When Does My Contract End?

[#1]

I'm thinking of moving provider because of the very good offers I've had in the last week or two. I've no idea when my current contract finishes (quite soon I think) or how much notice I need to give and I can't find it anywhere in 'my account'. Can anyone point me to where I can find the details? I dont want to accidentally get a cancellation charge but of course I don't want to miss out on a decent offer (looks like Sky or talktalk).

Thanks.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@quelquod 

When I log into my account on the opening page it says Good morning xxx. Underneath that are three sections labelled My bill, My products and My contract.

Under My contract there is a bar graph showing my contract start and end date with the bar highlighting how far I am through it.

[#3]

Ah, mine doesn't. 

But I see there's now a band with a caption saying "renew your broadband package with this exclusive offer ....." so perhaps my contract has just expired already (yesterday was my billing date). I guess I should maybe log into the PlusNet site more often - I never do.

I guess I'll have to ring up and talk to someone - rats! I was hoping to avoid the hassle.

[#4]

Thanks for your post @quelquod 

If you don't see a contract length bar on the summary page of your account then you'd likely be out of contract, but I appreciate it's always good to double check though. 

If the offer we've made you online isn't to your liking, I'd recommend calling our customer options team on 0800 013 2632 to see if we can tempt you with a new deal to stay. They'll also be able to tell you definitively if you are indeed out of contract which I suspect you are (I'm not currently in the office to check that for you).

Customer options are open until 7pm today and 9am to 6pm tomorrow, on weekdays it's 8am to 8pm.

I hope this helps. 

[#5]

So I decided to stay with PN after all - too little difference overall to go through the uncertainties of a changeover.

New contract should have started yesterday but I still don't see this 'contract length bar' underneath 'Contract' on the welcome page 😪 .

[#6]

@quelquod 

Last week, I took up the offer of a new contract at what seemed to me to be good terms. The "welcoming" email suggested the new contract would start the next day but I was subsequently advised that it would start on my next billing day. I have yet to see if that happens! My Member Centre page still shows the time bar relevant to my old/existing contract

Maybe you are in similar cisrcimstances.

[#7]

Thanks for renewing with us @quelquod 

Sorry for the confusion with this, I've added a reply onto a support ticket you'll be able to view by going Here which I hope helps although I can't definitively work out why we've delayed the start date.

Hi @jgb thanks for renewing too. Looking into your renewal, what I suspected to have been the cause in @quelquod's case, may not actually be so. Again I can't seem to figure out why we've advised one thing and doing another. 

I'm going to look at raising this to the relevant team to investigate further internally if this is a repeated occurence.

[#8]

@Gandalf  but now I'm REALLY unhappy!!!!!!!!!!!!

For (at least the current 18 month contract but I think much longer) my download rate has been around 70Mb. In fact it's been around 70Mb ever since I upograded to PlusNet's fibre service from my old broadband with you. Each time I've recontracted its been called Unlimited Fibre or some such and in fact my current contract is called "Fixed price - Plusnet Unlimited Fibre" and so I expected this to continue unchanged when I recontracted at the offered price for a further 18 months. I even went to the trouble of checking what upgrade options I might have on the upgrade page but the only one listed was "Plusnet Unlimited Fibre" and that's still the only one offered on the upgrade page.

But this evening I've received an email saying "The order we've placed with our suppliers is to downgrade your service to the standard fibre package from fibre extra....". What????? THAT'S NOT WHAT I EVER WANTED!!! I wanted to continue the service I've had for years and years. I was told repeatedly that I was on Unlimited Fibre and it has ALWAYS been at 70+Mb. I check it weekly just to watch for any issues.

In my view this is a completely underhand way to treat a long-established customer. I've been with Force9 since 1998 and always on the top available package. 

And not only that, it turns out that my existing contract is actually not expired at all despite what Customer Service told me but still has until 13th March to run. So overall it seems to me that I've been manoevred into taking out a new contract prematurely, at quite different terms and conditions on the pretence that there will be no change. Absolute incompetence if not deliberate obfuscation.

No PlusNet - this is certainly NOT DOING ME PROUD. I could have readily bought a low-speed fibre contract elsewhere for £10 cheaper if that had been what I ever wanted!

[#9]

Thanks for getting back to us @quelquod  I'm sorry if that wasn't what you wanted and you feel this way. When you went through the online renewal process we should've made you aware what your speeds will be and I can see we've made you aware of that via email afterwards that's documented on your account Here.

I think the confusion stems from the name of the fibre extra package you're on that's called "Plusnet Unlimited Fibre". If there was no other package for you to choose from when you went through the online renewal process, then I suspect that our system has gotten confused on this occasion.

At the time of writing my ticket I just assumed you wanted to downgrade based on the information and email we provided.

To resolve this, can you add a reply to your ticket 199139101 advising that you don't want to go ahead with the downgrade? I'll then monitor and revert you back on to fibre extra and your previous agreement as soon as it goes through, although it'd take 1 to 2 working days to action the change back to the 80/20 service.

(We'll have to do it this way because unfortunately we're currently unable to cancel a pending contract in the system)

With regards to your contract end date, we'd allow you to agree to a new contract up to 3 months before a contract expires should you choose to. Can you advise roughly when you were told a different end date so I can look into this further?

[#10]

@Gandalf 

I am not bothered that the new contract will not start until my next renewal date. In fact that will make its end date better align with my LRS annual renewal date in late 2021 - with the contract finishing slightly earlier so that I can see what is on offer before committing to another year's LRS! 

The contract renewal is being monitored on ticket #194265778 that is already open on my account (for several billing issues that have occurred since Sptember 2019, some of which are still extant on my account) to see that things go to plan.

[#11]

@Gandalf 

Thanks for the reply. I've added a comment to the ticket 199139101  (as you've advised) that I don't want to go ahead with a change involving a downgrade. I'm still pretty het up about this as its the first real problem I've ever had with PN.

I phoned customer service on last Saturday 15th and asked the CS agent when my current contract expired. She said it had expired already. I asked what I should do. She said she would put me on to a different department (can't remember which one) and the line dropped. I couldn't face another long wait so ended up taking the only available upgrade option.

The PN system seems to think that the package which I'm on is not the package which I'm actually on (and always have been although the name has changed over time). There are no other options listed on my Upgrade Package page.

So what should I do now? What I want is to continue with what I have just now though not at some sky-high price. At present I'm paying approx £31 (including line) after a £9 discount and receiving a 70+Mb download speed which is on a par (just a few £ higher) with what Sky or TalkTalk are offering and preferably I'd like to just continue unchanged but there seems to be no option to retain my current (actual) package?

[#12]

Thanks for getting back to me @quelquod 

Sorry for the delay and for the issues with your renewal. I'll listen to your call from the 15th and feedback where appropriate.

I've take the time to discuss this in depth with a colleague from our billing team with regards to our options moving forward.

We believe that the best way to sort this out would be to allow the product change to go through, regrade you back to 80/20 and carry out an instant account change on your account to our current fibre extra package, which is the same in every way to the legacy fibre extra package you're on, it's just named differently and it's legacy.

This will involve you seeing lowered speeds for about 2 working days while I'm actioning the proposed changes back.

We've looked into other options such as cancelling the order we've placed with our suppliers to downgrade your service, and re-place the order for the exact same service to try to 'trick' our system into thinking the product change has completed, but there's a good chance that this may not work and result in a system issue where the pending change never completes.

As mentioned above, unfortunately we've no functionality in our system to cancel a pending contract once initiated. 

To try to sweeten the deal I've added a reply to your ticket 199139101 with a gesture of goodwill which I hope helps.

If you're happy to go ahead with the plan we've proposed, could you let me know by replying to the ticket?

Apologies again for the issues and the inconvenience caused.

[#13]

Thanks @Gandalf 

This has obviously caused you a good bit of aggro so I'm grateful that you've (apparently 😉 ) sorted out a solution so quickly. Thanks also for the 'gesture of goodwill' which was quite unnecessary but which of course I'll snatch out of your hand! 😀 😀

It's odd that I've not had any problems when I last extended my contract 18 months ago as (AFAIK) the situation was just the same. The difference last time was that CS did it all when I phoned in so perhaps they noticed what I was actually on and what I needed to go ahead with. (?)

While you're configuring things do you think you could fix the name of my current/future contract to align with whatever it's called nowadays? It might help avoid similar problems come next time around.  I think it's always been called 'unlimited fibre' but obviously this has come to mean something else over the years.

I can't be unique I guess. There are bound to be loads of others also on what I think you called a legacy product so I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often.

[#14]

No problem, it's not the solution we'd have liked but it's the best of the options that's very unlikely to cause system issues down the line unlike the workarounds we've thought of which have a good chance to cause further issues.

When we recontract you on the same package, the process is a bit different this side as we'd just click a button that says 'Recontract' after choosing the contract length, and it'll make no changes to the package you're on.

In your case when you recontracted online, based on what you've said the only package you were offered was the basic fibre package, so it looks like the online renewal system got confused between the legacy 80/20 package 'Plusnet Unlimited Fibre' and the current 40/10 package 'Unlimited Fibre'.

I wasn't around at the time we brought out the package you're currently on, but looking at our internal knowledge base this was launched in December 2012 and retired in June 2014, with the 40mbps package during that time being labelled "Plusnet Essentials Fibre". Over the years, packages have come and gone, since 2014 it's been Unlimited Fibre and Unlimited Fibre Extra.

I'm always conscious of anything which may have a tendency to be a common problem and I raise that with the appropriate team if there are repeated occurrences so we can investigate further and fix.

As part of the work I'll do to revert you back on to 80/20 when the order completes, I'll change your account type to 'Unlimited Fibre Extra' so you shouldn't get this problem again. 

I'm sure all this will be worth it for the goodwill gesture. 

[#15]

@Gandalf 

Thanks again.

It occurred to me belatedly to mention that I have a domain hosted with webspace and ccgi webspace. You've probably noticed. I don't use it a lot but I do use it as a primary email. Please can you ensure that it doesn't accidentally get zapped during the changes? It hasn't before so probably unlikely to this time but if this process is different to your usual " just click a button that says 'Recontract' "........