topic Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion in Plusnet Feedback

Live Chat Availability Discussion

JonoH — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 17:44:53 GMT

We're currently experiencing an unusually high volume of calls. To try and keep wait times to a minimum, we've temporarily suspended Live Chat for all departments except cancellations. We apologise for any inconvenience, and will let you know as soon as the service is back online. Social Media and the Community remain unaffected and those requiring accessibility options can find them here

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

mechanic123 — Fri, 07 Sep 2018 14:47:27 GMT

It would help to put that on screen in the 'Contact Us' page!

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

Townman — Fri, 07 Sep 2018 15:31:56 GMT

Changes to service content (such as the content of the contact us page) requires change and release control procedures to be performed. Whilst sounding simple, the reality is that such service content is not likely to be deployed on just one server, but many virtual services. Therefore adhoc changes to website content is not overly practical.

The status of chat is clearly signposted in the SERVICE STATUS page, on the SERVICE INFORMATION board here and the contact us pages clearly report that the service is currently UNAVAILABLE (which is different to the usual “service busy” status when the service is available, but busy).

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

JonoH — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 14:43:19 GMT

Live chat has been turned back on, customers should be able to access it normally.

Thanks for your patience.

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

jostridge — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 15:08:13 GMT

my live chat mileage differs. m click on allow cookies but its greyed out Most unhelpful

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

Barney67 — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 21:06:29 GMT

How are we supposed to get our internet "service" back if they are not answering phones or replying to emails? Our broadband has been less than 1mb download for almost a week. Plusnet won't sort it out, so what is our next step? If they haven't sorted it out by tomorrow I'll be cancelling and going with another provider. I'm not going to continue paying for a service which is not being provided. I have spent over 2 hours waiting on the phone but it is impossible to get through to them. They should be paying me for my wasted hours!

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

Townman — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 21:14:34 GMT

@JonoH

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

SammyM — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 17:59:13 GMT

Hello @Barney67,

I am sincerely sorry for the wait times you have experienced. We can see that we organised a phone engineer to attend your line due to noise and they believe they have resolved that side of the problem.

Please can you advise if the noise is no longer present and my team here will be able to progress the issue further.

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

Mgnl1983 — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 15:58:23 GMT

Live Chat is Not available to me, and I`m hearing the same from many people in the "Account/Billing" Forum. It has been greyed out for nearly Two weeks now. There are no options either to "Raise a Ticket" for support, and I can`t afford 2 Hours waiting on a phone line. How on earth do I get to speak to someone who can assist?

If I disable all means of communication in my business, and stack customers in a 2 hour long telephone waiting queue, I won`t have a business for very long at all.

Chris

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

Townman — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 17:46:19 GMT

Chris,

Are you a residential user or a business user? For business users chat is virtually always UNavailable, where as for residential users during support hours it can sometimes be busy.

“Not available” is (I believe) only reported when the residential service is closed.

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

Mads — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 09:21:19 GMT

Hi @Mgnl1983,

Thanks for getting in touch, I'm sorry to hear you have experienced these issues trying to get through to our Customer Support teams. I'm afraid our live chat service was taken down for a couple of weeks due to the call volumes. Feel free to send me your username via PM with a brief summary of the issues you are facing and I can take a look into this for you. - Thanks, Maddy.

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

Jrod — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 15:25:32 GMT

This is quite unacceptable. I am about to be a new customer but I am thinking of cancelling my order. For 3 weeks the wait time for a telephone call has been over 30 minutes and Chat is not available. You are just not staffing up to meet customer demand - it's not our fault for trying to contact you, it's your fault for not investing in call staff. What is Plusnet doing about this?

Jrod

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

Mgnl1983 — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 15:40:40 GMT

Hello Jrod, It does seem to be the way of the world in big businesses now. Very hard to find any method of speaking with someone, or contacting via a live chat facility (unless they`re after your custom of course) and it is very frustrating, when all you want is a little bit of assistance. I don`t think it is a very wise policy at all !

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

sbore — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 08:53:42 GMT

You might like to ask yourselves WHY there is such a demand for contact through live chat?

a) "Help line" never gets answered?

b) There are far too many problems which require assistance? After all these years, your systems ought to have been sorted out, surely?

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

Townman — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 08:59:32 GMT

Hi @sbore,

A warm welcome to the forums.

In the immediacy, this is the first monthly billing cycle of the new billing system … there are a few gremlins which have been experienced by a number of users. Consequently support is particularly busy at the moment.

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

sbore — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 08:15:04 GMT

Yes, but my problem is totally different from account billing, but even so I cannot get through either.

I have had a HUGE number of automated e-mails telling me that my mailbox is over-full, but I cannot get in touch to find out what to do about it. I have copied part of the e-mail below.

We're letting you know you have now used more than 75% of your mailbox capacity, and you need to take action to reduce the size of your mailbox. If your overall mailbox size is larger than the 1GB allocated amount, we may have to archive your largest mailbox to bring you under the 1GB limit. 

The rest of the e-mail tells me what is to be done about it, but since it starts off with the words "Click Personal Settings"  and  I do not have Personal Settings on my screen I am stuck at the very beginning. And when I try to start Live Chat, I am told that my Ad Blocker is preventing contact being made - but it does not tell me how to deal with it. I don't think it is correct in any case - I have managed live chat with some other web sites.

Get your glitchy web site right, and you will find the Live Chat and "Help" Line calls are much reduced.

Cheers.

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

Mgnl1983 — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 08:43:04 GMT

Hello sbore, I've had this problem on a few occasions, and plusnet have deleted all my emails. I then takes approx. 3 - 4 days to get them restored, and that is only once you`ve been successful in getting hold of someone.

As emails are stored on Plusnets server, my advise is to delete any un-wanted emails, just as you would delete any email. Any emails with an attachment, such as photos or large files, I would save to your computer directly first, and then delete it. This will reduce the amount stored on their server. I would do it as soon as possible, as once they are deleted it is a whole heap of trouble trying to get them back.

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

sbore — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 09:22:42 GMT

Good advice, no doubt, MGNL. But the problem is that i do not have any large e-mail accounts - probably fewer than 100 e-mails in the inbox at any one time.

This is why live chat would be so useful, so that it could all be sorted out. It is not the sort of problem which can be dealt with on the 'help' line, because it is outside the scope of the standard answers which they use.

Meanwhile, I will download all my e-mails so that they don't get lost or deleted as you suggest.

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

Strat — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 09:54:46 GMT

And presumably you have nothing in Junk or Deleted Items?

Re: Live Chat Availability Discussion

Gandalf — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 14:54:41 GMT

@sbore

The rest of the e-mail tells me what is to be done about it, but since it starts off with the words "Click Personal Settings" and I do not have Personal Settings on my screen I am stuck at the very beginning

Are you checking webmail or a mail client?