PlusNet - average of 29 minutes call waiting time?

What?? I'm trying to contact PlusNet, and the average waiting time is 29 minutes, with the longest wait time being 49 minutes. Really? Has it all gone horribly wrong for them, or do they need to invest more money in their call centre?

It has been like this (or worse) for a long time now, lots of posts saying much the same. Fortunately I hardly ever need to call them. They are already working on getting a second call centre up to speed.

Edited by kasg (Sat 01-Mar-14 09:55:55)

It does make me wonder why Plusnet are still advertising on TV, radio, web, and doing price promotions when they clearly can't even cope with their existing customer base.

Yeah, £2.99 a month for 12 months was bound to generate some volume.

Only 49 minutes. I have waited 2 and a half hours to get to talk to a person. And then they don't have the product knowledge to help.

They should have stop advertising 2 months ago and then sorted out their call centres. Appalling customer service from Plusnet these days. Would not recommend them to anyone, and currently they make BT Retail look the model of professionalism.

I'm sure that I am missing something but the graph does not tie in with the stats shown here.
I assume the base line is the time & it's now showing 1800.

edit: I have rechecked and it's showing 1100 now.

Edited by deleted (Sat 01-Mar-14 11:19:38)

Calling at 4am is clearly a good ploy

From the website: If we're not meeting our target times, we'll be working hard to make improvements.

I can't see any target time stated for answering Residential calls!

And for faults, I love the bit that says "Connection faults can therefore take up to 7 working days to clear."

Average closure time
7 days, 17 hours, 6 minutes and 14 seconds

Target closure time
7 working days


Only been waiting since 4 December 2013 for my fault to be solved! Bit more than 7 working days.

Edited by deleted (Sat 01-Mar-14 17:53:27)

In reply to a post by georgelnx:

And for faults, I love the bit that says "Connection faults can therefore take up to 7 working days to clear."

Should actually say "Connection faults can take up to 7 working days to clear if Openreach actually get their finger out"

If you had tried to contact Plusnet around Christmas time, it was over an hour wait on the phone. The average wait for me has been about 15 to 20 minutes.

PN are opening a new call centre in Leeds but are still training and setting up. When Leeds call centre starts to run in full operation, call waiting times should go down and back to the way they used to be.

At least we won't have to listen to, don�t you want me baby, anymore.

Does anybody know when this new Leeds call centre actually will be up and running? It seems to be taking forever. Maybe Plusnet have a lengthy training programme for new call centre employees? But surely the IT and actual installation of the call centre should be quite quick?

The problem with setting up call centres is that there will be a high turnover in staff during the training and initial work period.

Call centre work is not for everyone and people soon find out once they talk to live customers if it is for them. Expect to hear the job adverts while waiting in the queue at Plusnet as you did last December. At least it's better than their music selection.

Also with all theses new employees, you will see a degrading of existing service while the experienced staff mentor the newbies. For each trainee, one staff member will have to coach them for several days so you will see service go down when the new call centre is on-line initially.

The length of training is hard to gauge, a normal non technical support call centre would do two weeks minimum before you start to listen into calls handled by an experienced call handler for a few days and then they help you for a few days. Remember the welcome to the company and the fire exits speech and form filling takes at least 2 days when you start. If Plusnet staff need product knowledge, fault finding skill training then add 4 weeks on top at least.

And before all this, you have the recruitment drive, interviews, more interviews, checking references, job offers, rejections and repeat recruitment until you have more staff than you need as you know 20% at least will not make the grade. Then first day watch as only 95% of people turn up, of which 5% will be smelling of alcohol (a massive no-no for a call centre) so at the end of day only 90% are available to start day 2. And then the real attrition rate starts.

So yes @OnFire it does take a long time to set up a working call centre.

In reply to a post by kasg:

Calling at 4am is clearly a good ploy

I'll try that one day on the way to the loo

Longest call waiting over 27 mins at 7.50am on a Sunday morning though.

edit: over 34 mins at 8.05

Edited by deleted (Sun 02-Mar-14 08:10:27)

An update - I created a ticket on Saturday to ask why I was paying so much for my broadband, line rental and calls (c£46 per month for 6mb unlimited; calls are anytime). I received a standard response today saying that my question had been 'escalated'. What can I say........

In reply to a post by DonaldDucked:

An update - I created a ticket on Saturday to ask why I was paying so much for my broadband, line rental and calls (c£46 per month for 6mb unlimited; calls are anytime).

Aren't you better off calling the Customer Options Team for that sort of thing? Not that I know what their call waiting times are like at the moment!

And there's the rub. It's adding insult to injury making me wait on average thirty minutes to tell me why I am paying so much. This sort of query can easily be answered by email.

In reply to a post by DonaldDucked:

And there's the rub. It's adding insult to injury making me wait on average thirty minutes to tell me why I am paying so much.

Is that using 0330 123 9197?

I think it was 0800 432 0200........

Post deleted by reserved

You are correct:


Residential cancellations

0845 140 6002
0330 123 9197

Monday to Friday: 9.00am - 8.00pm (Except Bank Holidays)
Saturday: 9.00am - 5.30pm

You'll need your username and password handy

Post deleted by kasg

Thanks, I realised that I had replied to the wrong person and deleted it but not befoer you had seen it

i called them on their 0345 140 0200 line about an hour ago, pressed 1, and someone answered within 2 rings.

now off to buy a lottery ticket

In reply to a post by DonaldDucked:

What?? I'm trying to contact PlusNet, and the average waiting time is 29 minutes, with the longest wait time being 49 minutes. Really? Has it all gone horribly wrong for them, or do they need to invest more money in their call centre?

I have to say it's the one thing that nearly put me off them when I changed a couple of weeks ago. As you'd expect during a migration there were several times when I wanted to speak to them. I think I tried about four or five times and gave up waiting on each occasion. Luckily I had confidence based on reviews and from recommendations but it wasn't very clever. It also seems to take them a while to respond to support queries.

Having a spare eight hours to kill, I rang the 08004320200 number today and pressed the 'I'm thinking of leaving' option. Got through in record time..... Glad to say that they have reduced my bill somewhat (c50%). That's more like it.