Clarification required on call barring

[#1]

My friend has recently found that she was unable to make calls on her telephone.  This had happened chiefly because her teenage children had run up bills on mobile numbers during the holiday while Mum was work thereby using up the credit limit.  They have been suitably reprimanded!
Apart from the expense, the problem is that the actual cut off came as a surprise because as far as I can tell she was not warned. 
I wonder if one of the staff can outline the actual procedure for this intervention?  I know that it has been aired before on this forum but it has always caused controversy.  I think that at the very least she should have been called or texted and informed of the situation.  After cut off it was a while before the telephone was able to be used again. 
This was inconvenient because she needs to stay in touch with them whilst she is at work.
I have to add that this has caused a great deal of ill-feeling.  Although she realizes that the overspend is not PN's fault, she is very angry about the process.
She was ready to move to another company, and we did check out other deals on the Internet. In the end she has decided to stay with Plusnet although I thought that she should go to TT for a better deal and as it is the only LLU at her exchange (she is in Market 2 area).
Would be grateful for any information regarding this.

[#2]

Quote from: poppy

I thought that she should go to TT for a better deal and as it is the only LLU at her exchange (she is in Market 2 area).

I would not recommend them to anyone based on my brief experience with them, Regardless how cheap they are to be honest.

[#3]

Steve - I know how you feel about TT but not all users have had your bad experience (and mine for that matter).
In any event, this thread is not really about TalkTalk - I only mentioned it because she was looking for another company due to the bad handling of this situation by Plusnet. I did nothing to dissuade her from taking this course of action because they were going to be slightly cheaper than Plusnet and every penny counts for this lady. In fact, despite the loss of referral I offered to help her transfer over as I look after their computers.

My friend is a struggling single mother trying to earn a living and raise her children.  The last thing she needs is her telephone line tampered with especially in the school holidays when it is more likely that her children may need her.  They should not have done this but parents of teenagers will understand that this kind of thing is par for the course. In this case hopefully it won't happen a second time.
I am at a a loss to know why the 'system' cannot flag this up and alert Plusnet so that a staff member can telephone the customer in order to prevent this action being taken.  It is no good sending emails or texts as you can never be sure that they have been received.  A telephone call is the appropriate action IMO.

[#4]

Is there any member of staff able to answer this please?

[#5]

Hi Poppy, I do hope Plusnet have got back to you on this by other ways and means rather than this thread that does not seem to of been answered for you.. And Its now the weekend 

[#6]

Thanks for the reply Steve and no, it does not appear to have been picked up.
I still do not know the actual procedure that Plusnet applies to these cases (if they have one).  I have been told by a staff member that she should have received one or two emails.
My pal is notorious for not checking these (I have another email-allergy friend too) so I checked myself and could not find one, never mind two.
On a more positive note a very helpful Plusnet staff member who is no stranger to this forum has been wonderful with this particular case so I have to say a big thank you to him and rest the case now.
Said friend has upgraded both her telephone and broadband, has had an increase to credit limit applied but most importantly she has threatened the kids with never going out for the next 2 years!    (They're not usually that bad though and I think that they are great).
Still, would have liked to know the process for this eventuality and if it can be improved. It must be quite a shock to come home and find your telephone not working.

[#7]

Hi guys
I'm confused by the phrase 'not working', any customer who is call barred should be routed to our CS, who should have been able to explain the situation and take a top up payment or increase the credit limit accordingly (we do have rules internally for when this can be done as standard), so the interruption should have been minimal.
With regards the warnings, you should get an email when you have £10 left and again when you have £5 left. I haven't looked at the account in question, but I suspect the issue is that all the costly calls were made within a very short period of time, so the credit was used up in one particular update of call processing. This is a problem sometimes, and we could possibly look at sending the warnings earlier.
Our CS staff do call people who are barred due to failed billing, I'd have to look at the numbers of people who hit the credit limit but don't fail billing to see if this was worth doing.

[#8]

Thank you for replying to this thread Mand. I think that the credit limit might have been reached very quickly as unbeknown to my friend, her daughter had been ringing the Big Brother number in addition to the line being used for mobile calls.
As said before, I could not find a warning email. The daughter called her mum at work and could not be connected so she went out to the telephone box to call her from there so this was the first that my friend knew about it and she was understandably confused.
I am sure that if someone had called when she was within, say, £5 of the limit then that would have been good because they could have gone through the bill to see where the money had gone.
Anyway, am glad that you are prepared to look at things so thank you for that.