Plusnet still billing me after I’ve transferred to BT

[#1]

When Openreach put super fast fibre on our street in September I discovered that Plusnet weren’t able to provide it to us, so I decided to transfer our phone and broadband service to BT. We had been having problems with our broadband speed for a while with Plusnet. It all appeared to go smoothly: I received an email from Plusnet confirming the cancellation of my service and saying that they would send me a cancellation bill. What they have actually done is to continue to bill me as normal and chase me for payment for a service they no longer provide. I paid the bill the month after I left Plusnet but then cancelled my direct debit as I didn’t trust them - a decision I’m glad I made. Why on earth can’t they get one simple thing right?

[#2]

By super fast do you mean FTTP?

If yes, then you need to be aware that there are issues with the way BT administer FTTP provision so that (unlike ADSL or FTTC) there is no automatic notification to the losing provider that the new service has been commissioned. It is not dissimilar to moving to Virgin Media, the losing supplier needs explicit notification outside of the Ofcom Gaining Supplier Lead migration process.

There is a monumental flaw in the industry business model for FTTP related migrations - there are no processes akin to those we are all used to.

BT Retail (they are a shambles) will not have notified Plusnet that the service has moved. Give COTS a call - chose the I’m thinking of leaving option - they should be able to sort this out.

[#3]

Moderators Note
This topic has been moved from General Chat to Accounts / Billing.

[#4]

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@Townman wrote:
BT Retail (they are a shambles) will not have notified Plusnet that the service has moved. Give COTS a call - chose the I’m thinking of leaving option - they should be able to sort this out.

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PN must have been notified. As @Mfeh1972 has already said..... "I received an email from Plusnet confirming the cancellation of my service and saying that they would send me a cancellation bill". Something awry....again.

[#5]

That might indeed be the case, however until Plusnet receive an asset termination notification from BT’s business systems, billing might continue. AFAIK a migration from ADSL to FTTP (much like switching to VM) does not always generate an asset discontinuation notification.

[#6]

Thanks both - I called Plusnet earlier and was told that after notifying Plusnet of the transfer request, BT subsequently cancelled the order after they started supplying me (with no input from me!). Plusnet dealt with it pretty quickly - said they would backdate the cancellation and send me a final bill which I’ll need to wait for (I may have overpaid) so hopefully it’s sorted but I’ll have to wait to see. They didn’t query the cancellation from when BT took over the supply. Apart from things going awry with BT, the main issue I have is being forced to call Plusnet when in my view it should be capable of being sorted by a message directly to them and it wasn’t. My guess is that BT have slightly overstretched themselves - in the last few months I have seen Openreach vans literally everywhere around here and I've even been doorstepped by a couple of guys from an intermediary about switching after I’d already done it. I’m very happy with our speed now but the transfer has been sloppy. Thanks for your replies.

[#7]

Thanks for your post @Mfeh1972 

I'm sorry for the issues you've had with transferring to another provider and I'm happy to see we got this sorted for you.

All the best with your new provider but let us know if there are any further issues or anything else you'd need help with.

[#8]

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@idonno wrote:

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@Townman wrote:
BT Retail (they are a shambles) will not have notified Plusnet that the service has moved. Give COTS a call - chose the I’m thinking of leaving option - they should be able to sort this out.

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PN must have been notified. As @Mfeh1972 has already said..... "I received an email from Plusnet confirming the cancellation of my service and saying that they would send me a cancellation bill". Something awry....again.

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... after which BT cancelled the cancellation ... in effect that same as my suggestion, BT did not do a clean hand-off on this migration to FTTP.

Good to hear that for this user, Plusnet has sorted the issue, in spite of BTw's B2B failings.