Praise & Moan!

[#1]

Morning All
I hope this post finds you all well and you all have the wonderful sunshine I can see out of my window  
I decided to share this here because I know I will then get some attentive support, are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.............
Firstly let me holds my hands up and confess I am the worlds worst payer of bills, not intentionally I am just really un-organised and far too busy with work, family life etc etc to sort myself out, as a result I do not pay for anything by direct debit as I always forget and end up with bank charges. I have been this way with Plus Net since the beginning and every month I get the little message on screen telling me I need to pay and I then phone in and pay my bill by card. This happened in March this year only this time instead of making a payment I was told there had been a mistake and in December last year I had actually paid twice! Woo hoo I was in credit by around £65, I was told that the system does not automatically see this and it only comes to light when I ring in, so the operative credited fifty odd quid to my account to cover the outstanding bill and said there was still nine pound odd owing to me and they would refund it to my card once I added one to my account online, great!
April come and goes bill paid as usual by phoning in, fast forward to Thursday just gone and I get 4 emails from Plusnet telling me my service had been cancelled and the phone and broadband would go offline that day, completely puzzled by this as we had not cancelled our service I rang customer services, after much investigation and reading of notes I was told that I had not paid a bill from March and this has resulted in my service being cancelled and they had emailed me on the 27th March to explain that the person who told me I was in credit had made a "mistake" and it was down to a bug in their system, I was not owed a credit and the bill was still outstanding! No email received by me and I cannot locate any ticket either. OK sometimes things go wrong I am not an unreasonable, dramatic kind of person so I accepted this explanation, told them I was not really impressed about the whole thing and paid the outstanding bill for March with my card.
I was then told that as the cancellation had already gone through they would have to re-provision the service and essentially I would be starting again with a fresh contract and they guy I spoke to also told me he would try to make all this happen quickly so I would not lose access to broadband, broadband access for me is imperative as I work from home and require internet access to do my job but as it is so important I do have a backup with my mobile phone contract but only get a 4gb personal hotspot allowance so I would be OK for a couple of days at most then it would start to cost me a fiver per GB!
Within an hour of me putting the phone down the internet was off and so was the phone for incoming and outgoing calls, gutted to say the least but half expected, bearing in mind none of this was my fault I was more than a little peeved! I started to use my mobile data allowance which was a nightmare, we live rurally and signal is not great but I was able to do the essentials via remote desktop to my cloud based Windows machine but my allowance was guzzled very quickly. Yesterday I noticed the green light on the modem for broadband was solid so I logged into the Plusnet router clicked connect and thank goodness we were back online, however it is almost unusable. Our IP Profile (god I am sick to the back teeth of IP Profiles!!!!!) had been set at a ridiculous 0.5Mbps. I went on live chat and spoke to someone who looked into it and said he could not manually increase this as he needed something from provisions to be done first but would update the new "invisible" tickets to keep me informed.
So far I have heard nothing back, I know these things do not happen instantly but again bearing in mind none of this is actually my fault will the good Plusnet staff on here please please please get on the case and get whatever needs to be done, done as quick as possible? Also we still have no phone, there is a dial tone but no outgoing calls and when I try to phone our number I get a message saying number not recognised so can someone also gert onto this as well please?
Rant as this is a total shambles and should not have happened to begin with, praise as so far customer service have been OK(ish) but the time it takes to solve these issues really is unacceptable and this whole IP Profile nonsense need to be stopped once and for all, I have had nothing but hassle with IP Profiles for the last 2 years whoever came up with the idea needs tar and feathering as reducing a profile down to 0.5Mbps for no good reason when the day before it was running fine at 7Mbps is not only EXTREMELY frustrating but also completely illogical and then the time it takes for them to organically change is just a joke!
Here I am again 6 months trouble free and then nightmare problems this is starting to form a repetitive pattern!
Anyway I know from experience the good Plusnet staff on here got he extra mile hence this post.
If any forum members have any nuggets of wisdom I would love to hear them.
Thanks in advance.

[#2]

Wow, that sounds horrible.
Really sorry you've ended up in this situation. I've just been over the account and have updated our profile to ensure no speed restrictions are on our side. Unfortunately as the line is technically being provided and the order hasn't completed (not due to complete until the 21st 27th) I can't even run a line test to see what's happening.
Looking at the orders they were placed as a start of a stopped line SIM order, so the broadband and phone should have activated the same day (8 working days is the lead time for this type of order). What we would sometimes do in this is start the phone line first and then place the broadband order after this completes, which would cut the timescale down. However as your broadband is now working again I'd be loathe to cancel this as it'll likely take you offline again. Personally I'd suggest we allow the orders to complete and we'll arrange a gesture of goodwill and cover the cost of the downtime once you're back up and running.

[#3]

Thanks Chris I knew I would get the right help here
I will keep an eye on everything fingers crossed it will soon sort itself out.

[#4]

@Chris,
Once again we see the effects of industry imposed constraints in re-provisioning service on a ceased line - BTw are really quick to execute cease orders but take ages to process provisions.
In recognising the dire consequences of an unintentional cease, has anything been done to ensure that the billing system mistake encountered by this user cannot be repeated please?
Setting aside the incorrect advice / information, this is a text book example of the risks of non-automated monthly payments.
Cheers,
Kevin

[#5]

Hi Kevin,
This is a big anomaly if I'm being honest. There are a lot of circumstances where the line is being rightfully ceased, as we get a lot of customers that just cancel their Direct Debit and leave.
@PembsPanther - I hope the services remain active by luck through your provision. I note your comment on a ticket saying that the phone was down, is this still the case?
Matty

[#6]

Hi Matty
Yes as of this post the phone is still down.
The biggest issue here for me is communication or lack of, had I known that the credit applied had been done so in error then I would have paid the outstanding bill and this situation would never have happened, as far as I know the only way PN chose to communicate this error to me was via email on the 27th of March which I did not receive, I have no email at all informing me of this error and also I cannot locate any ticket on my account either, even when I phoned in to pay the bill in April nobody told me of the error and the fact there was still a bill from March outstanding.
Under the circumstances and considering we have been customer 3 years this year and also only just re-contracted for another 24 months I would have though it more pertinent for someone at PN to pick up the phone and call us to let us know of THEIR mistake rather than just cancelling the line and not informing us.
There seems to be a lot of threads on this forum from disgruntled customers that could have been avoided if communication would have been better.
Thanks.

[#7]

As of this post still no phone...........

[#8]

Hi PembsPanther,
I've just checked the orders, and as per Chris' last message your phone and broadband will go live again on 27th May, and once they do, we'll sort you a goodwill gesture and a refund for your downtime  

[#9]

OK thanks for the reply, extraordinary amount of time!
My wife was talking to one of her clients this afternoon who lives just up the road from us, interestingly enough she is going through exactly the same thing as us with Plus Net, her services were also cancelled out of the blue last week with no communication to her either, does this kind of thing happen often?

[#10]

It's not something that happens often at all, as Matty has mentioned. Has your neighbour raised this with us?

[#11]

Hi Cat
Yes she has been in contact with CS she is currently on the same re-provision nightmare that I am experiencing, I do not know the full details I just found it very strange that she lives so close to use and around the same time the same thing happens to her that has happened to us, I do not know the full story obviously but it does seem strange considering it is something that happens rarely.
Complete nightmare of a thing to happen to anyone and I still have a whole week to go before it is rectified This whole situation has tested my backup plan for internet access for my job which for a couple of days works well but for a couple of weeks not so well, I am going to have to get a business line and broadband installed, I cannot have a utility provider have such an influence over our business lives especially one that takes light years to sort out problems! Whether it will be PN I opt for to provide us with a business line and broadband remains to be seen, sadly the longer I am a customer the more faith I lose in your service.

[#12]

It is cold comfort to you, but this is a supplier related issue.  Whilst at one level this just looks like PN not getting you reconnected promptly, it remains that case that BTw / BTOR implement disconnections more or less instantaneously but can take weeks to implement connections, be they new ones or just-disconnected ones.
It is not clear to me if there is a fast track reconnect option which PlusNet have failed (or refused) to use or if there is simply no way of making the BTw/BTOR treacle move more quickly.
There have been numerous stories over recent months of areas where there are not enough e-side circuits, such that more or less immediately on cessation, the e-side line is being allocated to another subscriber.  Thereafter subscribers need to wait for a line to be come free, new lines in stalled or records / lines checked out to identify workable pairs.

[#13]

The way that we placed the orders for phone and broadband to reactivate together meant that the lead-time for this was 8 working days. However there was another way to place this, however as mentioned earlier I didn't want to cancel the current orders as the broadband is actually still working and I feared that cancelling these would also cut this off.

[#14]

Hi Chris & Townman
Thanks for taking the time to reply, I understand how it works I am just bemused at the time scale involved and the absence of some kind of fast track procedure for when things have gone wrong. I understand what you are saying Chris and appreciate you pointing this out to me and leaving things how they are, although I have a ridiculously slow speed it is far better than nothing at all and is allowing me to get the essentials done for the moment which I am thankful for, I will have a huge pile of work to do though when all this is finally sorted out!
You know, in this day and age things like this should not only not happen but this insane amount of time to provision and new line with broadband is just, well, ludicrous really but I do appreciate there is little that you guys can do and also appreciate your efforts so far.

[#15]

Well, I tell you my jaw dropped PembsPanther when I started to read this thread. I Just cannot believe the continued appalling standards of communication that Plusnet are exhibiting and it seems that a fair proportion of it is down to poor training and incompetence on Plusnet's part. I spend a fair bit of time of these boards helping users with their issues (although that is going to change - explanation later) and in my time I've read some disgusting posts from some users where what has happened has been considerably less severe or disruptive than what's happened to you, yet you have remained civil but rightly critical of Plusnet.
Because of a number of issues in the last 24-36hours in particular, I was starting not only to get very frustrated about the way things were going at Plusnet but getting quite niggly and having read your thread it has now made me quite angry that I'm going to desist from posting much further until I've had a strong cup of coffee or two before I post the rest of what I've got to say for fear of getting too personal.

Quote from: Townman

Once again we see the effects of industry imposed constraints in re-provisioning service on a ceased line - BTw are really quick to execute cease orders but take ages to process provisions.

Totally agree, and I don't know if the changes due to take place later this year will alleviate this sort of situation.

Quote from: Townman

In recognising the dire consequences of an unintentional cease, has anything been done to ensure that the billing system mistake encountered by this user cannot be repeated please?

This was no "unintentional cease" Kevin, this was a deliberate act by Plusnet.