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September refferals are wrong.

VileReynard
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September refferals are wrong.

Ticket 182518551 was raised on 11th September,

It was ignored a couple of times before being "Escalated issue with TL" FIVE days ago.

Is Plusnet going to carry on ignoring this month old ticket?

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

15 REPLIES 15
Gandalf
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

Sorry to see your ticket about your referral issue hasn't been looked at by our billing team yet.

I've had a look at this and unfortunately the notes on the ticket don't give much away in the way of information. I think I remember another topic on this that you've responded to, but I'm struggling to find it.

Could I ask that you update the ticket with the referrals which are missing and drop a reply back here once you've done so?

Thanks.

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
VileReynard
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

The ticket notes say nothing much because customer support didn't bother to write the information down.

I've tried to explain what is wrong - although if the billing team had compared referrals paid for any month in 2018 against September's invoice the error would have been blindingly obvious.

Please could you ask the billing team to actually investigate my referrals issue?

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

Gandalf
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

Thanks for the information on your ticket.

This'll assist us in the investigation.

Unfortunately there's not much we can do until our billing guys dig into this issue for you when they pick the ticket up.

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
RobPN
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

Nice to see @Gandalf (who we can usually rely on to sort things out properly) getting involved in a missing referrals  thread.  Smiley

When I can be bothered to reply to my own ticket and continue with my own missing referrals thread (where I've already provided all the necessary details but have frustratingly come up against blinkered agents) perhaps I'll tag you @GandalfWink

VileReynard
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

I quite agree with you about @Gandalf - my ticket was rapidly updated to show

[...] The missing referrals seem to be showing as N/A under "Uninvoiced Referral Credits"
Unfortunately there's not much we can do until our billing guys dig into this issue for you when they pick the ticket up.

That's more progress in a few minutes than the ticket sat idling in "customer support" for a whole month.

I'm suddenly more optimistic that something could happen in the near future. Thumbs_Up

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

VileReynard
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

That billing team have done nothing with the ticket, though.

It seems that customers are simply being ignored.

I was wrong to be optimistic that something positive might happen. Sad

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

TheMightyAJ
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

Hi @VileReynard,

I'm sorry to hear this hadn't been picked up as the timing of your post. I've taken a look into your account today and I can see that you have since spoken to our support team regarding this issue. If you have any further queries or issues on this matter, or any other, please don't hesitate to get back in touch and we'll be happy to investigate further.

If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Alex H
 Plusnet Help Team
VileReynard
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

I've spoken on the telephone at least twice about it.

The agent who picked up the call admitted that staff morale was low because of the volume of invoicing failures.

They agreed that the new billing system should have been run in parallel with the old system for at least a month to pick up most of the defects in the new billing system.

The agent said they didn't want to add any comments to the existing ticket -

because this would push it to the back of a (very long) queue.

But they would start a fresh ticket in which they said they would credit the unpaid referrals from September on November's bill.

Obviously, I can't "click the 'This fixed my problem' button" since I have little faith in PN's billing capabilities.

 

Most of my work in IT over many years was in financial systems, especially accounting & billing systems. Mistakes were occasionally made - but our customers were never aware of them because false invoices etc never reached them. We always did comprehensive testing + parallel running for installation of new accounting systems.

I expect PN will be busy blaming "their contractors". I'd expect to see the departure of the CFO, at a minimum.

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

RobPN
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

I've yet to see an admission from PN that the new billing system is the cause of the missing referrals problem.  I've seen denials of the same, i.e. that the missing referrals have NOT been caused by the new billing system (or even in my case that the referral isn't missing!), but IMO it seems too much of a coincidence for there to be any other cause.

 

Edited to add the word 'new' x2

Gandalf
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

Sorry for my previous reply, I wanted to do more digging into this on Thursday, but due to personal circumstances I had to take emergency leave for the past 4 days.

 

@VileReynard, I can assure you that we're not ignoring you. There's a backlog of open tickets with our billing team.

Commenting on a ticket shouldn't push it back to the queue. I believe it used to, but as of around mid-2015 if memory serves me correct, that was fixed by one of our engineers(Shortly before the ticket system was largely removed in favour of webchat).

Escalating a ticket to another workflow/pool or back to you will push it to the back.

Moving on to the issue at hand, I can see the adviser you spoke to has applied a credit on to your account which will come off your next bill. After some head scratching I think I've figured out that this should be sorted soon moving forward, but due to the way referrals work I'm limited as to what information I can provide.

Will update you as best as I can via your ticket in a sec.

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
VileReynard
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

I can guarantee that the cause of the referrals problem is due to one or both of:-

  1. The initial data take-on was flawed
  2. The billing system wasn't specified/designed/programmed/tested properly.

One of my referrals have been paid each and every month since January 2008 with the exception of September 2018, which coincides with the start of the new billing system. I don't think that's a coincidence.

@Gandalf I'm Sorry to hear of your personal emergency.

But at least your notes enabled someone else to apply the credit to my account - for which I'm grateful. I shall monitor the outcome in November, as you suggest.

Normally I would normally take issue with an email saying

We've reviewed your account and found that you are owed a credit. £1.75 will be credited to your account for the following reason:
Gesture of goodwill
You'll see this amount deducted from your next bill, please let us know if you have any questions.
 

I don't think it should be a "gesture of goodwill" - but for a small amount of money its not worth arguing over the exact wording.

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

Gandalf
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

No problems and thanks for your thoughts.

Regarding the gesture of goodwill, that's simply down to the reason code the adviser chose when putting it through. I'd personally have chosen incorrect charging as that'd be the closest one. 

Let me know how things go next month.

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
ScottStorey
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

The ticket pushback problem waw other customers commenting pushing it back which was fixed.

Agents putting a comment on I'd expect to push it to the back of the queue as it has been actioned. So the agent was probably right.
VileReynard
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Re: September refferals are wrong.

@Gandalf - thanks for all your hard work.

Plusnet's billing dept. have actually managed to put through a credit for September's error and get the referrals for November correct!

Better late than never...Smiley

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."