Billing system gone to pot?

[#1]

It is now November 8th and I still cannot access my bill even after trying the suggestions made by forum members. My broadband usage comes up but neither my bill or calls.  When are PN going to fix this issue please????

[#2]

I agree.  We are paying for technical support.  I'm all for people helping each other out but this appears to be technical support for free as far as PN are concerned.

[#3]

Is it legal for a company to take payment for something when the customer (of which there appear to be MANY) is not being supplied by said company with verifyable billing information?  Perhaps all those with a problem should suspend their DD's until PN tell us what is going on or provide a fix?

[#4]

We shouldn't have to be doing this. Why are Plusnet ignoring this thread? Webdeveloper console on Firefox suggests the whole new portal is a complete mess - given the number of errors it's throwing it's surprising it works at all.

[#5]

I appreciate what you say, people should help each other.  However many of us do not have your technical experience, nor do we have the time to trail through numerous forum messages and then test all the different possible fixes suggested in order to restore a service which worked perfectly well for us and we did not break.  Not to mention the extra use of daytime broadband usage (which could push me into extra costs) to do this. I cannot do this research in the wee small hours as I have to work to pay the PN bill.  We just want to pay a large company (in reality BT) which earns a lot of money, to provide us with a usable service. 

[#6]

@Enaj, unfortunately probably yes. There is no requirement in law to provide a receipt for any payment (although it is common to do so). There is a requirement to provide a VAT invoice for sales to a VAT registered customer, but the assumption is that residential account holders are not VAT registered. I don't think the bill/receipt/invoice would be seen as the product you're paying for, so as long as they actually provide broadband/phone or whatever your package is advertised as providing I suspect there's little legal recourse available (but then again I'm not a lawyer).

As for suspending DDs, from the (rather confusing) e-mails I've had from Plusnet I suspect they may have suspended mine without my intervention. I'll know for sure in a week or two. That might be entertaining.

Of course, any company that cared about keeping customers happy would be a bit more proactive than Plusnet appear to be.

[#7]

This is a complete farce plusnet. Are you going to sort this problem out for FF users who cannot download their bills? Why not attach our bills in pdf to emails instead of giving us a link that doesn't bloody work. I'm fed up totally and having to use two separate browsers isn't acceptable.

[#8]

As advised here - https://community.plus.net/t5/Plusnet-Feedback/New-accounts-system/m-p/1586447#M83008 - bills attached to emails is, by Plusnet (and many utility suppliers), considered to be a potential security risk.

Given that there are a good number of users reporting no issues with FF, this is clearly not a simple "its a FF compatibility issue" - there MUST be something else in play here!  What else have you got running on your machine which might block access to resources?

I have just run some detailed tests and there are a good number of resources being accessed … so there is some possibility that those who have locked things down very tightly might be digging their own graves here.  The list has been sent to PN.

[#9]

I can't say I'm surprised if you use Plusnet's own email accounts.  They're set as plain text passwords and there's no encryption anywhere.  If they actually did something about that, it wouldn't be anywhere near as much of a security issue.

[#10]

I have just run some detailed tests and there are a good number of resources being accessed … so there is some possibility that those who have locked things down very tightly might be digging their own graves here.  The list has been sent to PN.

Nothing

I started up a completely clean FF profile with no plugins and couldn't access my bills.

Webdeveloper console shows:

So its all pretty messed up

I'm convinced that the problem lies here:

XML Parsing Error: no element found Location: https://iac.plus.net/prgatewayweb/PRPCGateway Line Number 1, Column 1:

I think the call to the Gateway fails and that breaks the rest of it.

[#11]

That is not the concern or consideration - it is more that if you have to logon to get your invoices … then you are clearly the account owner or authorised by the account owner.  If delivered by email, then anyone with access to your PC can access the bill.

Look elsewhere for relationships where you do not have access to a supplier's email system (Gas / Electricity suppliers) their reluctance to send bills via email has nothing to do with how secure the connection to the mail service is.  The risk they seek to mitigate is leakage at the receiving end … if for no reason other than they can.

It is the security for security sake syndrome.  I recall a project I worked on a national public body.  For years documents containing personal information were shipped out via normal royal mail in brown envelopes without any concern.  They then sought to eliminate the paper and send stuff by fax / email.  Well suddenly the fax machines at the other end had to be housed in a secure area less some mere admin at the other end might see the documents … which previously they removed from the big brown envelopes.

Then when they moved the process to email, they demanded that all recipients had to use secure gov.uk email addresses and all communications had to be over the national UK Government secure network and all email servers located behind double firewalls and only accessible when connected to the Gov. network.  Their fear was that someone might tap into the physical wiring and be able to "sniff" the documents (medical information relating to vocational activity).

Oddly enough shipping large volumes of brown envelopes containing the same information a few months previously through a known to be leaking royal mail sorting office … was not seen as being a security issue.

The real issue is that people have a fear which is greater than reality - the wide spread stance seems to be "if it can be locked, lock it down, regardless of the real need or risk".  That is not to suggest that SSL is not desirable.

[#12]

@SteveA That is strange. I am having no problems using FF63.0.1 64bit on a very old (12 months +) profile and TWO ad/blockers (AdMuncher and uBlock Origin) and have no problem - go figure!

[#13]

As I've mentioned in an earlier post, I currently have 3 Plusnet accounts, and several computers/browsers, and I have issues with all accounts - sometimes. I think it is somewhat random, so having it work today is no guarantee that the same computer/browser won't have problems tomorrow. It seems to me the root cause of the issues must be at Plusnet's end.

The errors that can be seen by debugging the web pages seem to confirm that hypothesis.

[#14]

@SteveA,

That is really useful.  Do you have auto logon enabled?  I thin the iac. resource is associated with user verification.

I have just rerun my tests with Chrome and see different errors but they do not appear to be detrimental.

[#15]

@Townman I personally don't see anything wrong with sending invoices / statements by email.  You get them all the time from online shops you buy from.  The only real problem is ensuring the email address is correct, and that 'shouldn't' be a problem if PN used the addresses they give to the customer (minus the lack of SSL laziness).  IMHO there should be an option to send documents this way and put the onus on the recipient to make sure the address they use is correct, especially if they us an alternate email address.

If the recipient can't be bothered to put a password on their home PC and other family members can access it, well that's the punter's problem, not Plusnet's (not that I imagine anyone would give two hoots about a PN monthly bill).