Have Marketing failed? (change of all contract lengths to 10 days)

[#1]

You're a cynical lot 
I wonder why

[#2]

Now I'm confused. On your side? you mean of being a cynic? I'm always a cynic, but I happen to agree with what Simon had said, but I don't happen to think it was done deliberately with the idea people would stop reading.
Edit: Anyway, I also think this is mountain out of mole hill rubbish now, the point has been made. There are far more important issues around the boards, so I won't be wasting my time on this one again.

[#3]

Quote from: Anotherone

As a matter of interest, has anybody seen a similar thing from BT themselves or are they still pushing 12 month "rolling" contracts.

Funny you should ask. I had junk mail from them only this morning, pushing BT Total Broadband, so I actually read it on it's way to the bin.
Correct at time of going to print (November 2009). 18-month minimum term.
Now that includes a 3 mth initial discount & a Home Hub 'worth' £88.08, but note the phraseology. 'Minimum  term' implies a contract term to me, not just that you have to re-imburse them for the hardware & discounts.
You would have to go online to see what happens after 18 months & life is too short to go trawling through their small print to research the terms of a contact I have no intention of going anywhere near.
It's a bit off-topic, but I think their whole 'wireless broadband' advertising is playing on people's ignorance as well. The broadband isn't wireless at all. Again, it's a case of some very carefully chosen phrases which actually say one thing if you read them carefully, but which are intended to engender a different impression altogether.

[#4]

Quote from: Anotherone

There are far more important issues around the boards, so I won't be wasting my time on this one again.

I bet you can't resist replying if I say  " you are entitled to your opinion but your choice of words like 'stupid' to your friends, yes, friends, was OTT 
@ the moderator, I rest my case and will not say any more except "I enjoyed that" 
@anotherone  Friends?
cheers

[#5]

Nothing like the hard facts. As I said before if the cap fits. & Nothing like a good banter now and again 

[#6]

Phew....glad that's sorted

[#7]

yes - all a bit circular 

[#8]

We've had another email about the contract changes and today we've seen this post:

Quote from: sga101

I've been a plusnet customer for over 4 years, and have generally been impressed with the service. When I signed up, I was mostly using email and browsing the internet, so Broadband Plus was more than adequate. More recently, I've wanted to make use of services like iPlayer, but have often found them to be unusable at peak times. I would have liked to upgrade to a product which would allow me to do this, but can't commit to an 18 month contract. I think it is unreasonable to require existing customers to sign a new 18 month contract just to upgrade their package. I don't need new hardware, I don't need my line activated, and I don't need to be transferred from another provider. If there are any costs associated with making the change, I can't believe it takes 18 months of subscription charges to recoup them. Please can you consider revising this policy.  I would prefer that you had a 1 month minimum contract length for upgrades, but would be prepared to sign up for 3 months if I had to. I want to spend more money with you, and you are making it difficult for me to do so. I'm sure I'm not the only one in this position, so you are potentially passing up on considerable extra revenue. Also consider that some people would probably like the freedom to try out the more expensive packages without having to commit to them if they offer them no tangible benefit, and this would make it easy for them to do so.

Having seen from this poll how few people knew about the minimum contract change why wasn't the opportunity taken in the last email to clarify the situation?

[#9]

I rest my case (see pages 1 & 3).
I note that no one in authority has disagreed with me, apart from a slight murmur from Mand, but that was hardly a rebuttal.
I have to say, I don't find it particularly shocking that Plusnet should take this approach. Clearly they decided in the first place that long contracts were in their commercial interest. Ofcom told them they must stop & they did. Assuming Plusnet still think that long contracts would still be in their interests if they were allowed to have them, you can hardly expect them to shout their removal from the rooftops.
I think it's the wrong decision, but it's theirs to make. The bean counters will have done the calculations. I suspect that as usual, customer satisfaction & goodwill has been undervalued, because there are no actual beans to count.

[#10]

Guys,
We're not trying to hide anything here.
When we made these changes we emailed everyone, we stuck notices all over the sales pages, we built support pages and an FAQ. We could have met the legal requirement with a lot less. We were also one of the first ISP's to make the changes Ofcom recommended.
That said, we're hardly going to send out an email to the entire customer base shouting 'good news, you can now leave us for nothing', that wouldn't make good business sense.
Ultimately, if someone really wants to leave our service they would anyway, regardless of contract length etc, only if they didn't read the email, the FAQ or the support page they'll now find that it's cheaper to leave than they anticipated.

[#11]

BT still seem to be advertising 18 / 12 month contracts.

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayCategory.do?categoryId=CON-TOTAL-BB-R1
But at least PN are not
[edit : url updated !

[#12]

Mmmm, the page says "Sorry, this page is currently unavailable"
I noticed the letters CON in the link above, seems appropriate somehow

[#13]

Quote

Fast & reliable Option 1 Broadband Option 1 £7.78 a month for 3 months, £15.65 thereafter (18 month contract) OR £15.65 a month (12 month contract) Monthly usage: 10GB usage

[#14]

yes - sorry - I edited my post with updated url. - How can BT do this ?
But as Mand says - they have not hidden anything
as per Anotherones post shows
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,81029.msg664792.html#msg664792

[#15]

Quote from: pd

I have only just found out about the changes as I have not been on the forums in a while. Yes, I did receive the email, but I paid scant attention to it since, without reading it through, it appeared to relate only to Plusnet Home Phone which I don't have anyway. Changes to my Broadband T&Cs are, in my opinion, important enough to warrant a separate email, not tagged on the bottom of something which is not relevant to me at all.