us. it undoubtedly isn't to AWB (and most likely the average user) as you can no doubt judge by the comment from AWB.

Interesting that you mention the history there @MauriceC (of which I was aware) - that sort of thing would cause chaos with posts being removed as well, but of course not what's happened here, and of course there was never any intention to "delete" the original AverageWhiteBloke account - which had already been renamed during migration. (I did notice on SMF one or two other users names had been deleted - but not the posts - as they had become "anonymous"). I'd guess the system works as suggested by @Anonymous

As far as links to other posts go, that was an issue that was hotly discussed during testing. As you may have noticed on migrated posts, where a poster had given a link to another reply, although the link goes to the correct place, the post number here is one more than on SMF - "message 2" here, was "reply 1" on SMF.
But when it comes to "quoted" posts, the in-built link that existed on SMF giving the origins of the quote just does not exist here and so of course none of those actual links were migrated from SMF making the traceability of those, and future quotes here, rather like a needle in a haystack search (unless in the same and short thread, or the poster manually provides a link), just another example of this fine leading forum product. This was one issue we wanted resolved before going live, and is still something we are waiting to be provided in a future update.

Anyway, leaving this rather interesting aside, it's not even clear why the issue was mentioned now as it's been happening from day 1 where users haven't been able to get access to their original account. They've created a new "temporary" account to get onto the forum and explained why they can't get to their old account - whether it be forgotten passwords, wrong email address, no reset email etc. The original account has been recovered, in some cases renamed, password reset, email address updated where needed, and then the "temporary" account has been "deleted". I'd guess it works as Mook suggested because it gets assigned the default Lithium Anonymous Avatar rather than the default silhouette or no avatar, and IIRC this was explained somewhere else - probably on Staging.

So now back to the two points made by the OP - 1) he has his original account and all his posts. 2) It's worth posting again for any future readers, that to discuss contract renewals etc, it's usually best to contact Customer Options on 0800-013-2632.
As far as pressing the "1" key goes, AWB70 might want to bear in mind the possibility that the phone used may be slightly off with the key tones - try another phone, or if there is difficulty with other calls with another phone as well, then there could be some sort of line/exchange problem.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

AWB70 — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 10:09:35 GMT

Anotherone wrote:-

So now back to the two points made by the OP - 1) he has his original account and all his posts. 2) It's worth posting again for any future readers, that to discuss contract renewals etc, it's usually best to contact Customer Options on 0800-013-2632.
As far as pressing the "1" key goes, AWB70 might want to bear in mind the possibility that the phone used may be slightly off with the key tones - try another phone, or if there is difficulty with other calls with another phone as well, then there could be some sort of line/exchange problem.

Thanks for the input, indeed yes I have my original posts back which was the main benefit. This is an excellent forum for getting information about anything tech related not just Plusnet. I tend to make it my first stop when I have any type of issue because you always seem to get your issue resolved here rather than in a specific board for that issue. I spend most of my time in the Linux section, I often come across an issue where I've been here before but can't remember what I did last time. I know 9/10 times I will have discussed it here so can trawl back though my previous posts. If I was a bit more organised I would save all the relevant information into Evernote or something to revert back to but every time I pop in here with my issue it's good to keep up with what other people are doing.

Regarding the helpline, not sure at which end the issue is. like I mentioned earlier up the thread I tried the same thing off my mobile and it worked which would suggest the dial tone on my landline. However I've used the same phone on other numbers where pressing one was an option and it always works on their systems, actually did it twice this morning without a problem.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

Anotherone — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 10:26:28 GMT

If you ever have any intermittent noises on your line that could affect the tone signalling whilst the noise is present - as well as a potential affect on your broadband (poor line = poor broadband usually).

AWB70 wrote:
I tend to make it my first stop when I have any type of issue because you always seem to get your issue resolved here rather than in a specific board for that issue.

Not sure whether you meant the Plusnet forum in general, or this board specifically, as opposed to a board of some other forum. I'm guessing from the bit

I spend most of my time in the Linux section.......

you meant this Forum rather than any other.
Whilst the search engine here is somewhat clunky (gross understatement) you can more easily browse through you own posts by looking at your Profile then clicking on the > on the Latest Posts by ... module as you may have discovered - unless you've made a very large number of posts, when you can't go back far enough - currently limited to 500 pages - then you need to use search

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

AWB70 — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 10:34:57 GMT

There's no audible noise on my line it's quite clean. Yes I meant this forum mate which is why it's handy to as you say look back through my previous posts. For instance the Linux section (which has changed now) I can post soemthing and easily have two or three suggestions within a couple of hours. Post the same thing in the Ubuntu forums and you'll be very lucky to get a reply.

Re: Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

Anotherone — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 11:58:18 GMT

For instance the Linux section (which has changed now)

That is something, I'm still hoping we'll get changed back, but that is a separate argument going on elsewhere.