PN Market 2 charges

Purely by accident I noticed last night that PlusNet changed their monthly charges in July 2011 (Link to PN Price Guide) so that the Market 2 exchanges are charged at the same as the Market 3 exchanges. I've been on a Market 2 exchange since I re-joined PN in June 2010 so now after 2 years I find that for a year I've been overcharged. I've searched the PN forums and it seems the attitude was not to tell everyone but deal with it on a case by case basis if a customer raises an issue, and it also seems like there is no refund for being overcharged. Can anyone confirm this?

I've raised a ticket about it as I'd rather have the £6.50 difference in my pocket, but I'm going to be mightily annoyed if they wont backdate a refund for the 12 months that I've been overcharged. The amount of money is not really the point, it's the attitude of not telling everyone that annoys me.

Just to make sure, which exchange is it please? LLU there doesn't necessarily mean it is Market 2 these days.

LVWTW, it's been Market 2 for longer than I've been connected to it as Virgin Media have a presence, there are no LLU operators on it though.

Ofcom have it listed as Market 2 in 2010 Ofcom Market 2010

EDIT: Sam Knows Link

Edited by fig (Thu 16-Aug-12 09:41:33)

It was worth checking.

There have been a couple of threads about the change, as I picked up at one point that different parts of the website were out of step. But I agree, it's a bit poor not making the change more public to existing customers like yourself.

In reply to a post by fig:

it seems the attitude was not to tell everyone but deal with it on a case by case basis if a customer raises an issue, and it also seems like there is no refund for being overcharged.

I'm not surprised. It's quite common. You're being charged under your existing contract. You'd need to take out a new contract to get the new price.

I'm on the 1 month rolling contract, and in PN's own forums it seems to suggest if you contact them about the price change they will lower the charges.

The "1 month rolling" refers to the notice period, not the price.

In reply to a post by fig:

in PN's own forums it seems to suggest if you contact them about the price change they will lower the charges.

Which contradicts your original statement "it also seems like there is no refund for being overcharged" . Or did you mean they will reduce price from now on, but not backdate it? That sounds like a new contract.

I took out the option of signing up with no tie-ins so at most a 1 month notice period, so fair point.

However I do think your other point is invalid, as I'm sure that PN would happily put the price up without issuing a new contract if they saw fit, however they have themselves admitted in their forums that they simply didn't bother.

To quote Chris Parr from their forum on 23/7/12

We didn't change existing customers (either direction as there were some exchange that went from Market 2 to Market 1) as it didn't make business sense to do so, if anyone contacted us then we changed the market area but generally we continued charging the price the customer agreed to when they signed up.

And another customer "Gus" in the same thread

Yes you have, since they changed the pricing on market 2 exchanges they have never told us about it. It was a while back when some one posted on usenet that it had changed, day after I told PN my exchange was market 2 and my price dropped by a Fiver on my next bill. But to this day they have never told us the existing customers of the change.

So no new contract is mentioned, merely a drop in the price of the current one which is what I'd expect (but admittedly, not all the information may be in there).

However, my issue is that for 12 months I've been charged more than a new customer would be connecting to the same exchange as me. Even if it was only 10p a month different, it's still not good customer service to just leave it and not tell anyone affected.

I know what you mean however deals change all of the time.

They can't constantly be changing what you pay

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I know what you mean however deals change all of the time.

They can't constantly be changing what you pay

I agree, but generally they add new products with new deals. If they change allowances, etc on existing products then it just happens. If the price had to increase for some reason, I'm sure it would go up straight away, but it seems not if it's the other way around.

I'm sure it will all get sorted, I've never had an issue with PN or billing in the past, I was just curious if anyone had actually experienced this and got a refund for previous months of being overcharged where the exchange was Market 2 from the point PN changed their tarrif.