PLUSNET - Dreadful Regard for Customer Service & Satisfaction

Although this is a bit of a rant I thought I would bring this to the
attention of any prospective PlusNet customers. I should also like to
say that I have been a loyal PlusNet customer for two years.

Five weeks ago I rang PlusNet to ask if they could carry out a managed
conversion from Home Highway ISDN to ADSL as my exchange is being
broadband enable very shortly. I had intended to remain with PlusNet
for ADSL but was informed that a managed conversion was NOT possible.
As I was keen not to have my ISDN removed before the ADSL was proven,
I regrettably decided to leave PlusNet and duly arranged the required
service with another ISP that offered this facility.

Subsequently, as seen in a newsgroup, I had been misinformed and
PlusNet do in fact offer this service, although according to the
PlusNet representative I spoke to this morning, not all of their
operatives are well enough trained to know this.

Reluctantly, this morning I cancelled my PlusNet account. My due date
is 6th June and I asked that it be terminated then. I also stated the
reasons above for the cancellation and that I had received inaccurate
information. The reply stated that I had to give 30 days notice and
being as they cannot accept part monthly payments, I will now have to
pay for another 6 weeks until 6th July! Even 4 weeks until 21st June
would have gone some way to negate their inefficiency.

Having been a good customer and having recommended several customers
to PlusNet, including my brother, I find this adds insult to injury.

PlusNet have been so inefficient and then not seen fit to attempt to
redress the problem that is not only my account that they will be
loosing but also my brothers.

I'm sorry but this seems to be well out of order to me.

This is not an isolated incident of wrong advice. See this message ID:
(E-Mail Removed)

I wonder if anyone from PlusNet would care to comment?


Ken.

"Ken" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message:

> This is not an isolated incident of wrong advice. See this message ID:
> (E-Mail Removed)

hmmm...I was also given the wrong advice a few weeks ago and Plusnet refuse
to take any responsibility. People on here say I should have done more
homework but it still should not excuse the fact that I was given wrong
information by a Plusnet employee.

I won't be recommending to anyone.

Don't judge an entire organisation on the error of one person.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, "Gareth :-) voom"
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>"Ken" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message:
>
>> This is not an isolated incident of wrong advice. See this message ID:
>> (E-Mail Removed)
>
>hmmm...I was also given the wrong advice a few weeks ago and Plusnet refuse
>to take any responsibility. People on here say I should have done more
>homework but it still should not excuse the fact that I was given wrong
>information by a Plusnet employee.
>
>I won't be recommending to anyone.
>
>
Out of interest, who would you recommend? Which of the big corporate
players scores highly in terms of support?
--
Paul

>
> Five weeks ago I rang PlusNet to ask if they could carry out a managed
> conversion from Home Highway ISDN to ADSL as my exchange is being
> broadband enable very shortly. >

I have just arranged this with Plusnet and the lad I spoke to was very
helpful and informed. So far I'm well pleased with the efficiency of the
signup, especially the immediate selection of dates when BT can do the
conversion

A few weeks ago I spoke to another support assistant who said no to
a managed conversion.

My advice to Plusnet is to make the managed HH to ADSL conversion
option more prominent on a primary sales / upgrade webpage. The only
mention I found was in the FAQ at ..

http://portal.plus.net/info2/whatisadsl/adsl_faq2.html

.. not easy to get to from the front end, I only arrived there after a
search.

Chris

"Ken" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) idual.de...
> Although this is a bit of a rant I thought I would bring this to the
> attention of any prospective PlusNet customers. I should also like to
> say that I have been a loyal PlusNet customer for two years.
>
> Five weeks ago I rang PlusNet to ask if they could carry out a managed
> conversion from Home Highway ISDN to ADSL as my exchange is being
> broadband enable very shortly. I had intended to remain with PlusNet
> for ADSL but was informed that a managed conversion was NOT possible.
> As I was keen not to have my ISDN removed before the ADSL was proven,
> I regrettably decided to leave PlusNet and duly arranged the required
> service with another ISP that offered this facility.
>
> Subsequently, as seen in a newsgroup, I had been misinformed and
> PlusNet do in fact offer this service, although according to the
> PlusNet representative I spoke to this morning, not all of their
> operatives are well enough trained to know this.
>
> Reluctantly, this morning I cancelled my PlusNet account. My due date
> is 6th June and I asked that it be terminated then. I also stated the
> reasons above for the cancellation and that I had received inaccurate
> information. The reply stated that I had to give 30 days notice and
> being as they cannot accept part monthly payments, I will now have to
> pay for another 6 weeks until 6th July! Even 4 weeks until 21st June
> would have gone some way to negate their inefficiency.
>
> Having been a good customer and having recommended several customers
> to PlusNet, including my brother, I find this adds insult to injury.
>
> PlusNet have been so inefficient and then not seen fit to attempt to
> redress the problem that is not only my account that they will be
> loosing but also my brothers.
>
> I'm sorry but this seems to be well out of order to me.
>
> This is not an isolated incident of wrong advice. See this message ID:
> (E-Mail Removed)
>
> I wonder if anyone from PlusNet would care to comment?
>
>
> Ken.
>


Hi Ken,

I'm sorry you feel this way. I'm not sure why you were told we don't do ISDN
conversions, I can only think that either the agent in question genuinely
made a mistake or didn't understand what you wanted. For this I can only
apologise and I will make sure in future that everyone does understand that
we do offer this service.

Regarding any cancellation we require 30 days notice and if a payment falls
within this notice period it is taken in full and the cancellation date is
set as the end of that paid period. You will find that this is fairly
standard across the industry.


--
Regards,

| Dave Tomlinson Broadband Solutions For
| Technical Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet Technologies Ltd. @ http://www.plus.net
+ ----- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -----

On Sat, 22 May 2004 20:41:40 UTC, "PlusNet Support Team"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Regarding any cancellation we require 30 days notice and if a payment falls
> within this notice period it is taken in full and the cancellation date is
> set as the end of that paid period. You will find that this is fairly
> standard across the industry.

I think the point being made here is that PlusNet ought to be a bit more
flexible, given that it was their error that caused the problem.

--
Bob Eager
begin a new life...dump Windows!

On Sat, 22 May 2004 21:41:40 +0100, "PlusNet Support Team"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:


>I'm sorry you feel this way. I'm not sure why you were told we don't do ISDN
>conversions, I can only think that either the agent in question genuinely
>made a mistake or didn't understand what you wanted. For this I can only
>apologise and I will make sure in future that everyone does understand that
>we do offer this service.
>
>Regarding any cancellation we require 30 days notice and if a payment falls
>within this notice period it is taken in full and the cancellation date is
>set as the end of that paid period. You will find that this is fairly
>standard across the industry.

PlusNet have just admitted their mistake. I was quite clear about what
I wanted as I am involved in IT and Internet every day of my life.

Peter Crossland G6JNS suggests that these are the experiences of just
one person, however another person in this group has confirmed my
findings. Others have done so in previous Usenet postings over the
last few months. My brother also was given this information by PlusNet
six weeks ago and was reduced to a dial-up connection for fourteen
days whilst migrating from PlusNet dial up to ADSL. This is totally
unacceptable.

(E-Mail Removed) I am sorry that you are unable to admit to your
company's failings and try to redress the issue by blaming an
individual rather than the effective training of your staff. An nice
feature would have been terminating my account as I requested without
penalty. I will be contacting your senior management within the next
few days with reference to these issues.

I would stress that I have been entirely happy with PlusNet services
until now. Regrettable you are now attempting to negate your
inaccurate advice by quoting terms and conditions which pail into
insignificance compared to your support failings.

After reading this thread if just five people decide to choose
another ISP other than PlusNet due to your response, then it is due to
PlusNet's inappropriate customer regard attitude. It is PlusNet's
loss. Or are we seeing a return to the old "force9" days?

Ken.

On Sat, 22 May 2004 21:41:40 +0100, "PlusNet Support Team"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Regarding any cancellation we require 30 days notice and if a payment falls
>within this notice period it is taken in full and the cancellation date is
>set as the end of that paid period. You will find that this is fairly
>standard across the industry.

This is simply not true. My sister just cancelled an account with
firefly ten days before her paymebt day.

On Sat, 22 May 2004 21:41, "PlusNet Support Team" wrote:

>"Ken" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>> Subsequently, as seen in a newsgroup, I had been misinformed and
>> PlusNet do in fact offer this service, although according to the
>> PlusNet representative I spoke to this morning, not all of their
>> operatives are well enough trained to know this.

> I'm not sure why you were told we don't do ISDN conversions, I can only
> think that either the agent in question genuinely made a mistake or did
> not understand what you wanted.

> For this I can only apologise and I will make sure in future that
> everyone does understand that we do offer this service.

As well as Ken, Gareth and Rufus have posted fairly recently about the
same aspect. Chris Howland posted in this thread that there is little
mention of HH to ADSL. I know it is on the signup form as I've fairly
recently been through this with a friend moving to PlusNet, but if one
rings and gets told that managed conversion is not a service PlusNet
offers, it is pretty clear one would not spend much time searching
a web site to find if that was correct or not.

Some of us have known for a long while that PlusNet offers this -
it has been covered time and again since the autumn of 2002 in
uk.telecom.broadband, and PlusNet has been one of a number of ISPs
which is widely known to offer it, but clearly not widely enough :-(

> Regarding any cancellation we require 30 days notice and if a payment
> falls within this notice period it is taken in full and the cancellation
> date is set as the end of that paid period. You will find that this is
> fairly standard across the industry.

As Bob Eager posted, given the error on PlusNet's behalf, wouldn't it
show some goodwill to be flexible. FWIW, not everyone is as stuck on
payment in full months. A friend moving home has just cancelled his
account with Eclipse and they explained they will charge only for the
days used, up to the 30th from them accepting his e-mail confirming
the cancellation.

I'll certainly have to remember to give notice the day you take the
last payment from me, so I don't run foul of this money-grab, as your
automation is bound to be the reason for the inflexibility of coping
with a request part way through a month. I'd guess that BT would
never get away with it, and they're the firm which presumably bills
you for the majority of ADSL customers. They do it, why not you ?

[ Thread started in uk.telecom.broadband/alt.internet.providers.uk ]