Day 6 for calling plusnet to sort payment hopeless situation

[#1]

I have never had a problem with plusnet in the past. Saturday morning no internet we phoned customer service who told us that we had not paid our bill and an email had been sent. We hadn’t paid so hence no internet. This I understand but firstly we had not received an email as it went to an old account. Secondly we had not received any prompts at all on any of our devices with the usual reminder prompts. We asked to settle up and were told we couldn’t because it had gone to a debt agency they were despondent and unwilling to talk any further. This call was made at 7:30am. As I could not understand this approach I then called back an hour or so later. This time the the customer service was more helpful and apologised saying there had been a recent problem with prompts and if we spoke to billing we could pay and get reactivated But they would not be there until after 9am. So called for the 3rd time after 9am to be told they couldn’t help but we needed to speak to accounts on Monday. So Monday called again and yes we couldn’t pay them either. I set up a new email address and were told they would contact me within 24hours to organise a payment I could make. Nothing happened. I called again to be told no one could help be it customer service accounts etc I was told I have to wait for a debt agency letter which could take up to 2 weeks and only then could I pay the outstanding sum and then be reconnected. I was told it was my fault for not having an up to date email. The fact that I had no prompts and no letter did not seem to be a problem to them. I asked to be put through to complaints and was told I had to write a letter.
How can you at plusnet not be able to accept a payment on the same day the internet was stopped.
We have spent a lot of time calling and waiting to be answered upto 45 minutes on one occasion and have been pushed from one department to another. all I want to do is pay my bill.
Should I just go to another provider??? or are you expecting me to wait 2 weeks to sort this out.

[#2]

Moderators Note.
Moved from Community Feedback to My Account / Billing

[#3]

This is the exact same situation I am in too!

madness how they wont allow me to pay and I have to wait for the debt collection agency letter!

The worst thing is the reason the account is in arrears in the first place is due to plusnet error with regards to my direct debit being returned each month and them failing to send the direct debit guarantee confirmation to my bank!!!

[#4]

SU Escalation

Superuser escalation

This topic has been escalated by one of the Superusers, with the request that PN respond.

Escalation does not guarantee that progressing this matter will be given priority, nor that a different outcome will result. 

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[#5]

I'm seeing a few of these posts recently. I think with the new billing debacle and current telephone wait times, PN should be deferring the transfer of any account to debt collection. Surely it can't be too difficult to create a payment portal for making failed/ not collected/ other missed payments to prevent having to ring in? Either that, or a dedicated payment line where you can do it with a automated bot, so many other places do it. This could also have the knock on effect of people waiting in queues to make payments not blocking the queue for technical issues.

Mark