Telephone support hours changing at Plusnet

[#1]

@ I.T. Works - That's where the ASA comes in.

Quote from: alext05

Oldjim, what g1000 is saying is this: T&C say : The service we agree to give you comprises: - bla bla bla; - bla bla bla; and - any other applications and features as described at www.plus.net/broadband

And what will happen on or just before 13 July is that it will be re-worded. The problem is it doesn't say in the T&Cs that the applications/features cannot change.
OFCOM will not rule this as a change of material detriment, the ASA might rule it as misleading though as the change has not been updated in the advertising.
As far as residential end users go though, your options are limited - you can try arguing it with Plusnet, although I very much doubt that will get anywhere. You could raise an official complaint and go through the arbitration process, which might yield something. Or you could go to the Small Claims Court, but the judge will almost certainly want some form of evidence about how this will affect or impact you.

[#2]

Quote from: AndyH

Or you could go to the Small Claims Court, but the judge will almost certainly want some form of evidence about how this will affect or impact you.

Which is exactly why I posted

Quote from: jelv

Anyone who has in the last year called in to report an issue after 10pm and before 7:30am: you should have a ticket on your account. I strongly recommend that you go to https://portal.plus.net/wizard/?p=search and search all tickets raised to find the ticket and take and keep a screen shot. If you are going to claim it's a detrimental change to your service you will then have proof that you have used the 24/7 support in the past.

[#3]

I dont know if anyone else has, but I have raised this as a formal complaint, due to being persuaded by Plusnet advertising of its award winning 24/7 customer care (I only choose companies with 24/7 customer care), and less than a month after joining... its taken away.

[#4]

Quote from: AndyH

And what will happen on or just before 13 July is that it will be re-worded.

What happens after or just before 13 July is irrelevant to anyone who is signing up now or signed up before.
People are signing up to a specific set of features that all form part of a contract on a specific date, be that a free activation, 24/7 helpline or anything else, and those features are equally important. For someone that specific feature might be a crucial one that helped to make their mind up.

[#5]

The term "mis-selling" comes to mind.

[#6]

I'm not convinced it's a change to T&C's and I suspect that PN will have had lawyers go through it with a fine tooth comb to ensure it's not such and avoid a mass stampede.
as we are reminded the number of members on this forum is insignificant to the overall numbers and as much as we'd like to think of PN listening to our contributions they are a company and as such the bottom line is king.

[#7]

Quote from: AndyH

No terms have been changed.

something advertised and then pulled is a change in ToS.
Since i have access to people who do legal work as a profession I checked with them yesterday (25th june).  Ofcom have already been contacted about whether they consider this detrimental enough for people to leave penalty free and if plusnet are ok not informing anyone.

[#8]

Quote from: dvorak

..........as we are reminded the number of members on this forum is insignificant to the overall numbers and as much as we'd like to think of PN listening to our contributions they are a company and as such the bottom line is king.

Whilst the first part of your remark is of course true and active membership of the forum is a very small percentage of the customer base, the great majority of "contributions" are well thought out and well argued by a good number of people who have/had careers in Engineering, IT, Computing and so on. But what might be frequently forgotten is that the Forum is read not only by forum members but by a lot of the general public At the time of writing this post for example, there is ten times the number of guests reading threads than there are members reading or posting. Now that starts to be a not insignificant number.
Plusnet would be mugs not to listen to the majority of constructive suggestions, criticisms and questions most of which are intended to ensure that the high standard of service that has earned Plusnet it's good name, continues. There have been plenty of those remarks in recent months and a lot of them would not only save Plusnet some money, but improve the service.
However, do we see or hear any mention of any of those things being done, judge for yourself.

[#9]

Sorry this is not a constructive reply, but I wonder how many people agree with me that Plusnet seem to recently have lost their way - rapidly? First thing I noticed was the effective destruction of the ticket system, then a gradual decline in CRT involvement in the forums, now a reduction in another form of what used to make PN an ISP to trust.
I appreciate that occaisionally we get a CRT response, but I kind of notice that even a couple of those people who used to speak 'off the top' now either don't post, or are being forced to spout meaningless comments.
I know we won't be told - because it's 'commercially sensitive' or 'internal policy'  - but why has the service deteriorated so quickly?
Also, whats happened to the back office improvements?  I've been involved in the introduction of totally new systems that have required much more external validation/verification to very much higher  standard than pure commercial setups, and we've had them up and running inside six months from conception.

[#10]

Quote from: jab1

Sorry this is not a constructive reply, ........

Eh? Just to be clear whose reply are you referring to dvorak's or mine? Sorry, brain misread the "this is" as a "that was"
Actually, your reply is constructive, in that it compactly summarises where the declines in Customer Service are and you've asked why?

Quote from: jab1

...........a gradual decline in CRT involvement in the forums..........

Several of us have posted comments about this before now. I think that if you have a good look around all the other streams, you will find a lot of customers having problems or making complaints.

[#11]

Quote from: Anotherone

Eh? Just to be clear whose reply are you referring to dvorak's or mine?

I think their own

[#12]

Whoops read too quickly    and didn't take it in properly, will edit pronto.

[#13]

Overall, I think the answer to the "why?" is quite simple..... cost cutting.
There seems to be only one motive at present, increase the profits, get the customer base to over a million by Christmas (so the CEO can presumably get his nice fat bonus)

[#14]

You are correct, AO, but if those 1 million customers start thinking like me, soon they won't have any.

[#15]

And I wonder if this reduction in service will be applied to their Waitrose/J Lewis operation too;
their www shows as 24/7 still?
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