Joined 7 months ago but no payments taken

[#1]

Hi All,

I Joined Plusnet back in August 2018 and as yet have paid no monthly charges according to the website my next bill is due in 2037 all i get when i ring is you'll get an email (which i don't)

I am getting worried about how this is going to get sorted I don't want a large and unexpected payment to suddenly come out of my bank and am not convinced that i will be notified.

Does anyone have any ideas as to the best way forward, all i want to do is pay them!!

The shame of it is the service is absolutely fine and i've had no issues, but is has to be said that the level of support is disappointing, and i can't believe the lack of any info regarding the billing issues on the website

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@mrcyrix,

Firstly, welcome to the forums, though I'm sorry it's not under better circumstances. 

I'd like to provide some explanation or clarification on what's happened and what's going to happen. 

As you'll probably notice from other forum posts we rolled a new billing system around the time your account was activated and a small number of customers were affected by a problem which required us to switch off their billing until a problem was resolved. 

Looking at your account you're affected by that problem, but also a much rarer one where your billing date has been set extremely far in the future. All the accounts affected have been found and are currently waiting for the fix to roll out but is being delayed until the root cause fix is rolled. 

You will not receive a bill from the start date of your account until the date of the problem fix. As a company the stance we've taken is to take the hit and only bill for 90 days worth of subscription charges from backdated from the date the issue is resolved, with the option of spreading those 90 days across multiple months (to try and help prevent anyone having any payment issues). You will be notified in advance of any billing - it will not just be debited from your account. 

When the fix is about to be rolled you will indeed receive a communication from us advising what's happened and how and when the matter will be rectified, but this will not happen until we're sure it won't cause further problems, and at the moment we can't give you a date for this to be resolved. 

In the mean time enjoy the free broadband and line rental.

[#3]

Well Jolo I have just been on the phone to Plusnet for nearly 2 hours and with another Loss of Service.

During the call I told the operator that in fact you failed to credit me for the loss of service in January, this brought total silence to the call as the operator then proceeds to tell me that you haven't filed my since September ! September, that's 8 months ago. This is despite having a direct debit in place on my side. There is much passing me through departments and complaints regarding the billing and again the loss of service and I am still left cursing Plusnet. 

Your tagline, "We'll Do You Proud", nothing could be further from the truth and just goes to show the complete corporate ignorance of these silly strap lines. Unable to speak to anyone with any authority regarding the matter. No one to tell me when I would be billed nor could they confirm that you are saying in your post that you will only be billing the preceding 90 days. No one could confirm this on the phone.

As a result, I view my case as a complete Breech of Contract on your side, continual loss of service, no refund for the period of previous loss of service, inability to bill and as a result I demand a release from the contract and the ability to kiss goodbye to you forever.

If you find the time you are welcome to reply, totally fed up with you lack of everything, attention to nothing and certainly doing absolutely no-one proud

[#4]

Hi @ginnser, 

I'm really sorry for all the miscommunication from speaking to our representatives over the phone. I want to assure you that we are doing everything we can to resolve the problems with suspended billing on some of our customers accounts.

I can absolutely appreciate your patience has worn thin. Unfortunately we cannot give an exact time frame on the resolution of the billing suspension, which I can understand can be very frustrating.

Because we do not have an estimated resolution date to resolve the problem, we are only billing any customer impacted by the issue for the past 90 days from the date the issue is finally resolved.

I would also like to reinforce that you will absolutely only be billed for the past 90 days of service. This is irrespective of however long we have been unable to take the payment. As it stands you haven't been invoiced since September, therefore at present you will have no charge for months - October through to January.

We previously issued the statement below on our commiunity site confirming that we would only bill for  the 90 day period:

We’re aware that a small number of customers are still experiencing problems from our new billing system and we’re working hard to fix these legacy issues. We want to reassure those affected that may not have received a bill from us recently, we’re doing all we can to get everything back on track. We’re sorry that this isn’t the service customers have come to expect from us and give our assurance this will be sorted as soon as we can.

Under circumstances where bills have not been generated for longer than a 90 day period, we will only charge for the last 90 days leading up to the bill being generated and anything prior to this will be removed. We're also happy to set up a payment plan if the 90 day bill period is not affordable in one payment.

As there seems to have been some communication breakdown from when you spoke to our advisors and I can see you have also arranged for a manager call back on ticket:189287361 I'm going to note this statement in writing onto your account to avoid further confusion.

As a side to this, your initial reason for getting in touch was a connection problem. We can take a further look for you here if you would like? From testing I can see there has been some disconnections however, I am unable to locate the source of the issue.

Have you recently tried the troubleshooting steps here?

If you have already done so and the problem persists raise a fault here and let us know, we can then progress things further.

Again, I'm really sorry for all the problems you have faced with both the billing system and your broadband service.

[#5]

@Optimatts  while its nice to have such a good reply from yourself a lot of customers are worse than frustrated , also would be nice if some update was posted on the , Service information Board  you may get less posts on here then 

[#6]

Like mrcyrix I too joined PN last august paid my first month plus installation by debit card and have been enjoying broadband and tv with no issues ever since.

BUT i too have a next bill date in 2037, I reported this in january and the raised ticket just keeps getting put on hold, can i assume that i will only be asked to pay for 90 days once the issue has been resolved because 8 months plus of arrears is going to make for a huge bill.

This is a shame because i am very happy with the services i am receiving since i left virgin, just seems a bit ridiculous that  an IT problem could last this long.

[#7]

Hi @onekeano16

Thanks for getting in touch.

The 90 day billing process applies to anyone who has had the delayed billing issue for longer than a 90 day period, so in your case, you'd only be billed 90 days retrospectively from the fix being applied, rather than back to January.

Best wishes

Dave