topic Re: Why I have left Plusnet in Plusnet Feedback

Why I have left Plusnet

jelv — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 20:52:26 GMT

I’d been with Plusnet for 15 years; first on dial-up, then ADSL and finally FTTC. During that time Plusnet has changed out of all recognition. They used to be one of the ISPs of choice for the more technically advanced users, not far short of Andrews and Arnold and certainly on a par with Zen but a little cheaper than either of them. Now their ratings are heading towards Sky and TalkTalk:

So what do I want from an ISP? Certainly providing a reliable, quick connection is a major factor; but that’s not the whole story, there are two other considerations. Firstly things never stay the same in this marketplace so how well do they rise to challenges? Secondly at some point something will go wrong so how well do they respond to issues?

Having been heavily committed to the Plusnet Community (where I have the second highest post count of any user) and other forums I think I’ve got a good overview of how things are in the world of Plusnet so let’s take a look at what’s been happening. Some of these affected me directly but all influenced my opinion on the soundness of Plusnet as my choice of ISP.

IPv6

Many people think of IPv6 as a new version of the internet. It’s not new – IPv6 has been around for over 20 years and it’s only since the pool of IPv4 addresses ran out that many providers have done anything about it. Back in 2011 Plusnet had developed and internally tested of what was needed for IPv6 and started a trial with around 20 users. A further trial started in 2013. This looked good and it appeared Plusnet was all set to steal a march on all the other large ISPs. So what’s happened since then?

When the bng gateways were introduced it was found IPv6 didn’t work properly on them (users only get their correct address when they managed to hit an ag gateway).
In the last year Plusnet have been moving users to their “new” WBMC Dedicated network. Why IPv6 wasn’t a key requirement of this I fail to understand.
Recently it’s been announced that the ag gateways are being retired – see https://community.plus.net/t5/IPv6-Trial/PSA-AG-Gateway-decommissioning/td-p/1384277

In the meantime Sky and BT have made IPv6 available to all their users (specialist ISP Andrews and Arnold has been providing IPv6 connections to all their users for around 15 years). All requests for information about Plusnet’s IPv6 plans are rebuffed.

Secure email

Users have been requesting secure email for many years and Plusnet had been promising its coming for just as long. Late 2014 a selected number of users were told how they could configure their email to use SSL/TLS on their outgoing mail so it looked like Plusnet might be getting there. Since then nothing and all requests for an indication of when it might be available get a non-committal response (incidentally the outgoing secure email server is still there – I was using it up to the day I left).

New accounts system

For at least 8 years we’ve been told about a new accounts system that will address many of the issues that there are with the current system and there’s no sign that this will ever become a reality (I suspect that there may have been more than one rip it up start again). In the meantime there are these issues/needed improvements:

Ability to select/change billing date
Correction/cancellation of Direct Debit if user contacts Plusnet immediately on receipt of notification email
Display contract end date
Discounts maximum of 12 months when contracts can be 18
Emailed statements or availability of pdf downloads
Single account for multiple lines
and many more…

New Network

The project to move from the current WBMC Shared to WBMC Dedicated has had issues. Around July time there were increasing numbers of complaints about packet loss and increased latency. It took far too long for the issue to be recognised and resolved and for some time they were continuing to move people across to the new network when it was known there were issues. Recently there have been packet loss reports again while they are still moving people across at a high rate.

Webmail and mail servers

Every few years, big issues emerge with the performance of the mail platform and recently it has been really bad. The current large topic running on these forums (“Webmail - Extremely Slow”) was started in May and they are now indicating a solution early December. At first the recommendation was to use an email client, but recently those using a client are also seeing issues.

Communicating with Plusnet

When I joined Plusnet calls were always answered in a reasonable time and for lower priority issues or questions you could raise a ticket. Most tickets were responded to within a few hours. Over time the wait times on the phones got worse and the ticket times did the same. When challenged we were promised it would improve (opening the Leeds office was supposed to make a big difference) – but it never has. Now tickets have been all but killed off and users are forced to wait either for the phone or the chat system. People have lives to live. For a simple request which they are happy to wait a day or so for an answer the ticket system was perfect; they don’t want to be hanging on the phone listening to over-loud noisic, or waiting for chat.

For the last year or so, wait times on both the phones and chat have been totally unacceptable. This is coupled with the quality of the support when you do get through often being below acceptable levels. One thing I have noticed in recent months is a significant increase in the number of times the Help Team, when responding to complaints on the community forums, have had to apologise and feed back to CSC managers. Increasingly this is not a failure to understand or deal with an issue, but getting it completely wrong.

Ever since the chat system has been introduced it has been known that ad blockers can stop it working. It would be so simple to put something on the page to pre-warn users that they needed to disable ad blockers if chat doesn’t work and apparently this has been pushed back but it’s taking a ridiculously long time for something to be done.

The standard of some of the automated emails from Plusnet is poor as well and this illustrates another issue: even when it is known and acknowledged that communications sent to customers by Plusnet need tweaking it doesn’t get done; even if this would reduce the number of support requests. The prime example of this is the email send out on a user’s billing date when they have ordered an upgrade from ADSL to Fibre. They get an email saying “Your broadband product change is complete” which any reasonable person would interpret as they should now be enjoying the higher speeds – it means no such thing, they still have to wait for the engineer to connect them to the fibre cabinet which could be a couple of weeks later. We have seen scores of people posting about this over many, many months. Apparently the Help Team has fed back on this many times but nothing gets done. It would be so simple to change the email to say something like “Your account has been changed ready for your upgrade to fibre. You will be advised separately when this will happen”.

Technical knowledge of Plusnet

I have concerns that the breadth of technical knowledge within Plusnet isn’t that great; there are a few people within Plusnet I have great respect for, but many of the excellent people who I have had dealings with over the years have now left. This really came home to me three years ago when I moved to my current house.

I had been on Max Premium on 20CN (8Mbps down, 832Kbps up) in two previous homes with no issues. On moving here I kept getting disconnections every time the phone rang for an incoming call. I had several engineer visits who confirmed the issue (including one who saw the issue when connecting to my line directly inside the exchange), but no resolution. Eventually I contacted AAISP with a view to migrating to them under their “We’ll fix your line” guarantee (see http://aaisp.net/broadband-trial.html). They immediately told me this was a known issue with Max Premium on Marconi 20CN exchange equipment and they’d get me moved across to different equipment. I fed that back to Plusnet who came back, saying no alternative was available and offered to downgrade me to standard ADSL Max. This did cure the disconnections. On contacting AAISP again to say no alternative was available they checked my exchange and said “oh yes it is”. Finally Plusnet got my line moved and put back on Max Premium and all was well.

So the one significant technical line issue I’ve had over the years was solved by me getting the necessary information from another ISP and telling Plusnet what needed doing!

Orders System

I’ve lost count of the number of posts I’ve seen where new users have placed orders and some time if not weeks later they are wondering when they’ll be moved across. When they contact Plusnet it’s found that the order from Plusnet to their suppliers failed and it hadn’t been picked up. Again this points to issues with systems not being addressed when it would reduce customer dissatisfaction and reduce support requests.

Pro Add-on

The Pro add-on was introduced before any of the genuine unlimited accounts were introduced. On the old accounts it did make a difference and was worth users paying the extra. On Unlimited accounts it is pretty pointless as 99.9% of the time (and acknowledged as such by Plusnet: see message 6 from Chris on https://community.plus.net/t5/Broadband/ADSL-Max-Pro-add-on-or-Max-Premium-trial/td-p/1039937) which was posted three years ago. Yet for years they continue to offer it to users on Unlimited accounts when the principal affect was to make the user £5 per month poorer with no improvement to the broadband (and in some cases it made things worse).

Fibre Product Range

For a long time they offered the choice of 40/20 (Fibre or 80/20. The 40/20 made no sense as they still had to pay OpenReach the same amount as 80/20. They then stopped that, but instead of offering the standard 40/10 they offer 40/2 – the reason seems to be that their rival who they want to compete with (TalkTalk) has that as their entry fibre product. Recently they’ve downgraded all the people who were on 40/20 Unlimited to 55/10.

We see numerous posts from people who have migrated in from other ISPs where they were on 40/10 and are surprised to find their upload is reduced to a fifth of what is was – the upload speed on Unlimited Fibre is well hidden! To add to this madness Plusnet will not sell Unlimited Fibre Extra to people who cannot sync above 40 – the only choice people whose download speed is limited have is to go to another ISP such as BT. Offering a choice of 40/2, 55/10 and 80/20 would offer a perfectly balanced portfolio which is why OpenReach introduced 55/10 in the first place.

Conclusion

When I joined Plusnet they didn’t advertise at all – they didn’t have to. They enjoyed steady growth through word of mouth and the referrals system. When they were bought by BT the whole approach changed. BT itself was still charging the premium prices to its users and wanted a way to compete on price with Sky and TalkTalk.

It is now apparent that the over-riding aim of Plusnet’s management is to gain customers which is why we now see frequent adverts, stunts like the sponsorship of Big Brother and a continuous stream of introductory offers (usually with cashback) to match those of TalkTalk. All of this has produced a steady stream of new signups at a faster rate than they’ve grown the support department. The inevitable consequence has been the decline in support as we’ve seen. The result has been a lot of users who bitterly regret coming to Plusnet have suffered the consequences of the poor support and leave again at the first opportunity. Not only are they permanently lost but they will also put the word around about their experience.

The changed approach has also had other consequences:

It has changed the type of users that Plusnet attracts. They now appeal to those who are solely out for the cheapest deal and still expect first class support; they will show no loyalty at all and will leave again as soon as they are out of contract and a better offer is available.
The most likely time for users to need support is when they join or upgrade to FTTC from ADSL. The current strategy means that there will continue to be high demands for support so I cannot see any prospect of a return to the high levels of service we saw in the past.
Developers are continually engaged preparing for new campaigns and small tweaks that could make improvements for existing users never rise to the top of the development stack.

What Plusnet don’t seem to realise is that just gaining new users isn’t the only way to increase the total user base – keeping your existing users happy is just as important. Plusnet’s churn rate is probably as high if not higher than any other ISP’s.

I nearly moved away 18 months ago when FTTC first became available on my exchange, but at that time I’d have had to deal with moving two domains as well as a lot of other things going on at the time. I’ve been watching as the 18 months passed to see if there was any sign that Plusnet would return to being the ISP who I would be confident would deal with problems if they occurred, promptly, efficiently and competently. Instead we’ve seen support so overwhelmed that they had to post a service notice apologising that it was taking up to 5 days to deal with faults. They tried to blame it on “their suppliers” but it was strange that I saw no other ISP indicated they were having such problems. That was the final straw!

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

St3 — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 21:33:10 GMT

I think you hit the nail on the head with most of that.

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

arktos — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 22:11:46 GMT

Excellent post, Jelv. Very comprehensive, and it sums up the frustrations which are evident every day on these boards. It is very poor that, as you say, even the rewording of a template ("your product change is now complete") has been unaddressed for so long, despite many of us bringing it to Plusnet's attention. I did so myself, here: https://community.plus.net/t5/Fibre-Broadband/Fibre-upgrade/m-p/1380862#M49759

That is but a minor example, but whoever wrote that template shouldn't have been allowed to do so if they had so little breadth of vision as to the scope for misunderstanding. The fact that it has been pointed out so many times with no rectification, really does hint of "let them eat cake".

Likewise the communications issues. What an obliviousness towards customers' time being wasted! I too can remember when a simple matter could be raised on a ticket, and the answer would be back very quickly. Now, nearly everything takes hours or days, which is doubly annoying when someone else's mistake has caused the problem. I've recently noticed that even when a ticket comes off "hold" it can be several days before it's reviewed, even on a provisioning or fault issue. And with so many questions being asked about matters which shouldn't have arisen if things were done correctly to start with, it's no wonder it's got like it has.

The unsatisfactory relations / communications issues between BT and Plusnet also slow everything down terribly, and Ofcom (or whoever) failed us yet again by not sorting that one out recently.

However, there are two things that I should say to balance thing up a bit.

One is that it must be dreadful trying to field all the phone calls from people who have already reached "the end of their rope", yet everyone I have spoken to has managed to stay calm and polite. It's not usually their fault that things have become so fouled up in a disfunctional system, so well done, agents, and thanks for your soothing words.

The other is that for me the actual broadband service has been good and reliable once it's been provided. It's reaching that point that seems so incredibly difficult.

Yes, we remember the halcyon pre-BT days.

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

AndyA — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 22:07:37 GMT

Well done Jelv, on an excellent, and informative in depth article. Although only with Plusnet for 3 years, the changes, as you point out have been substantial, and the plunge in customer service levels forced me, more in exasperation, to seek a better service elsewhere. Good luck with your new ISP, and tnx again, Andy A

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

jab1 — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 22:07:57 GMT

jelv - a fantastic message for PlusNet management, which of course they will take no notice of, because as you say, they are now engaged with TalkTalk in a race to the bottom.

I have about 15 months of a 2 year deal remaining, and believe me, when that is due for renegotiation, I shall be seriously looking at other options.

Fortunately (says me with fingers & toes crossed), I have been lucky in that I have had no serious problems in the past 12 months or so. The few niggles I have had have been addressed/solved by a couple of the old 'Bright Sparks' - who I notice no longer paticipate in these forums - and I don't blame them.

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

rongtw — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 22:13:20 GMT

Worst part is that is all True

BUT will PN take any action ,,,, NO

DONT HOLD YOUR BREATH

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

rongtw — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 22:17:19 GMT

I wonder how long before this post is Locked ?

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

jab1 — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 22:26:04 GMT

It shouldn't be, rongtw - so long as the 'one-post-and-run' brigade don't hijack it - there's nothing untrue or derogatory been posted yet.

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

jelv — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 22:30:03 GMT

@arktos

You've made a very good point. I feel especially sorry for the staff of the Help Team who work these forums - there's some good people in there and they honestly try their best. But they are let down by the management who let the chronic shortage of support staff continue. Also either the calibre of the support staff being recruited has declined or they are thrown in to the fray with insufficient training (I suspect the latter) which is why we see so many mistakes.

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

alanf — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 01:28:12 GMT

As with the Chat issue simple changes that would make big differences don't happen.

Some years ago after changing product I discovered that my Internet Firewall had been disabled. I reported this and it was raised as a Priority 2 issue. A couple of years later I discovered the same thing had happened again. I was informed that It had been decided that development time for a fix was not justified and the matter dropped without informing anyone. If a change could not have been made to stop the Firewall being turned off a simple message to inform the customer that they would need to reselect their chosen settings after a product change could have been displayed with almost no effort required. I suggested this three years ago and got no response.

See https://community.plus.net/t5/Plusnet-Feedback/Firewall/td-p/602285

Unless there are big improvements by the time my contract ends I'll be off having being a customer for nine years. Although my time has been mostly trouble free I cannot stay with a company that is so disfunctional that when I do have a problem I will have nothing but grief.

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

jelv — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 08:31:29 GMT

I could have included in the section about communication included the scary emails being sent out when people are to be moved to the new network! Another example of where a lack of thought led to unnecessary extra calls to the support staff.

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

2u2me — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 10:09:43 GMT

You speak from your head and heart, unfortunately most speak from their wallet and the company has to lean to this or they go down,will it ever change? doubt it, as long as the people at the top see the sign up stats larger than the leaving/ disapproval stats, wish you well, your knowledge will be missed.

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

Andrue — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 10:10:38 GMT

A very good post, Jelv. I agree with all of it. The only defence I would personally add is my 99% reliability experience. Aside from a few wobbles during the single-threaded debacle of '15 my connection has always done everything I wanted.

Lack of IPv6 is a minor irritation and nearly caused me to jump ship a few weeks ago (but only because I thought I could get it for about the same monthly fee). Ultimately right now for all it's technical advantages IPv6 just isn't that important. Maybe one day it will become so but until then I can put up with not having it.

So my bottom line is that I get an excellent internet service for £22pcm. As long as the service continues to be reliable I'm happy

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

jelv — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 10:16:31 GMT

That's the problem with Plusnet - when it works it's good. What you have to balance is the risk that when problems occur they will not be dealt with promptly or efficiently. If the consequences of a protracted period of issues are not that high for you then sitting tight is probably the right thing to do.

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

nbk — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 10:53:48 GMT

Problem is @jelv...

Plusnet is pretty damn cheap 😐

I know of a lot of people who would be on zen if not for the cost...even BT is a lot more expensive, there's always choices like voda but...who knows what their service is like? Their customer service on mobile at least is pretty awful (my brother has asked 2 dozen times to stop with the marketing calls and texts but still gets them!)

So yeah...if people need cheap broadband there arent many choices

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

rongtw — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 11:02:40 GMT

Just because its Cheap , should NOT mean they skimp on Support

My connection is 99% perfect , and i enjoy visiting here and trying to help BUT its annoying when its the same mistakes that occur at PN every week.

And frequency is increasing

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

billnotben — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 11:05:06 GMT

All those points are true and I could think of a few more.

The real problem is Plusnet and most of their staff already know. As many of the problems are contrived.

Nothing will happen until new customer numbers fall off the cliff edge, then it will be too late.

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

dvorak — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 11:36:32 GMT

@rongtw wrote:

I wonder how long before this post is Locked ?

There is no reason to lock this thread; it's thought out, not abusive and factual.

Only replies that fall foul of the rules would cause any action to be taken.

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

Ronski — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 11:38:58 GMT

I have been with PN for just over 13 years at home, and the business I work for for 3 years.

I have to agree with Jelv, he has written an excellent post, there are so many problems that could easily be fixed, which in turn would help with support time. I don't frequent the forums very often, so do not see the issues on a day to day basis, but do see them mentioned elsewhere.

From my own experience I get the distinct feeling that the back end software (billing platform etc) that PN runs is very dated and fragile, and hence causes a lot of issues and is long overdue an update which Jelv mentioned. In this day and age I cant believe I have to login, view a webpage and print it just to get our monthly invoice. This has been raised on the forums many a time over the years and nothing has changed. I also remember the billing system holding up the rolling out of a new package, can't remember the specifics but it certainly sounded like it wasn't flexible at all, and adding the new package was causing problems.

Fortunately at the moment both connections are running OK, but I hate to think what would (or wouldn't) happen if I needed support, the business line is on a business contract so hopefully support will be better there.

Having just the two options of 40/2 or 80/20 is just plain ridiculous, it also seems the business options are lacking with a choice of two 80/20 and 80/10 (PN must be throttling an 80/20 package), fortunately both my connections were ordered long before this farce came into being. But my home connection only really warrants a 55/10 package, rather than the 80/20 I pay for. AT least they still have fixed IP's available, and currently IPV6 is not a problem for me.

I don't want to change as I'm tight when it comes to money, and I get a bit of discount with referrals I've made in the past, but with anybody I try to refer recently I always tell them support is lacking.

Re: Why I have left Plusnet

gleneagles — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 11:42:56 GMT

@jelv

Thanks for such a detailed post , as I have been fortunate enough to have had no recent problems I was unaware of the extent of problems many users faced, of course I have seen posts from users complaining about issues but it's clear the problem is much bigger than I thought, clearly caused by the detailed reasons you give..

I recall that in my first few years with PN the service was excellent, in fact PN actually phoned me regarding a few issues I had and talked me through them these days it sounds like you would be lucky to get throught to talk and even then few staff seem to have the skills to deal with specific issues.

These days everything is about profit and the customer is just a nusiance unless they are phoning to join or renew their contract in which case staff are very helpful in describing what excellent service and speeds you will get on signing up.

The only question is which ISP to go with in the future and whichever you choose might they not also go the same way as PN