What has happened to PlusNet service?

[#1]

I know you said to keep this on hold, but this morning I find that the problem has gone away -- no more timeouts. Great. So I went to look at the open ticket to see what has been done, only to find that the ticket has been closed and has disappeared.

I then discovered that there is no obvious way to see closed tickets! I had to google for how to find them. When I did, I found a response on the closed ticket:

3:09pm, Tuesday 5 Dec 2023

Dear Mr Woodward,

Thank you for getting in touch.

I'm sorry for the delay in response, this ticket pool isn't monitored regularly.

What is the point of having a ticket system if it's not monitored???

The response continued:

I'm sorry to hear you have been having problems with your emails. I can see you were assisted on the 4th December. Hopefully this has resolved the problem, however if not please do give us a call on 0330 1239 123 and we can put you through to the technical team to advise.

@Townman said the issue was being escalated for investigation and that there was an open incident report, I have received no notification that the issue has been resolved.

I would like you to know that we will be closing down our email service within the next 12 months. We currently do not have a date which is why we've not sent any communications out at this present time regarding this. We are advising customers to move over to another Email provider like Google or Outlook sooner rather than later. We are aware our email system is not the best technology and cannot complete with other providers.
We will of course be here for Broadband and landline, and for help with the emails until it ultimately closes down.

Well, that's good to know ... So how are PlusNet "advising customers" if they've "not sent any communications out at this present time regarding this"? Just another example of how bad things have become.

This may be why you could not see a service status or raise a ticket. I've not heard of any problems with this however I do apologise for the inconvenience this creates.

No, I couldn't see Service Status or raise a ticket because PlusNet have removed the ability from their website!

The reply concludes:

[Email notification sent to: [Removed]

No it wasn't, or if it was I haven't received it. It is not in my inbox or spam/junk folder. I have looked at both claws-mail and webmail.

Do I need to call the technical team as suggested? I don't know. I want to know (from someone at PlusNet):

• What the problem was?
• What, if anything, has been done to fix it?
• If the problem has magically cured itself, what is the likelihood of it happening again?

I am deeply frustrated by this issue, and I come back again to why I posted this in the Customer Service forum: PlusNet Customer Service has become a joke. Why has it has been left to fellow users to try to sort out this problem?

Anyway, for the time being, thanks again to @Townman and @Dan_the_Van .

Moderators Note: Personal information removed

[#2]

Oh dear - another shot in the foot from front line support on a number of fronts.

I will add this thread to the discussion.

I somewhat doubt that your "email" issue was correctly connected to the issue I advised was (is) under investigation.  There is a country mile difference between there being an issue with the mail service and an issue connecting to the mail service.  I fear that such subtleties might be lost on first line support ... especially where it is a case of this works for some, but not for others.

[#3 · Accepted solution]

@andrewww 

Hi Andrew,

I sought confirmation about the issue and have received the following ...

 The issue is resolved now, was fixed yesterday afternoon. There was a very specific intermittent issue affecting Free-Online customers only. 

So much as I surmised: an obscure and intermittent issue (possibly in the network?) impacting a small segment of the user base.  Given the circumstances, first line support might be forgiven for not looking deeper into your experience and connecting your "email" issue with that being investigated.  Whatever the quality and content of the response provided above is a different matter.  That too has been escalated.

Delighted that you now have a working system - sorry that I did not jump in here sooner.  In my time (amongst other things) I used to do 4th line support ... so I do not take kindly to things being left broken, without some attempt being made to diagnose and resolve.

[#4]

@Townman 

Thank you! At last I have some concrete information. But, unfortunately, given my recent experience and the reply I received, I have no confidence in the ability of PlusNet to maintain a reliable email service.

@dvorak  Thanks for removing my email address -- but it doesn't matter because I won't be using that for much longer. I'm currently in the process of changing all of my online accounts that use a Free-Online email address to another provider.

It's very sad, because, as a long-standing customer, I have always been very happy with the Broadband service I have received, both in terms of performance and price. However, when my current contract ends I will be seriously considering another provider given the state of things at the moment.