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Plusnet - not a business option

Zachnuk
Newbie
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎20-06-2008

Plusnet - not a business option

We have been with plusnet  for 3 years+, we operate from 2 plusnet sites and have over 50 customers with plusnet connections; for primary, secondary and tertiary links.
Plusnet are not a viable ISP for any form of serious 'net usage.
1) Customer service is a shambles; phone support is pretty much a no go.  Status is inaccurate and the ‘My Questions’ section on the portal is a joke.
2) Leading on from this; staff are unhelpful, uninterested and totally avoid of any savy; the system controls them.
3) Senior staff, if you can find them, are impolite, nonchalant, unhelpful and technically inadequate.
4) Logical quality of service is a misrepresented shambles.  It’s unfair, it doesn’t work and it cripples business & fair use.
5) QOS again; it really is a joke.  / angry now – I can ping a router at 20-25ms but during ssh / http / ssl connect get restricted throughput.
6) To the above Plusnet support will say “no you don’t” – a year ago I would reply “yes I do” and then they would make something up and allow my traffic to pass. Now I get “yeah well”
7) Usenet –“9-19kbps sounds about right”
They also close support calls without user authorisation.
link:censored
cp:red Rude comment removed. mod:end
11 REPLIES 11
Spider
Grafter
Posts: 1,100
Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Plusnet - not a business option

Sounds like you have experienced a lot of problems. Although I can't offer help I am curious as to why you have stuck with Plusnet so long despite your bad experience?
My other interest is what do you define 'serious net usage'? From my own experience people seem to have different expectations of the net and what the ISP should offer so the ISP is in a no win situation.
Mark
Grafter
Posts: 1,852
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Plusnet - not a business option

Hi there.
I am really surprised at some of the comments you have made here. We normally deliver a very high level of business support and our dedicated business support agents are very skilled and knowledgeable. Telephone wait for the business team is around 30 seconds. If you have not received the quality and level of support which our business customers pay for, I will deal with that.
As for senior staff, I run our business services and havent had the pleasure of speaking with you but would love that opportunity.
ssh/ http / ssl are given a very high priority on our network providing standard ports are in use. Where they arent, we'll happily look into the applications you are using and adjust where necessary.
As for usenet on a Business account. As it is not a standard application used by businesses, it does not get a high priority on our network or indeed our business products. If I could get an understanding of your business requirements for Usenet then I'd be in a better place to understand your concerns.
I havent read your ticket history yet, but I will and rest assured I will ensure that your issues are investigated fully today.
**EDIT**
I have just read through the tickets on the account which you have posted from. The last ticket you raised with us regarding a problem was on 19 May, We replied on the same date and havent had a reply from you since. Can you provide details of the account on which you are having problems and we'll work with you to get it resolved.

Zachnuk
Newbie
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎20-06-2008

Re: Plusnet - not a business option

Regarding the [censored] how was that comment rude ?  It did not contain any swear words, nor was it serious in any way - the give away was text in parenthesis  which for you non-moderators, read (may not be true)
Zachnuk
Newbie
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎20-06-2008

Re: Plusnet - not a business option

Hi,  This is a long one, and it may meander a little bit, but I can find more if you wish.

Why have I stuck with PlusNet so long ?  - very good question indeed.  A question I keep asking myself.  I have never had a PlusNet xDSL move go to plan, whether that be a simple premises move or a change of broadband supplier.  Last thing I want here is a 21-30 day outage.  I am also a patient man, believing the hassles I am having are just ‘blips’.
Hopefully the migration situation will change now that the regulators have stepped aboard.
Mark;
“I am really surprised at some of the comments you have made here. We normally deliver a very high level of business support and our dedicated business support agents are very skilled and knowledgeable. Telephone wait for the business team is around 30 seconds. If you have not received the quality and level of support which our business customers pay for, I will deal with that.As for senior staff, I run our business services and havent had the pleasure of speaking with you but would love that opportunity.”
The phone support is still flagging, I’m afraid, and no where near the quality of, say Easynet or Pipex, although the 45minutes to 2 hour waits of the past are behind us, the quality of the support once through is still abysmal.  Business users, generally know what they are doing.  When I ring up with a problem it is a serious one, I don’t want to be told to change filters, reboot routers, unplug phones etc.  We recently had an outage with account whereby the line was down for over 2 weeks.  I rang and the customer rang, it was obvious that the problem was serious – no ATM sync or Tone.  Yet it still took the best part of 3 days before you contacted BT – BUT what really annoys me is the way the support logs are written to cover your own bums, so very cowardly.  In the instance above, all blame was put on BT (as you usually do) we don’t pay BT for the broadband YOU do. (also, aren’t you owned by BT?)  To rub salt in the situation, you guys also said that we should PAY EXTRA for better support.  That’s just degrading, isn’t it ? – a customer purchases your best, most expensive product and you turn around and say, well, we can’t give you any SLA’s or proper support - unless you pay us more we won’t even bother doing out jobs properly.
When the fault occurred, I completed the online hoop jumping whilst the customer rang you, remember, NO dial tone, NO ATM sync, Plusnet were advised of this and even told, “look it’s evidently a BT line or exchange fault, please can you arrange for an engineer to sort it out”.  This http://www.informal-it.co.uk/eraseme/24401556.htm was the response.  I can’t even laugh about this now.
Meanwhile, the online fault checker was run, it immediately returned “All initial checks have been completed without finding any problems” -  What sort of testing went on here?  Certainly not a line test or even a routing test.
On the second running of the test the results were ‘Inconclusive’. 20 hours later [CSA Name Removed] add the following to the ticket: “+internal+ Testing.” – How very helpful.
A further 4 hours goes by before we are informed the circuit hasn’t been in sync since the previous day. And the problem was raised with BT.  Allegedly.
From there on in it is a case of Plusnet not giving a damn, as far as they you are concerned, they can wash their hands of it if BT are involved.  The ticket gets put on hold for days and days at a time, engineers appointments are requested, cancelled – the end user is told to check routers and swap out filters over and over, the whole thing is a farce, with the bulk of the updates being from the “Automated Script Pool”.
I’m not saying the fault was caused by PlusNet, I do think, however, the management of it was appalling.
Whole ticket here. http://www.informal-it.co.uk/eraseme/24401525.htm
I was unaware of the fact, but, the client rang plusnet for compensation and was granted a whole month refund!  I am fairly confident if we hadn’t had a secondary backup-line installed they would have lost slightly more than £35 in business.
Our company was also the focus of some rage, and I chose to vent it in the direction of PlusNet for obvious reasons: here. http://www.informal-it.co.uk/eraseme/24770105.htm
What’s hilarious about this, is that compensation had already been granted, but still the PlusNet incompetence prevails, Oliver tells us that xDSL isn’t reliable.  Peter then wades in saying PlusNet are innocent and it’s your ‘Supplier’ who is guilty.  All the while a refund had been granted, but for some reason PlusNet are unable to look at their own systems, they just start rambling standard dross.  The first reply should have been, “ We have reviewed the case and it seems compensation has already been agreed”
I am wrong, however in this ticket accusing PlusNet of not raising the fault for a week, it just took a week for anything whatsoever to happen.  PlusNet washing their hands of it all.  But what really riles me is the plug for ‘Enhanced care’.
I find the comments of [CSA Name Removed] just surreal, we have to pay you more because you can’t support your own product – again passing the blame to BT (YOU ARE OWNED BY BT), all I hear is whinge, whinge, whinge.  Why can’t you make your products clear?  Why can’t your so-called business products include some form of support?
Compare this with an incident we had just last week; a clients Easynet connection failed at 7:45 AM – one of our engineers called Easynet Support at 8 AM, he supplied a description of the fault (Line sync failure), the Easynet technician, confirmed the problem, ran a line test whilst out engineer was on the phone, confirming a fault outside of the building and escalated to BT.  A BT engineer turned up and fixed the issue with a junction box in the street at 14:00.


“ssh/ http / ssl are given a very high priority on our network providing standard ports are in use. Where they arent, we'll happily look into the applications you are using and adjust where necessary.”

Your protocol priorities are a mess, you say SSL is a very high priority, however, not when it’s going to an IP you consider a usenet server; when this is the case NNTP actually gets a higher priority, seemingly.
We can’t be expected to encapsulate everything into SSL streams, although we try out best, the problem is just not enough IP’s to go round.  So we as well as other IT firms use a whole heap of other ports in order to do our job and give our clients some service.  Read through ID 21310665 , available here.http://www.informal-it.co.uk/eraseme/21310665.htm  I am a bit stroppy, but you can see the typical nature of the support from the first reply by [CSA Name Removed] , essentially saying in one succinct sentence that NOTHING is wrong, please go away.  He attempts to achieve this by lieing, obviously.  This support call then gets a little bit juvenile – but stick with it as it is a perfect example of Plusnet lying, not communicating with each other or the customer.  You will also note that I had to start this support ticket to the Abuse team, as other avenues over the phone were completely ignored / side tracked.  It’s also worth noting that in this ticket I am basically told that only some ports allow traffic at usable speeds, however you aren’t allowed to tell me which ones.
“As for usenet on a Business account. As it is not a standard application used by businesses, it does not get a high priority on our network or indeed our business products. If I could get an understanding of your business requirements for Usenet then I'd be in a better place to understand your concerns.”
We have developers in India and Australia and have used Usenet as a method for replicating Linux ISO images for over a decade, I also use Usenet for personal use – I shouldn’t have to install a secondary line just to download funnies from sites that you block.  You cite that Usenet cannot be used for business use, so you don’t allow it.  Well I find that very condescending; why don’t block YouPorn? – I imagine this site has far fewer business uses.  If it was bandwidth issue, why don’t throttle the likes of rapidshare, depositfiles, megaupload etc.
Additionally, most businesses do not require your hosting, your DNS services or your email, they might if you did proper hosting packages, such as managed racks, virtual servers or managed exchange hosting.  You seem to think that a business can be run effectively using POP accounts. You don’t even do a connection only service that I can see.
“I have just read through the tickets on the account which you have posted from…..
No you havn’t, otherwise you would fully understand my concerns – or perhaps, like all plusnet users, you had difficulty finding the useful tickets among the mess of useless invoicing updates, “internal ticket transfers” and large footers announcing how super plusnet is and how we should all resell it for you.
“The last ticket you raised with us regarding a problem was on 19 May, We replied on the same date and havent had a reply from you since“
This would be ticket number 24770060 available here.http://www.informal-it.co.uk/eraseme/24770060.htm
I decided I could do with some more upstream bandwidth for hosted services in this office (Citrix / TS / Webmail etc)  So I applied to upgrade from my old Teleworker account to your top of the range product.
After applying for the regrade, nothing happended, not a phone call, email. SMS (which you are so fond of sending) so I raised this ticket to ask what happened. It failed apparently, not even an apology.
After upgrading I also kinda hoped some form of Usenet usage would be forthcoming; sadly not, I took this opportunity to ask again about restrictions on usenet, really just to see if you guys had decided on a way to tell a fellow grown up you simply don’t allow usenet traffic anymore.
First off [CSA Name Removed] politely asks about the sort of problems I am having, then proceeds to tell me that the Business accounts are restricted least of all, but then adds that 19kbps is an acceptable download speed.
Then rather than give straight answer I am directed to a forum post of somebody also having Usenet issues http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,62798.0.html as well as this page http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/traffic_prioritisation.shtml which talks about products I havn’t purchased and the colours of some precious metals – it doesn’t describe the restrictions you place on some internet sites.
Finally I am told to buy another product if I want to use Usenet.  I find it odd also, how this works, I have managed many a game server from Quake World, AvP, Quake 4 and UrT – for gaming low latency is the key to getting a good gaming experience, yet you manage to bundle high priority Binary downloads into a product designed for low-latency gaming?  - How so?  And if you have the technology to do this, how come your premier business product can’t do either very well ?
I already pay good money for the most expensive and ‘best’ product you have.  Apparently the product I have (http://www.plus.net/business/broadband/business.shtml ) is Suitable for “For everything from email and web surfing to large file transfers and video conferencing” and “Business customers get the highest priority service on our network at all times“.  These are lies at best, false advertising at worst.
Who awarded you the awards for your award winning customer service?
[Moderator's note by Jonathan (chillypenguin):  Customer service agents names removed as per the Forum Rules. ]
[Moderator's note by Daniel (Assos),  CSC agent name, that was missed earlier removed as per the link:rules. ;)]
chillypenguin
Grafter
Posts: 4,729
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Plusnet - not a business option

Zachnuk
You may be upset and frustrated at PlusNet, but that does not give you an excuse to breach the Forum Rules.
Note that a copy of your post above including the Customer service agents names is available for staff to read.
Kelly
Hero
Posts: 5,497
Thanks: 380
Fixes: 9
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Plusnet - not a business option

Great post Zachnuk (apart from the quoting).  I'm make sure someone is addressing your concerns.  (Mark is off on holiday atm).
Don't suppose you can edit out the agent names from those links please?
Kelly Dorset
Ex-Broadband Service Manager
Chris
Legend
Posts: 17,724
Thanks: 600
Fixes: 169
Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Plusnet - not a business option

I believe Mand is going to be addressing the queries and has already spoken once to Zachnuk.
Former Plusnet Staff member. Posts after 31st Jan 2020 are not on behalf of Plusnet.
Zachnuk
Newbie
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎20-06-2008

Re: Plusnet - not a business option

Hi,
I have spoken to Mand, she was very courteous and somewhat apologetic about certain aspects of the service we and our clients have experienced.
I shall be talking with her again in the coming week.
I have removed the CSC names from the external links, apologies, I didn’t RTFM first.
Edit: A few names may have slipped through, this isn't deliberate, and I'm not picking on anybody - if you spot one and want it removed let me know where it is.
Chris
Legend
Posts: 17,724
Thanks: 600
Fixes: 169
Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Plusnet - not a business option

Thanks, I'm confident Mand will be able to help you with any ongoing issues.
Former Plusnet Staff member. Posts after 31st Jan 2020 are not on behalf of Plusnet.
Zachnuk
Newbie
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎20-06-2008

Re: Plusnet - not a business option

chillypenguin,
Please could you checkover to see if external links are acceptable and re-instigate if possible ?  They play quite a role in the post.
Thanks.
chillypenguin
Grafter
Posts: 4,729
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Plusnet - not a business option

Thanks
Links reinstated