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Plusnet's account-management and billing system in chaos

br1anstorm
Rising Star
Posts: 126
Thanks: 15
Registered: ‎24-06-2007

Plusnet's account-management and billing system in chaos

The real test of any product or service provider is not how good they are when things are going smoothly, but how effective their response is when things go wrong.

By this yardstick, Plusnet are failing very seriously. 

The billing arrangements for my broadband account have been inaccurate and incorrect for three months:

- back in November, my monthly bill (paid by Direct Debit) failed to include the correct discount/reduction for My Referrals.   I contacted CS and raised a question (ticket ref #186118472) and was assured a correction would be made and a credit reflected in my next t bill.  It wasn't.  The December bill did not have the missing credit.  And the January bill got the referral-discounts wrong.... again;

- so in January, I contacted CS again.  Another question (ticket #186832824) was raised.  It seemed that at that time CS could not access or check the account and billing details;

- these seemed to be fairly minor errors.   However my scrutiny of the bills highlighted that I was on a very unfavourable (and expensive) open-ended monthly tariff.  So on 5 January I spoke to CS and on 10 January I agreed a new 12 month contract  (annual Line Rental in advance, which I paid,  and a new - discounted - monthly rate with effect from 24 January 2019).  This was confirmed in a detailed messages giving the exact contract tariff in tickets #186309271 and #186309309 on 10 January.  I also got a receipt for my LineRental payment and an email confirmation of the new contract.

- However,  my 24 January bill arrived....  and it was still at the old, expensive, monthly rate, as well as failing to give me full referrals credits.  Having had a separate service-message from Plusnet Mobile on 13 Feb about billing problems with mobile contracts and a planned roll-over of January Direct Debits on to February bills, I decided to wait and see.

- my February broadband bill has just arrived.  It is - again - at the "old" and expensive rate, and an incorrect and excessive DD is about to be taken, again, from my bank account.

- I have also checked my current contract details on the relevant page of the Plusnet website.  It has not been updated either, and does not show the discounted contract-rate agreed in January.

So I am two months into a 12 month contract, being overcharged, and receiving neither the agreed discounted monthly tariff nor the correct referrals credits.  I called Customer Services - to be told that there was an ongoing and unresolved systemic "technical" problem with Plusnet's accounting and billing systems which means that discounts and credits are not being applied correctly to customer accounts.

The bad news is that has been an issue since - apparently - the beginning of January or earlier.  The worse news is that there is no solution in prospect. 

Meanwhile Plusnet continues to bill customers incorrectly and overcharge them.  Consequently the longer the problem remains unresolved, the bigger the mess, and the more complicated the task of recalculating and refunding customers who have been incorrectly billed.

A glance at the posts in this forum over the past couple of months reveals the scale of the problem.  For every post on the forum there must be dozens more tickets raised or complaints to Customer Services.  Astonishingly, some of the staff-replies to complaints in this forum claim that "only a small number of customers are affected".  This is dishonest.  And while CS dutifully promise to 'raise a ticket' and 'make a note on your account', all this does is add to the backlog and the size of the complaints-file.  It is no comfort to unhappy customers to know that they are part of a much larger crowd all suffering from Plusnet's incompetence.

When banks have suffered similar software and system-failures, Chief Executives have been put in the dock.  Heads have rolled.  Explanations have been publicly offered.  Resignations have been required.

Thus far, Plusnet has been evasive and passive.  Staff comments on the forum and on the phone express regret.  But raising questions and tickets have so far clearly done very little to bring about a solution to the problem.

It is time for Plusnet to step up, and take rapid, effective action.  This is a key test.  I would welcome a suitable response to this post from an appropriate, and informed, member of Plusnet staff.

 

 

 

5 REPLIES 5
198kHz
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Re: Plusnet's account-management and billing system in chaos


@br1anstorm wrote:

It is time for Plusnet to step up, and take rapid, effective action.  This is a key test.  I would welcome a suitable response to this post from an appropriate, and informed, member of Plusnet staff.


Good luck with that.  Wink

Murphy was an optimist
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OllieC
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
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Registered: ‎23-01-2018

Re: Plusnet's account-management and billing system in chaos

Hi br1anstorm@

 

Thank you for your time on the telephone this afternoon it has been a pleasure.

 

I'm really sorry that it hasn't been under better circumstances and I have created a complaint ticket for you here

 

Please feel free to give us a shout should you require further assistance as we are more than happy to help.

 

Kind Regards

br1anstorm
Rising Star
Posts: 126
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Registered: ‎24-06-2007

Re: Plusnet's account-management and billing system in chaos

Fair play to Ollie C - and credit to him for responding on this forum and for phoning me directly.  We had a very amicable and positive conversation, and it's clear that at that level everyone is trying hard to "firefight" the problems.

The issues affecting the accounting and billing are (as we are all realising) pretty serious, and this makes it tough for customers and also for the teams on the Customer-Services front line.

For all our sakes, we have to hope that the technical and IT situation is resolved soon and that things get back on to an even keel. Plusnet needs to survive (and maybe learn from) this experience.  But it's clear they are trying hard.

Fingers crossed, as they say!

 

 

Glassengineer
Newbie
Posts: 1
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Registered: ‎21-05-2019

Re: Plusnet's account-management and billing system in chaos

I am in the same position, being overcharged each month, calls to customer service resulting in apologies and and tickets raised and escalated.

I informed customer service that knowingly taking more money from a customer’s account when they have already been told they have it wrong must been some kind of fraud or theft.

To be told that it doesn’t matter and that they will eventually payback all the overpayments sometime in the future when their  computer problems are sorted out even though they have known about this programming error since September last year. This is not good enough.

 I am concerned that less astute customers who don’t check their bills or bank accounts will be unaware of these problems, and the less well off may be unable to afford to wait for the refund, whenever that happens.

Dumbledore
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 638
Fixes: 34
Registered: ‎06-08-2018

Re: Plusnet's account-management and billing system in chaos

Hello @Glassengineer

 

I am deeply sorry to hear about the issues you have experienced with your invoices and the service you have received from us.

 

I have responded to your query via a ticket. You can view this ticket by Clicking Here

 

Should you require any further assistance, please feel free to get back in touch with us.

 

Best wishes.