Hanging on the phone for 30 minutes and then no help from PN

Used the contact form to tell PN that I was thinking of leaving. Got a reply telling me to phone them.

So I have - so far I've been hanging on for 27 minutes - what wonderful customer service - well calculated to make me want to stay - I think not!!!

Finally got to speak to someone (after 30 minutes) - and he can only do something on the price if I commit for 24 months - time to start looking around.

Seems the long customer service waits aren't dropping(they were fine when I signed up last Easter). These reports have been going on for a while now and aren't doing Plusnet's reputation any favours.

It was these fairly frequent and ongoing stories about support and phone support in particular that made me decide not to join Plusnet when I was looking for a new ISP recently. I already had a problem and it was the lack of support at my then ISP that made me leave them so I was not going anywhere with a dubious reputation. Phone support is important if your broadband does not work!

But still the laughable annual awards continue, must have contracted the voting out to Tower Hamlets postal division.
http://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/broadband/survey?utm...

Plusnet have been and still are a decent ISP...just need to get call waiting times back to normal.

They have more to sort than call waiting. Many many pages of info and staff well out of date. never ending promises to put things right, like capped upload and bad info given by staff not up to date. They are not the worst, but my point is they are no way the best for customer service, but still get votes via their pyramid selling and shifty £2.99 Broadband ads.

But very rarely do we hear of anyone leaving. With other mainstream as opposed to niche ISPs we keep seeing that MACs have been requested, and asking for help choosing a new ISP.

Quite puzzling.

I quite agree, though I find consistently pulling awards for top this or that equally puzzling. Middle of the road ISP I could agree with.

Maybe it's to do with the 690,000+ happy customers .

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 11-Mar-14 00:04:28)

It gets awards because the products do what they say on the tin, the customer service is generally good, and the prices are low(that's also my experience having used them on and off since the days of dial-up). There is no great mystery to the equation. If there is a puzzle for ISPs getting awards perhaps that should go to Zen who don't really excel in anything apart from being unremarkable(they were my first DSL ISP many years ago).

In reply to a post by professor973:

They have more to sort than call waiting. Many many pages of info and staff well out of date.

Or the migration welcome letter that says 'An engineer will be attending today to complete the switch over' even though no such engineer was needed or (I'm pretty sure) was ever booked. Needless to say despite no-one to answer the door the migration went ahead just fine. But I tried my login despite what the letter said not because of it. I don't think I ever got a communication that said 'It's live - log in now'.

In reply to a post by professor973:

I quite agree, though I find consistently pulling awards for top this or that equally puzzling. Middle of the road ISP I could agree with.

So far (after barely a month) I'd say that it gets awards because it's fairly cheap and a damn' good service. It's only their communication that's flawed and as long as nothing goes wrong that doesn't matter.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Maybe it's to do with the 690,000+ happy customers .

How many of these are on Non LLU exchange where choice for unlimited is low. Happy or trapped?

Exactly... when the choice is between Plusnet (BT) or BT, it is hardly a choice. The only thing that Plusnet have in their favour is people that speak english that can't fix your problems. At least you stand a chance of eventually getting them to understand.

The reps on the PN member forum seem to be technincally competent. I've always avoided phone support with all the ISPs I've used as on the few occasions I've had no choice it has been a very frustrating experience. I've never phoned PN so can't comment on their phone suport.

Edited by kwikbreaks (Tue 11-Mar-14 09:25:51)

In reply to a post by kwikbreaks:

The reps on the PN member forum seem to be technincally competent. I've always avoided phone support with all the ISPs I've used as on the few occasions I've had no choice it has been a very frustrating experience. I've never phoned PN so can't comment on their phone suport.

I try to avoid phone support too - that's why I filled in the form on the Contact Us page - but what reply did I get?

"Phone us"

But when it does ... It does.

After re-reading your first post it sounds like you wanted to renegotiate the price. I think with just about all ISPs you have to talk to their retentions staff for that. As I've never called PN I don't know if they just pool CS and TS on the same number but I expect not.My comment about using the forum was for tech issues so probably irrelevant to your complaint. Sorry.

Look closely and you will see I am not with Zen for BB either, but they offer a remarkable phone service. I find Broadband remarkable elsewhere.

HI michaelh,

Apologies for the wait times, they have been lower recently but I don't think the issues last week helped.

The better deals offered do come with contracts and it's usually the longer the contract the cheaper the subscription price.

If I can help with this please let me know.

Regards,

What is your exchange's classification, is it Market 1/ Mkt2014: A ?

The PN headline prices of 2.50GBP/month are for PN low cost areas i.e. not Market 1 (Mkt2014:A) classed exchanges so in order to offer a low monthly cost to folk using those exchanges the contract length tends to be 24 months plus line rental/calls switched to PN for the perceived maximum discount.

Only 4% of UK households do not have a LLU option

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/11/plusnet_cust...

"We put the allegation to Plusnet. Your correspondent notes the firm is quite sluggish when it comes to responding to press inquiries through the normal channels"

So, it's not just us then

Maybe they prioritised answering calls from customers over those of the press

In reply to a post by chrispurvey:

HI michaelh,

Apologies for the wait times, they have been lower recently but I don't think the issues last week helped.

The better deals offered do come with contracts and it's usually the longer the contract the cheaper the subscription price.

If I can help with this please let me know.

Regards,

Hi Chris

I was happy to sign up for a 12 month contract to coincide with my BT landline contract period, but 24 months is too long.

In reply to a post by Apprentice:

What is your exchange's classification, is it Market 1/ Mkt2014: A ?

The PN headline prices of 2.50GBP/month are for PN low cost areas i.e. not Market 1 (Mkt2014:A) classed exchanges so in order to offer a low monthly cost to folk using those exchanges the contract length tends to be 24 months plus line rental/calls switched to PN for the perceived maximum discount.

Not sure - it is Droitwich

In reply to a post by michaelh:

In reply to a post by Apprentice:

What is your exchange's classification, is it Market 1/ Mkt2014: A ?

The PN headline prices of 2.50GBP/month are for PN low cost areas i.e. not Market 1 (Mkt2014:A) classed exchanges so in order to offer a low monthly cost to folk using those exchanges the contract length tends to be 24 months plus line rental/calls switched to PN for the perceived maximum discount.

Not sure - it is Droitwich

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/WMDRO

So Market 3.

In reply to a post by michaelh:

I was happy to sign up for a 12 month contract to coincide with my BT landline contract period, but 24 months is too long.

Do you know that if you need/wish to terminate early the charges for that are considerably lower than the full monthly price?

See Tables 1.9, 2.10 and 3.6 on this page.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 11-Mar-14 16:08:22)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by michaelh:

I was happy to sign up for a 12 month contract to coincide with my BT landline contract period, but 24 months is too long.

Do you know that if you need/wish to terminate early the charges for that are considerably lower than the full monthly price?

See Tables 1.9, 2.10 and 3.6 on this page.

Thanks, but I don't particularly want to become involved in early termination dispute situations.

Call me old-fashioned, but I would rather agree a contract term (12 months) and stick to it, so that I know exactly where I stand.

plusnet defenitly had issues since I signed up.

the migration process on plusnet's backend system seems buggy.
long call waits on the team that handles new orders (tech support seem not so bad).
very long waits on tickets lasting several days unless prompt on the forum.

however I havent even considered leaving, here is a few reasons.

hands on forum team, plusnet have a forum and active staff every working day on their forum, I think this is a very good thing, whilst other isp's do have forums they either make people wait days (VM) or dont have tech support staff directly posting (BT).
ipv6, enough said.
static ip without silly price premiums.
very low early termination fee's compared to BT.
uk based support, I support this out of principle.
post results of remote line testing.
disclose some info regarding things like users online, traffic graphs, BT MSO's etc.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

ipv6, enough said.

Plusnet are actually offering IPv6 now? My router isn't picking it up and I know it supports PPPoEv6 dual stack because it was working with IDNet. I thought PN only ran a trial.

It might be worth having another chat with them, they should be able to do something over 12 months too although the price could differ.

In reply to a post by chrispurvey:

It might be worth having another chat with them, they should be able to do something over 12 months too although the price could differ.

Thanks Chris I will give it another try when I'm feeling calm and patient.

sadly it is still closed trial only.

I dont think it will do any harm tho pm'ing chris on the plusnet forums. The worst that can happen is he will say no.