What a nightmare? Plusnet call it contract renewal

[#1]

My contract is due fo rrenewal on 1 April.  With my last bill there was an offer to upgrade from 38Mbs to 76 Mbs at £24,99 incliding Line rental.  It appears that on renewal my call plan increases from £9 to £9.41 (all monthly amounts). I can do this upgrade at anytime intil 31 March.

On Monday I received an email with "Two Cracking offers?"  38Mbs at £25.99 and 76Mbs at £29.99.

New customers meanwhile are offered 38Mbs at £22 and 76Mbs at £24 in each case with an extra £9.41 for Anytime UK calls with Mobile.

All these come with the health warning that price rises are in th eoffing as at 1st March - The increase will be CLI pubkished in January (that was 4.8% published on 19th January) plus 3.9%.  My arithmetic makes that 8.7%.

I am left with numerous questions:-

1:  Why is a "cracking offer more epemsive than an upgrade offer?

2:  Why does a new customer get a cheaper rate when there are activation costs and a lot more work for Plusnet ?

3:  Wasn't there some recent legislation makin it illegal to charge existing customers more than new customers - or is that just for insurance?

4: Given that my renewal is 1st April are the figures that I have quoted above th ereal figures that I would pay - ie first increase at 1 March 2023 or are they deliberately misleading?

5:  What charges will you be levying if I renew an 18 month contract as at 1st April?

I have been with Plusnet for well over 10 Years and, generally, (subject to OpenReach infrastructure limitations) have been happy with their service and costs. However this confusion which I, as a Maths Graduate from the 60's, find incomprehensible leads me to believe that the company now has lost much of its integrity (perhaps ofllowing the example providee by our politicians?). 

When I set this moral issue alongside the offer from Vodafone of 38Mbs at £18 or 76Mbs  at £19 plus, in either case, £8 for the comparable Call Plan I wonder why I am even considering staying with PlusNet.  I suppose the only positive is "The Devil you know" .

It's no good trying to get to the bottom of this on the phone.  I would no record of any agreement and it leads to a waste of my time in trying to starta "Question" which PlusNet have made virtually impossible fo rthe last couple of years. Other posts in this section make that clear.

Perhaps one of the moderators or Staff might like to explain my options?  I still have 6 weeks 🙂

[#2]

Sorry for the numerous typos in my post above - hope it is more intelligible than my options 🙂

[#3]

@inspiredron 

Accepting that the Plusnet left hand has no idea what the right is doing the trick is to ring the Customer Options Team on 0800 013 2632. This line gets answered quite quickly. Here quote the Vodafone price, tell them that you are considering it and haggle.

[#4]

Thanks for your post @inspiredron

I'm really sorry for any confusion here.

I would personally wait until the end of contract reminder we'll send you within the last 40 days of your contract end date, as this will generally be the best deal we can do for you and in some instances, it may be the same as a new customer's offer.

Once we've sent this, if you'd like to discuss further I'd recommend calling our Customer Options Team on 0800 013 2632 as @Baldrick1's suggested as they're the best folk to help as they're our sales & retentions department. 

[#5]

Thank you, Anoush. 

While I am grateful for your sorrow for the confusion - after all it is your bosses, not you who are responsible for the confusion -  you have not answered any of my questions. Your advice to wait till later for a better deal actually reinforces my impression that PlusNet is trying to extract as much income as possible from its more naive or trusting customers.  Not the best way to behave for long term customer loyalty IMHO! Having been born during WW2, I, personally, value integrity highly.

[#6]

I hadn’t answered the questions previously because I felt the best way forward was to wait for the end of contract reminder for the final renewal offer we’ll make before potentially calling Customer Options to discuss.

We absolutely aren’t trying to get as much money out of you by making you wait for the end of contract reminder, as we’ve provided you with some offers before then.

Ultimately though you’d have agreed a contract & pricing for a length of time, so we’ve no obligation to allow an early renewal before the end date however we do.

Now just to answer your questions as best as I can:

1. The offers we’ve made so far are just different offers that were likely sent at different times. Our offers don’t always stay the same, though based on what you’ve said it looks like there’s some overlap so you can still take out the cheaper one if you’d like to.
2. Our new customer offers are introductory. Everybody at one point will have signed up on a new customer deal. We can’t always offer that upon renewal. Though we do sometimes, so it’s worth discussing with Customer Options.
   
3. I haven’t heard about this.
4. The figures on the offers we’ve quoted would be before the CPI+3.9% price rise, because this hasn’t come into effect yet.
5. If the price rise comes into effect from 1st March and you renew on 1st April, then the renewal offer we agree on will include that price rise. 

I hope this helps, but let me know if you’ve got further queries or feedback.

[#7]

We'll - I rang yesterday morning, a week after receiving the best offer which was better than previous offers that had been made. I mentioned that another provider was offering a better deal and Plusnet matched it - I've contracted for two years but I will get a 9.3% increase after just 1 month. But the competition would have done the same so I'm content.
A new Hub 2 arrived today and is set up and working. Pity it only has 3 LAN ports so I needed to add a 1Gb switch.
Well done Plusnet!

[#8]

Excellent, now that’s what I like to see and cheers for posting back @inspiredron