My mother and I each have a PlusNet account. She is 91 and uses the web to surf and write/read e-mails. We have both been with PlusNet for years.
Last month we got a series of e-mails from PlusNet claiming she'd used over her 10GB monthly allocation and that she was being charged an addition £5.00 for 5GB extra. Pretty soon these mails were coming at the alarming rate of pretty much one per day, and once we got two, just twenty mintues apart. It is clear to see from her previous years' usage that this is entirely atypical and nothing close to this usage has ever happened before and nothing has changed in terms of usage at her end.
PlusNet themselves agreed that it seemed unlikely that a 91 year old has suddenly started gaming/peer to peering/downloading blockbusters 24/7 as these figures suggest, and came up with the hypothesis that there might be viruses on our kit (all Apple-only). The iPods and iPhones are sandboxed; the iMac has a virus checker on it and screened virus-free.
Since then Plus Net has throttled our speed right back as we had eventually to put a cap on the line as they refused to allow us to continue to use it normally pending an investigating, making the internet close to unusable and really upsetting my mother, who keeps in touch with her friends that way.
PlusNet then charged us more than the cap (using an older value than was in place at the beginning of the month's contract). I simply don't have time to spend hanging on the phone for half an hour or longer, only to find repeatedly that they have not fixed the issue or come up with any feasible explanation for these ridiculous usage figures other than to suggest there's a problem on OUR end. An engineer asked his colleagues to look at the problem (which seems identical to one the BBC reported with PlusNet's usage recording/charging in Feb). At that point, surprise surprise, the usage stats miraculously returned to normal. That was several days ago. However, I am still awaiting PlusNet to acknowledge that they have fixed the problem their end, and our service is still throttled..
Meanwhile, in order to check that none of my devices was causing an unexpected usage spike at my mother's, I tried to check my stats at home on my own account. Where guess what? There's an error, and they can't be viewed. PlusNet has not been able to fix this in the several days since it's been reported, nor to say if/when it will be fixed.
A very very disappointing 'service' - or lack of it - from a company which used to be known for its customer service. Verging on the dishonest: one of their operators told me the cap 'couldn't be guaranteed'. So: put a cap on, but PlusNet can and will charge whatever they want, regardless.
In my experience, a really poor show, otally lacking in any imagination about how to treat with respect PN's honest customers and unacceptably slow to resolve.
PN can expect their loyalty to us to be reciprocated.
