Plusnet, are the wheels coming off?

[#1]

I am concerned about what I am seeing on the Community Forums recently. There seems to be lots of customers complaining about a lot of things.
There was some discussion earlier commenting that the Rants and Raves board has been very busy recently. It has, but they are not raves but rants of customer complaints and dissatisfaction.
Billing errors going back months that people continually complain about - ongoing.
Many complaints about customer service problems, the ticket system, SA call centre, lack of capacity, erratic connections and various speed issues
Many are  saying there are moving on to a new supplier, some after only a few weeks with Plusnet because of the aforementioned problems.
Are Plusnet signing up so many new customers that they can disregard the "problems" and let customers drift away to other ISPs?

[#2]

I seem to recall we have been here before a couple of years back. All of a suden the penny will drop and fingers will get pulled out again, we hope.

[#3]

Maybe it's a problem that with having such an excellent forum as this everyone that has a problem posts about it for us all to see.
Remember the grass is always greener on the other side.
I must admit there are several issues I have with Plusnet.  The first is the throttling of download speeds in the evening on Unlimited.  It takes hours for me to download Eggheads yet when staying with a friend who has Virgin Media it takes 7 minutes.

[#4]

Not sure the wheels are coming off but I do thing it is time to tighten all the wheel nuts just to be sure. My own experience seems to be a lot different to what many post here, but people are more inclined to post when something goes wrong that when something goes right. Some times I wonder with regard to throttling how much of the problem is due to the line speed issues compared to the product performing as intended with a large number of users. People seem to be reluctant to pay extra for the unthrottled service that Plusnet provides.

[#5]

I am pleased to see that this thread has been started.
I have been a Plusnet customer for a number of years and experienced just the odd problem.
but it all came out right in the end......until the last few weeks.
The rants mail has listed all the problems which  are happening so I don't have to go into that again.
Someone here has said "Maybe it's a problem that with having such an excellent forum as this everyone that has a problem posts about it for us all to see."
but I doubt if ALL subscribers to PN contribute to the Forum , in fact I would be amazed if more than 1or 2% do!
I would suggest that there are a lot more unhappy subscribers out there than the Forum is showing.
I hope that PN come up soon with some good news.
I am afraid also that certain websites looking for reportable troubles will pick up on this and adversely affect our ratings.
(just for the record, my own still ongoing problem is the disappearance for me of the betawebmail!)

[#6]

I agree that there do seem to have been lots of people with problems recently, and I have had cause to complain about a couple of things.
I agree this is an excellent forum, and yes I agree that it is probably for that reason that we see ssome of the problems raised. people feel that by exposing the problem here will get it fixed.
I contrast it with being with other ISP's / telcos. You could never have a dialogue with a named CSC agent - let alone senior managers like we can here.
When did you ever exchange PM's with a Tiscalli / Talk-Talk marketing director/managing director.
Like others - I am concerned at some issues - but I'm not planning on jumping ship - but just grateful that in my own small way I can contribute to the community here, and benefit from the expertise of others - and of course the close dialogue with some of the PN staff.

[#7]

Quote from: Spider

People seem to be reluctant to pay extra for the unthrottled service that Plusnet provides.

Would paying extra provide an unthrottled service? the product I'm on (BBYW2) is supposed to be un-throttled before 2pm but the usenet speeds are useless, so if thats unthrottled then whats the point in paying extra and changing products.
I know its Saturday and some staff may not be working but I find it interesting (or worrying) that no-one from PN has bothered to comment on this thread this morning - so does this speak for itself?

[#8]

AS there are no specific questions for PN - maybe the staff on duty don't feel they should and are waiting for more senior staff to log on ?

[#9]

A quick answer to the question in hand, judging by what i have read on the forums i am going to sey - YES

[#10]

I don't think its wheels coming off but I do wonder if sometimes things are being done in a bit of a rush without thinking things through. Look at some of the recent configuration changes which were done between 7am and 9am. Surely someone somewhere should have realised that for a lot of people 7-9am is quite an important time to have a working internet connection.
Maybe someone needs to go through the community support forum and work out a list of what people seem to be reporting as problems and then try to prioritise them
I'm sure that its the existence of this forum that makes us realise that there are problems, without this forum we'd all be sitting there wondering if the connection glitches were just us, our phone line or our routers.

[#11]

Quote from: paulgul

I know its Saturday and some staff may not be working but I find it interesting (or worrying) that no-one from PN has bothered to comment on this thread this morning - so does this speak for itself?

I think that's a bit unfair - none of the Comms Team have even been online on the forums this morning.
As for the wheels coming off... to some extent I think they are. I'm certain that the customer support isn't what it once was, hence my decision to avoid using Contact Us wherever possible and just bring queries straight to the forums instead. But I think there're also other factors at play here causing a certain amount of unrest. One is no doubt the actual product set itself: Plusnet's products are now more throttled - by published design - than they have ever been; BBYW2, for example, is better than both Value and Unlimited - with BBYW3 and 4 improving on that even further. Which means that when something goes a bit iffy with Plusnet's capacity and/or traffic management, rather than losing a few hundred kilobits-per-second off a couple of megabits, people are losing a few hundred kilobits off... well, a few hundred kilobits. But then also we have those cases of 'something going a bit iffy', which also seem to be on the increase. As I commented in another thread recently, the problem Plusnet have is that they've now pushed their capacity to breaking point so much that their 'expected speeds' only seem to be viable when everything's perfect... and often things aren't perfect, be it because of a mishap when updating Ellacoya signatures, or a pipe dropping and leaving the network out of balance, and various other things I can't even remember now.
But then we have to remember what we're actually paying: in a lot of cases, not very much. £5.99 per month for 10GB and £15.99 per month for an unmetered account (no, it's not unlimited) are both very good prices for products that have to be delivered over BT's wholesale network rather than the cheaper LLU. And I suppose that, ultimately, those prices are just a bit too good to be true - yes, Plusnet can deliver something for those kinds of prices, but unfortunately not something of the quality that we once become accustomed to coming from Plusnet. As the recent media coverage of PN's weather marketing campaign put it, Plusnet are now the 'low cost alternative' to BT... which says it all really.

[#12]

Quote from: paulgul

Quote from: Spider People seem to be reluctant to pay extra for the unthrottled service that Plusnet provides. Would paying extra provide an unthrottled service? the product I'm on (BBYW2) is supposed to be un-throttled before 2pm but the usenet speeds are useless, so if thats unthrottled then whats the point in paying extra and changing products....

Although the cap only comes into force at 2pm for usenet the traffic priority is Bronze on BBYW 2 compared to Gold on BBYW Pro.  I would expect to greater speeds on Pro because of this.
Reference info

[#13]

I think if they'd kept to the old products things would have been much better, people see a product advertised as unlimited and dive on in there putting great strain on capacity even if it is throttled. Up until a few weeks ago I was very pleased with the service however now every time I try to download anything, whether usenet or other means, a lot of swearing occurs followed by a lot of swapping gateways, followed by another lot of swearing, which is not very attractive in a lady.
I'll give it a while to see how it goes but have already started looking at alternatives, as we have no LLU presence at my exchange my options are limited, but I may have to move and tailor my usage to what's on offer

[#14]

Here is todays leaver 
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,78448.msg634283/topicseen.html#new

Quote

* scarrabri this is so very poor I have been with plusnet for about two months now ,before plusnet i was with aol and sky compared to them this has to be the poorest internet provider i have used up to date ,not only is it slow but web pages often dont bother opening because it takes that long, i suppose one could say well your on the £5.99 package ,maybe this is so,but it is using the same line and exchange that both aol and sky used,altho i think sky may have been a little different, there speeds were 7.5 meg and at least 6 meg from aol and i never had trouble browsing, about 3 meg is the norm for plusnet and browsing the internet would depress you, i have contacted support,and i have no doult it will be me testing all my equipment, funny because never had to do this with any of the other providers,,best wishes Brian Cry ps i think its off to O2 for me

[#15]

yes but look at his previous posts