Hopeless customer service from Plusnet &Greenby

[#1]

The migration to Greenby has been an absolute disaster. Here are the main points Plusnet published when announcing the migration:

Unless you tell us not to, we’ll transfer your account over to Greenby automatically. Greenby will then contact you to explain how to set up your account with them, and what you’ll need to do next. 

They’ll send you a welcome email and explain how to set up your account. It’s really straightforward and should only take about five minutes.

You will receive an email, or letter, from us in regards to your email migration.

With Greenby you’ll also benefit from 

• A dedicated expert support team  
• A modern Email platform with excellent reliability 

If you have Plusnet broadband

Your email service will continue as normal. There will be no charge for your new service, however if this changes after migration Greenby will be in touch to let you know.

We have arranged for this service to be free for two years after you have migrated. This will be applicable for all current Plusnet Broadband customers whose email service is linked to an active Plusnet Broadband account.

If you're not a Plusnet Broadband customer, you'll have a 30 day grace period to support the move to Greenby, thereafter it will be chargeable at £15 a year.

Sounds good - but not true, none of this happened.

I have a free-online email account which I have had for many years without problems- and is one of the Plusnet family, I am also a Plusnet broadband customer. As soon as the migration started I had problems -sometimes not sending, sometimes not receiving and at one point my email client downloaded hundreds of old emails dating back 2 or 3 years which I had deleted long ago.

Then on October 23rd my emails stopped working completely. After spending several days researching I discovered my email account had been suspended by Greenby because I had not paid the £15 yearly fee - so not free for Plusnet broadband customers!!

Yet I had never been informed of any of this - when the migration had finally occurred, no welcome email, how to set up the Greenby account  - nothing.

So I paid the £15 and with great difficulty set up the Greenby account - I then received an email from them saying

“Your Greenby email service is free for 2 years. After that, an annual fee of £15 applies to continue using the service. During the free period, you’ll have full access to your email and all of Greenby's great features.”

It’s a madhouse  - my email is working now but I live in fear of it all screwing up at any moment - Greenby customer support is just an AI chatbot which is very slow to respond to anything other than a very simple question - but I have discovered if you add “Agent” to the end of the question a real person contacts you by email - assuming your email is working!

Like others on the forum I will probably leave Plusnet and Greenby and move to another provider - although it will be a chore to inform my many contacts of a different email address.

[#2]

@gray77 wrote: Greenby customer support is just an AI chatbot which is very slow to respond to anything other than a very simple question - but I have discovered if you add “Agent” to the end of the question a real person contacts you by email - assuming your email is working!

Adding "Agent" trick useful to know.

[#3]

I gave up with Plusnet.  Continued problems with some emails not being sent or received.  Broadband was OK, but received a very good offer from a local fibre provider that would keep my landline number active with a fibre connection, instead of using a BT copper landline (which was "costing the earth"). I set up an Ionos account with some new email addresses and set up some Plusnet forwarding to the new addresses.  In November 2025, I contacted Plusnet about keeping my emails as I was planing to stop taking broadband and wanted to transfer my email accounts to Greenby.   They couldn't transfer me yet.  They said that there were unexpected delays in the transfer process and that emails were inextricably tied to the broadband provision anyway. When the new fibre contract went live, I closed the Plusnet broadband and they straightaway deleted all my emails, underlying email addresses and the forwarding rules that I had set up, without any warning whatsoever.  Fortunately, I had downloaded all emails, but it was an absolute pain, because so many online accounts and services now send TFA confirmation emails to your registered email address when you log on, which now couldn't happen because all my email addresses and forwarding rules had been deleted.
I had been a Plusnet customer and avid supporter for ages, ever since Metronet, which I started with in 2004, merged to become Plusnet a few years later.  In my view, the acquisition by BT has been a disaster for Plusnet and now, unfortunately, I have nothing good to say about it, which is a pity as it was a good, reliable company once.