Service Interruptions after Unpaid Bill

[#1]

About a week and a half ago my DD failed after an unauthorised payment was made from my bank account. This sadly happens from time to time and I was only able to pay my bill this morning.

After my DD failed service interruptions started. They took the form of TV annoyances and the occasional webpage not loading. This was irritating and I guess intentionally so. I also received texts and emails quite rightly stating that I needed to pay my bill. That is all understandable.

What I found particularly irritating and, quite frankly, irrational, was that I I could not access plus.net! Every time I tried to get to my account login it failed with a "connection refused message". Why? I understand the idea of nagging people to pay their bill but why stop them accessing their PlusNet account?

ISPs are a utility now. Imagine Anglian water intermittently cutting off my water supply and denying me online access to my account to pay my bill!

Please revise your late/non-payment policies. Denying access to plus.net should be the last thing you do before disabling an account.

Yours faithfully,

Pleonast

[#2]

There are a number of policies that PN need to review and improve on, issues that have been mentioned numerous times by various customers in different parts of the forum but these appear to fall on deaf ears as customers suggestion never get implemented.

To put it bluntly there is more chance of me winning the lottery than PN acting on your suggestion of changing its policy on late/non payment of bills.

[#3]

Thanks for your insight, gleneagles. 

I am an optimist and so think that that process can be made better. Here are my ideas:

1) Customer doesn't pay bill on time

2) They are sent and email and text message to inform them that their payment was not received

3) Wait 3 days (DDs can be retried)

4) Start to intermittently re-direct web pages to a reminder page (I stress intermittently)

5) Send email/text explaining that that if they do not pay then they will lose connectivity within X days. No need to mention debt collectors and 25% additional costs at this stage

6) After 7 days send an email/text every other day as a reminder (people will usually have access to their mobile and email

7) Do NOT stop them accessing any plus.net webpage - they might want to login and pay their bill or find a contact number or email address

Slowly increase the interruptions to encourage them to get in touch.

9) Increase the nuisance factor as time goes by until every page or service they use is interrupted/refused BUT NOT access to any plus.net page. 

Something like that, anyway. I'm sure there are smart people in billing/tech/product management who can figure this out.

Pleonast

[#4]

(The cool smiley on point 8 was serendipity.)