Excellent! I can't thank you enough Plusnet for continuously doing me proud! Isn't it fantastic that after all this time, there is still no resolution in sight to this billing problem, and the latest response from the so-called complaints handler seems, forgive me for saying it, extremely lazy and unprofessional, but I will get to that part later.
So, to recap – through no fault of my own as a customer, in October last year a billing system issue started to affect my account. At no point did Plusnet do anything to alert me of this, the first I knew of an issue was when I was hit in January with restricted access and a request for four months payment. Just to be clear on this, at no stage did I dispute the payment – Plusnet provided a service, for which I was happy to pay the agreed amount for. At the time it was only the lack of communication on Plusnets part which caused me upset and frustration, which, naturally I raised at the time. On talking to the customer services team by way of trying to resolve this issue, it became clear that there had been several errors on Plusnets part, namely the billing issue, the erroneous early restrictions and the fact that communication of a failed billing is sent electronically (via email) after the restrictions have been implemented, thus I found myself in a position where I couldn't access emails due to the restrictions, and the restrictions also imposed prevent access to the plusnet website and payment page. You can see how this adds additional complications to a situation which is already far from ideal.
Things worthy of note at this stage – to this very day I am surprised and deeply concerned about the inconsistency of the 'failed payment' warning system. Why wasn't a failed payment warning generated when the problem first arose? Why wait until January, many months later? It's worth noting that even to this very day, the inconsistency is still present – due to the same (unresolved) issue on my account, despite making contact to ascertain whether payment had been taken last month, and being told yes the problem had been resolved, once again, this month, restrictions were applied to the account, and, you've guessed it, I was being asked to pay for two months.
If you have a read through all of my posts on this thread, you will see just how frustrating the whole situation has been, and I dare say there's quite a lot of info that I haven't shared on this forum just yet. You will also note promises that were made, in the way of offering to suspend billing, and to telephone me once a month to take payment over the phone. In both cases, these promises have not been delivered.
So, imagine my frustration when I followed this up, via an open complaints ticket, only to be told:
Thank you for taking the time to get back to me regarding this matter. I am sorry that you were previously advised by one of my colleagues that we could suspend the billing on your account. It has been confirmed that this would not be an option and would not resolve this issue.
In order for this matter to be resolved we would recommend setting up a direct debit payment on this account. We would be unable to offer any further options of resolution as we are unable to support card payments. If you remain unhappy with this option as a resolution we would recommend that you present your case to our alternative dispute provider as outlined on ticket..... (DC)
To avoid any doubt in my mind, it would appear that I am being told that suspending billing on the account will not resolve the billing issue – which seems strange, because if you suspend billing until such a time as the issue is resolved, surely that would temporarily, at least, prevent any further failed payments? And, secondly, suddenly I am being advised that plusnet are no longer in a position to accept card payments? When did that happen? Maybe that's not the right question – perhaps I should be asking... Why did that happen? So to be clear, am I being told that in addition to the initial problem, you are now in a position where you cannot even take manual card payments over the phone? If that is the case, then I want some honesty now as to what is going on behind the scenes. I'm coming to conclusions here which may or may not be valid, and your team are certainly not doing anything to alleviate those concerns. Put yourself in my position here. You have an account which, contractually, was set up with a monthly continuing card payment agreement. The system has gone wrong for reasons as yet identified, and I am being told to pay manually over the phone or to change payment method. The latest correspondence being that the only option left is to change payment method as the alternative is no longer available. Billing problems, card payments facility withdrawn, inconsistent customer support. I need to ask, and forgive me for this, are you going into administration?
It's clear to me that this is never going to be resolved, and that plusnet aren't doing anywhere near enough to find a reasonable solution to this backend software issue, a problem that I can't resolve as a customer, even though I am continually being made to feel that it is my fault? And I get the feeling that blame is also being passed onto decent support team members on the forum for offering solutions that could not be implemented. I'm certainly not blaming the forum team here - at least you tried to help, which is more than can be said about the complaints team who, frankly, seem to be making what is an easy problem to resolve quite a difficult one to fix. Whoever picks this up, go back over my case notes and you will see that I have been fair and reasonable throughout, offering various solutions which, for one reason or another, have all been declined. Moving over to a new account, paying by cheque being just two examples offered by myself.
The plusnet I knew and loved when I joined as a customer would have nipped this in the bud early, would have contacted me to inform me of the problem, and no doubt would have resolved this to everyone's satisfaction quite promptly. Accordingly I am now exploring several avenues of taking this to the next stage. One quick and easy resolution to this though, I would say, is that you withdraw the case from the current complaints hander, and escalate it onto someone with more compassion and understanding, and someone with authority to deliver on the promises and solutions being offered. And by that I mean a named representative of Plusnet, not an external ombudsman, someone I can write to and call directly to talk through any further issues. It's not much to ask.
There's too much inconsistency now, largely down to the way the system works with tickets and different team members picking up various parts and not joining all of the bits of the jigsaw together - the whole case is an absolute mess, and I hope someone can spend some time going over the entire case to find and offer a solution which is beneficial and agreeable by both parties here, if not for me, then at least for the other customers affected by the same, and similar issues. This is a case of having too many customers, and nowhere near enough team members to be able to resolve issues promptly and satisfactorily. It is clear from other forum posts that this is by no means an isolated incident, and the level of frustration being aired on this very forum by other customers in the same situation is also clear to see too, so I hope that if between us we can't get this resolved, I hope the experiences I have raised and shared will go some way as to assisting with learning lessons and influencing a more joined up approach to promptly resolving similar issues, should they occur, in the future.
but i understand you thoughts 
but you will not get a resolution