Landline calls between Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland

[#1]

Quote from: summerside

... OFCOM will be the most interested party (not to mention NI Politicians).

They'll be interested parties to the fact that somebody in the sales office of a telecommunications company is mistaken about the cost of calls from Northern Ireland to landlines in the Republic of Ireland even though these calls are charged at the same rate as calls to 01, 02 & 03 numbers?  I think you'll find they are not very interested.  Surely they'll say that if Plusnet misinform potential customers and lose business as a result, that's just their own silly fault.

[#2]

@ReedRichards
+1, Ofcom care little for such trivial issues.

[#3]

@summerside
Like I said in my previous post - I will pass this information on to the wider business.
I did this 5 minutes after posting my response yesterday and this has now been circulated internally. As Ben has pointed out - we are all human and can/will make mistakes once in a while. I'm by no means going to sit here and guarantee that no-one in the business will ever make this same mistake in the future, however, hopefully now the information will be more readily available than it was before so the chance is smaller.

[#4]

Hi all, just a point of clarity, mainly for Ben T and ReedRichards - I believe you are missing the crucial aspect. This is not about a PN Sales agent (or agents) making a mistake. Or indeed about a forum user highlighting 'a nuance'.
It has been identified that PN are mis-selling, inadvertently or otherwise. They are informing potential NI customers that their Anytime package will NOT include landline calls to ROI and that instead, explicitly informing the customer that they must purchase the International 300 Anytime package to avail of such 'free' calls.
This is the principal issue, that I can assure you OFCOM and indeed Trading Standards would be interested in - assuming the matter is not rectified - however by all accounts, as per Linn's latest update, PN may be correcting their Sales process accordingly/imminently.

[#5]

I agree entirely, summerside - when Ofcom receive a few hundred more complaints, or possible a few thousand more about this specific issue then I'm sure they'll be more than happy to launch their own investigation.

[#6]

I understand what you mean more clearly now, summerside, but anyone who has been 'mis-sold' the Anytime 300 add-on can check their bill, see that they are not using it and then cancel that option (the change coming into effect on their next billing date).  So assuming you bother to check your bill any 'mis-selling' can be corrected after a month and you will have paid just £2 unnecessarily.     

[#7]

We've got a list of the people in Northern Ireland who have one of the International call plan, so if they've signed up over the phone we'll pull the calls next week where we have them and have a listen and we can contact them as appropriate. In the meantime if anyone in Northern Ireland has bought an International Call Plan thinking they needed it for landlines then drop me a PM please and I'll pick it up Monday.

[#8]

Dave,
This is a highly professional (and honest) approach to the issue.  It might not though address the cases where calls between NI and ROI have been incorrectly charged at international rates as per your initial research.  What has been going on seems confused - BTW bill PN at the correct rate and then PN process those charges (according to their tariffs) on to the subscriber.  From all that's been said, based on BTW billing everything should be charged correctly, however there seems to be reports that the international tariff has been applied in places and in others calls have not been included in call plan packages.
If I've correctly understood all that I've read, I suggest there are three use cases requiring analysis...
1. NI subscribers who have the international call plan but have never called any listed "international" destination other than ROI - these users do not need the international call plan.  Note: given that the website sign up process has no special guidance for NI residents, it is quite possible that web based sign-ups mistakenly chose the international call plan for ROI calls as is applicable to the rest of the UK.
2. NI subscribers charged for calls to ROI at international rates - irrespective of call plan.  These should have been charged at the standard UK rates
3. NI subscribers charged for calls to ROI at UK rates which should have been free within their call plan.
...and the means of ensuring billing is correct going forwards.
Cheers,
Kevin