Don't move to Plusnet - at the moment

Plusnet have been running a number of campaigns in recent months which have resulted in a significant increase in the number of users (the regular announcements of increased capacity which they do to match increases in the number of users is proof of that).

What is painfully obvious to watchers of Plusnet's Community forums is that there are a lot of people with problems and that the length of time they are waiting for a response is way beyond what is acceptable. Although Plusnet have said they are recruiting more agents it's obvious that they are not up to speed and worse, a lot of duff responses are happening (again seen from many posts on the forums). Time and again we see the Digital Care team saying they will be feeding back to the CSC agents/team managers.

A couple of examples from today of the sort of thing that is happening:

A user was having problems with very slow browsing although speed tests were fine. Saturday it died totally and they have no connection whatsoever. Tuesday he had this response from Plusnet

From looking at our records it's clear to me that reason you have had a decrease in speed is because your connection keeps dropping out. BT's Dynamic Line Management (DLM) will reduce your speed automatically to try get a more stable connection. The only way to get back to a "normal" speed is to stay connected for at least 72 hours without any drop outs.

His connection is still totally dead and he's had no further responses.


Another user is moving their phone to Plusnet from TalkTalk. TalkTalk had the line terminated and they can't get any answer from Plusnet as to when it will be reconnected - even though they have posted to say

If anyone can chivvy my order along please I'd be grateful, as I have a wheelchair user in the house and need to have a working phone line.

No doubt someone will go and find these two examples and get them moving as a result of this post - at the expense of the hundreds of others who's problem investigation will be delayed as a result.


So until Plusnet get support sorted out my advice is to steer clear. If everything goes well it's great, but if anything goes wrong expect to feel like a mushroom (kept in the dark with **** being thrown at you).

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Edited by deleted (Wed 06-Oct-10 15:14:58)

Thats a bit strong!

Do you think Jelv has an axe to grind?

I think you have been very lucky - as have I - to not have any faults recently.

I've been thinking of making the post for a few weeks. Have you looked at the Your Feedback and Broadband and Routers boards on the Community forums recently?

Touting for referrals is not welcomed, if it was we'd have the place swamped with then.

I am with plusnet.... and currently have no problems with my line. But, that is because I moved location 3 months ago. When I was having problems previously, it was a nightmare waiting for tickets to get answered.

I have posted on the community forums a few times... and, infact, Jelv has actually posted in some of them, trying to provide information and generally be as helpful as possible.

I too have been looking over the community forums recently, and it is obvious that staff just aren't active there. I cannot comment on the ticket response times as I haven't submitted a ticket recently, but I think jelv is making a fair point.

Also:

You might like to read a post I made recently on the Community forums along similar lines. You might also like to note the total lack of a response from Plusnet addressing the issues it raised although they have answered other posts further down the topic.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Touting for referrals is not welcomed, if it was we'd have the place swamped with then.

sorry old chap thought it was light hearted. I have given myself a good spanking.
You could of course just deleted that bit but hay ho

Rob

Companies with lerger customer bases appear to have more complaints but if the percentages were taken and applied to smaller companies then I expect they are no worse or better than any other comapny. If all those with no problems were to reply to forums then the forums would be in meltdown. It's all a matter of size

It's not the number of complaints it's what the complainants are saying that is significant. If support was growing and handling tickets/faults at a rate to match the increase in user numbers we wouldn't see people reporting waits for tickets (about fairly standard issues) to be responded to of several days.

Don't you find it significant that nobody from Plusnet has responded? It's difficult to contradict the truth. Plusnet support is really, really struggling.

Hi there,

We are growing our support centre at a massive rate (the CSC now has more people than the entire business did 18 months ago). I don't think it's fair to say we're not recruiting at the right speed, cos we're recruiting a little ahead of the curve.

Those people need training though, and I personally think it takes approx 6 months to get to a point where an agent is technically able and confident enough to handle all queries they get.

We do have problems at the moment, particularly in the faults and prov sections, but these problems are not entirely our own doing (there have been a larger number of faults on 21CN for instance, Openreach have had engineer availability issues, and there are some problems around number porting at the moment).

Not only do these issues result in more contacts, but they reduce the efficiency of the CSC as we have to spend longer dealing with each contact.

We are working through this, and we are implementing system changes over the next couple of months which will help massively. Obviously these changes also carry a training overhead as well, and require extensive testing, so it's not a magic fix for all problems.

Employing even more agents right now will not help, nor will stopping signups. Whilst I don't doubt that your suggestion was serious I don't think you'd honestly find any business saying we don't want more customers, especially not in this industry.

In reply to a post by jelv:

Don't you find it significant that nobody from Plusnet has responded?

Yeah, sorry about that.

You may have noticed we've been a bit busy lately, what with the monster thread over on Community and the associated work.

In reply to a post by mand_beckett:

You may have noticed we've been a bit busy lately, what with the monster thread over on Community and the associated work.

Would that be anything to do with the ACS:Law debacle and unencrypted transmission by Plusnet of personal details via email?

Another sample:

In reference to community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,89738.0.html:

My Plusnet Telephone and Broadband package was supposed to start on 26th September but apart from a few days of unreliable and intermittent service using my previous providers router I have had no Telephone or Broadband service since that date. I am having to post this from my public library.
I think I have been exceptionally understanding and patient up to this point. I am EXTREMELY unhappy at the lack of customer service I have experienced and unless I get some satisfaction very soon I will be terminating my relationship with Plusnet.

One of the team is looking at that post, however you need to remember that there is no context behind what's actually been done to rectify the issue, when it was actually raised to us nor any actions/appointments that have happened.

I understand you're trying to point out issues where support haven't acted as swiftly or as well as expected, however it's worth noting that this happens with nearly any company you deal with. We're making a number of internal process changes, along with extra on-shift coaching/training to eradicate as many problems as we can.

Thanks.

All you've said emphasises the point I'm making:

Don't move to Plusnet - at the moment

Until you've got back on track with response times where they should be and all the new support staff working as they should, if anything goes wrong people can expect delays in getting it sorted.

The recent ramp up in advertising (the new television adverts) BEFORE the support issues are resolved is utter madness. If the campaigns lead to an increase in rate at which people join Plusnet things are going to get worse before they get better!

I take it you'll be equally quick to ensure customers when the all clear sounds, and they can consider Plusnet as a viable option once more?

Quick isn't the word I'd use to describe me giving the warning - I've posted about this previously on the Community forums and in hindsight I think a much earlier warning would have been appropriate.

Time will tell when (if ever) it's appropriate to rescind the warning. It's obvious BT want Plusnet to compete directly with the likes of TalkTalk and the bean counters have sway. At the moment they seem intent on competing with them on price, speed and time to resolve problems. Long gone are the days of Plusnet being a quality provider for the technically astute to compete with the likes of Zen and A&A.

Personally I'm subscribed to the A&A newsgroup and their forum on here to get a feel for what they are like. Being without broadband for any period would be disastrous for me so I'm keeping everything crossed that I don't suffer a fault.

And still they keep coming:

In reference to community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,89746.0.html:

My line was connected on the 17th of Sept and I have been completely unable to connect to the internet through the Thomson gatweway.

Since the beginning I was adamant that the problem lay in my account details, but a combination of telephone technical services and question support staff think its down to the hardware.

The router I was originally sent me would not let me connect to the internet when I entered my [email protected] and my password stating an "authentication error", a friends spare router had the same issue, so I was sent a test router which had the same problem as the others.

I think it must be related to a problem that the other user had mentioned in his thread as an..."authentication at the exchnage with BT" but so far no one from the Plusnet team has mentioned this.

The plusnet team has responded that they are contacting BT as "When we test using the plusdsl.net "realm" our supplier tests fail, so I am passing this fault to them to resolve. I am very sorry for any delay so far in resolving this."

To be honest I am unsure why it has taken them this long to test this as the issue was raised on the 21st of Sept and I have maintained that the problem does not lie in the hardware. Could someone please just confirm that this is the correct course of action to take as the other user was told by a forum administrator that she would his fix the issue (which is exactly the same as mine) on same day nd I dont want to wait another 3 days to be told that the issue is still not resolved!

Latest update was that it was reported to BT TODAY! Nearly 4 weeks for Plusnet to get on top of a realm/authentication problem. JoJo of the Digital care team is now on the case so it will now probably be sorted quickly - but it shouldn't be needing the Digital Care team it be constantly following behind CSC picking up the poo!

Twas tongue in cheek by the way.

As per my previous post, there is no context behind this. You haven't seen the tickets between ourselves and the customer and therefore don't know what's already happened on this fault and the customer has also said the following:

Been quick back and forth since I raised the issue on the 21st and just hope I can get it resolved. I didnt realise how much I rely on the net!!

Hopefully we'll get this customers issue fixed asap but I honestly don't think Digital Care's intervention will make it any faster in this instance.

Edited by chrisparr (Wed 13-Oct-10 17:01:18)

Another example of duff information given out by Plusnet support staff:

In reference to community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,89964.msg750671.html#msg75...:

Oh yes, and in addition, it might be a good idea to tell your staff exactly who is the CEO of PN. Anthony Vollmer's name was given to me this morning after the member of the Customer Services team had to leave me on hold in order to find out.

Post deleted by Sadoldman

Censor avoidance is not permitted.

Don't you think this whole thread is just nit picking?

In reply to a post by wingco1:

Don't you think this whole thread is just nit picking?

No I think your post is trolling...simple as.

Notwithstanding that It may have offended you that my request to let the OP of a thread have clear space to resolve ongoing issues, try to cope with it.

No I think your post is trolling...simple as.

Yep I suppose awkward questions can be called trolling when you don't have a valid answer.

Hasn't this jumped to the wrong thread ? It was the other thread where nitpicking was being discussed - the one where MrS said that if you responded again he would initiate a ban?

PS. This is the post I mean.

Edited by ian72 (Mon 25-Oct-10 15:30:29)

Your point is?

My point is you seem to have posted to the wrong thread and therefore lost the gist of the discussion. It can be difficult enough following conversations without them randomly switching between threads.

I asked a question about this thread, it was answered and replied to. As far as I was concerned that was it. It appears it needed clarification for you.

Sorry, genuinely my mistake in that case - I thought it was the conversation in the other thread as it was very similar - you may not see that but it was how it appeared to me. Anyway, no harm done.

An easy mistake to make, given the section and poster.

I just moved ISP myself and was going to move to Plusnet, untill I seen the adverts on the TV and radio, and thought this might just happen with too many new customers

Just because an answer is not the one you want does not make it invalid. There was one in the post "No"

Because of this, and other posts of similar attitude sub thread closed and expect better behaviour next time.

Watching the Plusnet Community forums my advice would still be the same - don't risk moving to Plusnet at the moment. If it goes well, great, but if anything goes wrong you may face long delays in getting it sorted. Two or three days for a ticket to even be looked at does not seem uncommon.

We were told about all the extra agents coming on board, but now they've closed the Durbun based support down which has had an impact.

Here's an example of the type of delays new users face when BT mess things up. Plusnet are not keeping on top of them to get things resolved and are failing to inform users of progress within the timescales they themselves set: http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,9054...

Another current issue is that on some ticket queues if users add an update after a day or two asking about progress it pushes the ticket to the back of the queue.

Jelv; I'd been away from the PN community forums for a few months but yesterday i posted what I thought would be a simple question for the support staff to answer. I was supprised to find my question ignored by PN staff. I know you are a frequent visitor to the PN forums, what has happened to the support staff of a year or two ago like Mand, Bob, James and a few others, always got a good response from them.

@paulgul, I'm pretty confident that nobody has purposely ignored you. Perhaps you could link me to the post in question?

Hi Bob,
I see there was a reply from Adam today,

http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,9099...

http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/board,3.0....

In reply to a post by bpullen:

@paulgul, I'm pretty confident that nobody has purposely ignored you. Perhaps you could link me to the post in question?

Sorry Bob, I missed your reply, its all sorted now, I have to say once PN found the post I've had a good response, I think perhaps it just got overlooked to start with.
Good to see your still around.
Paul

I would actually agree with jelv's assessment at the present time, unfortunately.

I have been with PN for 8 years now, 2 years at my parents and then I have had my own account for nearly 6 years and was, until now, perfectly happy to recommend them to anyone. However, I've had nothing but issues since I moved premises in September.

I had a house move ticket opened on October 7th and it took until November 3rd for the actual install to be ordered because my address apparently wasn't on the supplier's system (yeah, there's a BT NTE5 in the premises and three neighbours all have ADSL with BT themselves and not on LLU).

The engineer dispatch was set for the 11th, the engineer who turned up was not with BT but was a contractor who showed up at 7.58pm, looked at the NTE5 and said he would be back the next day to connect the line. He did come back, couldn't find the test tone on the cabinet and then said he had to leave. Didn't show up again then until the Monday (15th) when he found the tone at the cabinet and patched it, phone line was active. The ADSL order was then placed to be completed on the 22nd.

So, since I knew then response time for ADSL orders at my exchange (2-3 days) I plugged the router into the NTE5 test socket and waited. On the 17th the DSL light became active so I knew it was connected at the exchange. However it never synced. Phoned on the 23rd to ask about the order and to say I thought it was completed and to then report the behaviour of the connection.

Rather than checking to see if it was active I was told to wait another 24 hours because a house move can take that extra amount of time. Stupid me.

Phoned again on the 24th, finally got through to the faults department who closed my original house move order, was asked the standard questions (router in the NTE5 test socket, tried 2 routers known to work, etc.) raised a fault and then started the BT Wholesale test process. Which promptly completed with an error within 2 minutes. I then had to phone back the next day to ask what was then going to happen.

I was asked if the router was in the master socket (2nd time for that question). Nothing was done according to the ticket except a comment logged.

The house phone rang on November 29th and my housemate was asked if the router was in the test socket (3rd time...) and another round of tests was performed.

That night the line connected for the first time I was aware of but when I checked the line stats I got a downstream attenuation of 63db (lol) and a sync speed of 160kbps... ok so minimum line sync. Upstream? 15.5db, upstream sync of 480kbps and a speed test was getting 0.03MBps down and 0.36MBps up. ADSL but the wrong way lol

Updated the ticket that night and the line was going up and down the entire time.

So, when I got home today I looked at the ticket and seen another round of tests done and an attempt to call me to... guess what? Ask if the router was in the test socket... for the 4th time and each time was logged on the ticket.

So 10 days after the order was scheduled to complete the line isn't stable and there has been no record of BTW getting involved.

I know it's not the line distance as the exact same line was getting a sync of 1920kbps down when with TalkTalk and nothing in the house has changed. So it seems that the issue lies either at the cabinet (hello Mr. Contractor who doesn't know how to play with pairs!) or at the exchange. And since it's only the downstream that's affected I know it isn't a physical issue with the line outside of one of those two places.

So... TL,DR: 2 months after raising the request for a house move I still don't have an ADSL connection, have paid 2 fully months for it, and am still stuck in the PN support queue as they don't seem to have engaged BT for an engineer to check what should be a simple pair switching. I work US hours in the office but also do on-call so have a requirement for ADSL meaning I've been paying to use the BT FON WLAN from a neighbour's place at £5 a day... on top of the PN charges (which I probably won't be paying this month until the ADSL is working, DD cancel maybe...).

In reply to a post by VidX:

Was it TT LLU? if so, I wonder if it was ever disconnected? That could explain why the line/address wasn't on BT's system.

You could be on a different pair now from the cabinet to the exchange, with TT on the original. That could get interesting. Is the previous occupant's post being redirected by the Post Office?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by VidX:

Was it TT LLU? if so, I wonder if it was ever disconnected? That could explain why the line/address wasn't on BT's system.

You could be on a different pair now from the cabinet to the exchange, with TT on the original. That could get interesting. Is the previous occupant's post being redirected by the Post Office?

It was TT LLU and the pairs that lead to the premises were apparently switched from TT LLU on the cabinet to the new BTO number. That was set up at the exchange end prior to the engineer coming out for the first time. So, from what I've been told, the TT LLU kit is no longer in play.

(The previous tenant is still living here but is moving out next week, TT were called in August to cancel the line, no movement by October so PN just got a brand new line in... completely different story involving TT's useless CSR performance).

That does seem to explain the non-existence of the address . LLU phone lines do not appear on BT (broadband) checker databases, though obviously they appear elsewhere in the system.

HI VidX,

Can you post the ticket no. so I can take a look for you?

Jojo

In reply to a post by jpilson:

HI VidX,

Can you post the ticket no. so I can take a look for you?

Jojo

Hey Jojo, the ticket dealing with the line fault is 37405138.

Cheers!

Anyone who watches the Community forums will know that since I made the original post there has been no improvement (my gut feeling is actually that things are worse). We regularly see complaints about tickets not being dealt with for many days (I've seen one this morning where it took 5 days for a ticket about a totally dead connection to be looked at and passed on to BT).

We regularly see promises that there are more CSC agents being recruited, in training, about to hit the floors but it never makes any difference. It's blindingly obvious that the growth in customer numbers and the associated problems it outstripping the ability of CSC to cope.

Didn't we go through all this a few years back prior to PN being sold to BT. I regret to say PN is now a quantity ISP rather than a quality ISP.

Sorry if this seems off topic, but what does their recruitment process and policies got to do with you?

I'm staggered by that question as it's blindly obvious why it's an issue.

They haven't got enough experienced staff to deal with the problems generated by the rising number of customers. What they are doing to address that issue is obviously of great concern to both existing Plusnet users and to anyone thinking of joining Plusnet. If you get a problem it may take an inordinately long time for Plusnet to respond and resolve the issue.


PS I'm still waiting for an apology for the duff information and insults you posted over the capped upload speeds.

Edited by jelv (Mon 14-Feb-11 12:32:15)

Here is my recent experience with two tickets :
Raised ticket 1 on Sunday 6th to reset my SNR to get some more speed out of my line.
This was actioned on Thursday 10th - 4 days later. I was not contacted. But I am very happy, my IP profile has gone from 1250 to 2500.

Raised ticket 2 on Tuesday 8th with a simple question about contract length after upgrading to a current offering. I received an immediate response saying I had not asked a question. After checking I found that my text had been truncated. After resending I received an immediate response saying that my question was incomplete again. I then resent the question omitting all non alphanumeric characters.
I then received a rapid response which answered my question. All of this happened during the course of one evening.

So it seems a bit inconclusive as far as PN are concerned. My two responses were straight away (excellent) and 4 days (unsatisfactory).

This thread leaves me in a dilemma. My exchange is being FTTC enabled sometime before early 2012 as one of the RTI winners. I see that PN are currently testing FTTC and no doubt will have an ISP offer when I come to upgrade but do I want to stay with them if their previously excellent service is now compromised.
So I will be waiting and watching during the year that I have to decide who to go with.

Not ideal, but more of a worry would be the speed.

Are PN keeping pace with new customers with new pipes being switched on?

Yes.

They are still lighting pipes: http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1297158310.htm

They've recently announced a new network using four 10Gbps host links (with two more 10Gbps host links on order): http://community.plus.net/blog/2010/12/17/new-plusne...

They've started moving 20CN users over to IPSC on the new network.

Cheers for the reply.

Although CS is a currently an issue, glad to see it's not like the old days.

Interesting.

My pings increase from low-mid 20s to high 20s around the 8th of the month. Coincided with a router reboot though. Hmm.

What's the ending of your connection user name (the part after the @)?

I think your somewhat of a vendetta will turn out to be fruitless. I shouldn't feel the need to apologize for helping people with their broadband queries, and as for insults, its reciprocal and works both ways.

Now trot on, Jelv.

Helping people?

I fail to see how telling people totally duff information and refusing to back down when proved wrong is helping!

You are not the OP, and the OP confirmed the he has got his problem sorted. So what's YOUR problem?

Clearly your on a ego trip and I'm going to let you spin this one out yourself on your own fantasy land

Yes - the OPs problem is resolved. Now who helped and who hindered?

I said he needed to ask for the upstream to be uncapped and that Plusnet always cap the upstream by default. In one of your responses you said

In reply to a post by krazykizza:

my point remains valid. SNR being 30db upstream, far higher than what is normal for a WBC connection indicates to me a faulty line, and not a sync rate cap.

Ben Trimble from Plusnet posted:

In reply to a post by bentrimble:

Cheers for the PM. Your profile is...

WBC 160K - 24M Medium delay (INP 1) 15dB Downstream, 448 Medium delay (INP 2) 6dB Upstream (ADSL2+)

Which means target SNR margin on the downstream of 15dB and 448k capped upstream. I've submitted an SNR reset (re-starts training) and an order to uncap your upstream. Please leave everything powered up and plugged in with NO reboots and it'll train in at the best possible speed.

Enjoy

The OP later posted

In reply to a post by Wangmaster:

Just thought i'd post back to say things have improved somewhat:

Uncapped upstream now (yes, it was capped ).

I think it is important that people knows whose advice they can trust on these forums, and also those who will never admit it if they make a mistake.

Now who helped and who hindered?

I think your just trolling now.

Won't be replying to you anymore as you seem to be a nasty piece of work. Never reply to me again.

Our dear readers can make their own minds up on this issue, but enough is enough.

As for telling a poster not to reply to you...it does not work that way. Members are free to respond within our rules as they see fit. Your option is to either ignore or respond,..... that is the bit your are in full control of.


Will close this now so as not to further frighten the horses.