Just signed up to PlusNet - Now the Fear Kicks In

Hope Im making the right choice. 18 months is a long time for a contract! Lots of people are happy with Virgin. Lots of people are happy with PlusNet. I thought Virgin were poor and had way too many contention issues with frequent slow downs. Hope I don't experience the same here.

Now though my three bits of immediate concern...

* How do I make sure the home phone is progressing OK? How do I review the order to make sure that PlusNet will KEEP my existing number?

* Billing start date 9th July? Hang on, Im not being installed to the 24th July?

14 days "cooling off period"? But Im not being installed for 15 days! How can I "cool off"?

* "Your broadband order should complete on 25th Jul 2014 - After 12pm. "? Wait, what? Hang on, I ordered 24th July 2014!

Finally, I want to click the button for getting a static IP before the line installs so I can know what my static IP will be so I can provide it to various online systems for connectivity.

Any advice PN or anyone else?

Simon

You should now have access to your Member Centre. (Control Panel). See if you can go to My Account >> Connection settings >> Static IP.

Whether it will let you before you are migrated I don't know, but it's the first thing to try.

I forget who your broadband, and phone, are with.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 09-Jul-14 20:37:14)

Hi Simon,

If you've provided a mobile number on your account, we'll keep you updated o your telephone order via SMS. If not, feel free to PM me your account username and I'd be happy to check on things for you.

Did you sign up on 9th July and make your initial payment then? If so, this may have dictated when your Billing Date is. Don't worry, we won't bill you again.

We have given you a date for 25th as it gives the engineers time to complete all the work that's necessary. Officially, engineers can carry out the work u until midnight on 24th July. To be honest, generally, it happens much, much quicker than that and you'll generally find the order completes at some point during the day.

Static IP wise, we can activate this once you're account has gone active, it's how the accounts are built I'm afraid.

Thanks Chris. What does that mean, active account? You mean an active line? Or something else? I have a member centre portal where I can see my invoices and payments being made for a DSL and Phone service that isn't being activated for at least two weeks and delivery charges for a modem that hasn't yet been shipped?

That to me is really poor.

Simon

Your account will be marked active when the broadband actually starts working and that should become your billing date with your next bill being a month from then. That way you effectively only pay from when the service is usable.

In reply to a post by jelv:

Your account will be marked active when the broadband actually starts working and that should become your billing date with your next bill being a month from then. That way you effectively only pay from when the service is usable.

I know my FTTC switch to PlusNet from Sky ADSL is over a week away, but I've still got nothing further other than an order confirmation from PlusNet.

There's no confirmation re FTTC engineer install
No email from Sky re cancellation of account

And absolutely nothing else. When can I expect my router and for PlusNet to actually order the FTTC? Should I just have faith that this is going through on the 24th July as planned, or should I have received more by now.

SImon

Did you PM Chris?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Did you PM Chris?

I did, aye. No response.

Hmmm. That would upset me too.

Hopefully a rep with pick this up but I would suggest you give them a call and ask them to check your order and whether you should have had your router delivered by now.

You may fall unluckly with waiting times on the phone but once answered I have always found them to be great and if there is a problem they will sort it and send another router if it was not delivered.

I did not get any confirmations but it was installed on the date I selected during sign up. I did get a text giving me my phone swap over date after broadband was installed.

Hi sjdean,

I've checked over your order and everything seems on track, your fibre appointment is booked in for the 24th July between 8am - 1pm. I've dispatched a fibre router for you and this should be with you in the next few days.

When your fibre is active you can manually add a Static IP via our member centre.

Once your fibre order is complete we'll then transfer your phone line across which takes 10 working days, we will be bringing your existing number across too. You'll see more information on this once your fibre is active on our member centre.

I've also updated your ticket too.

Kind Regards,

Edited by deleted (Tue 15-Jul-14 12:32:19)

Thank's Chris. The feedback is greatly appreciated. Great to know everythings going smoothly. I would still suggest to the portal maintainers that they get some information on the system to show what's happening and when things are supposed to kick in eg - "We will ship your router on xx/xx/xxx" and "we will transfer your number 0123 456 7890" etc so that everyone knows what's happening.

So many things I can think of to make the whole thing a bit more informative to the end user.

Something similar happened to me, three emails on the day I signed up then nothing. However when I called them it turned out that they had not placed the broadband order, despite having all the necessary info (It was a Migration from BT Infinity).

The good thing about PlusNet's customer services is that they are obviously NOT reading from a script and therefore can actually be useful.

I too think that the member centre could be better designed. I do not find it intuitive and end up going round in circles when trying to find various bits of info.

I now have a date for the phone move too, that is sent after the BB is activated. All in all I think this was a good move, though I did have my doubts at the beginning.

Agreed - the migrations seem to be a particular issue with people falling into a hole where nothing happens until you contact them. Maybe only from BT ?

My phone moved across about 10 days after the broadband, and I've had zero problems.

I agree the member centre is not the most logical and I often spend a few trips around in circles to find a page I've seen before :

The problem with the help centre pages is that there is a huge agglomeration accumulated over many years, covering a vast number of topics in considerable detail.

Many people also have links gathered over a number of years to particular pages.

Reorganising it all would be a mammoth and very expensive task, needing very experienced Plusnet staff dedicated to it.

But!!!

Is there any other ISP that offers anything approaching the openness and comprehensiveness of the Plusnet help pages? I doubt if there is one with 20% of the coverage. AAISP is probably the nearest competitor in this respect, and theirs is equally labyrinthine.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 16-Jul-14 18:53:30)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Is there any other ISP that offers anything approaching the openness and comprehensiveness of the Plusnet help pages? I doubt if there is one with 20% of the coverage. AAISP is probably the nearest competitor in this respect, and theirs is equally labyrinthine.

I'm not sure if we're talking about the same things. The help centre (full of how-to articles) is as far as I know fine, I've not been there except for the static IP document.

The member centre where you see your billing info, your sync and profile speeds, and your product type, is not easy to navigate.

I have (self employed) friends that specialist in User Experience (UX) which is distinct to UI, and guess PN hasn't had time to get in the consultants

You should be able to see the how your order is progressing
here. We will set the expectation via an email that is sent when you sign up that should give you the dates of what will happen when.

You misunderstand Chris. I it's the quanity and quality of information that's lacking.

If you order two or three weeks in advance, it just sits on "Awaiting Activation". So you sit and wait hoping things are Ok, or you give a call asking if everything's progressing OK.

Ideally from a customer point of view, I want to know you have at least a) acknowledged the mac code, contacted sky, and ordered the fibre and confirmed the BT engineer and not simply state the date I requested back at me at the time of the order.

And if you ordered telephone, there's nothing there until the line is live!

I think it's generally agreed the portal could do with more info.

Simon

Good luck Simon. Hope everything go ok. The only hope is BT Openreach Engineer not the third party contractors.

Edited by adslmax (Thu 17-Jul-14 20:47:47)

yeah plusnet are hiding certian stages of information.

mine was stuck on line test for many days, but the call handler could see it was stuck using more advanced info they had that shows to staff. Very worryingly I believe mine would have been stuck indefenitly if I didnt contact plusnet. The ordering and activation system seems broken to me as I have read dozens of posts from others with issues. Then when the status did update, it proceeded to show the wrong activation date.

Hmmm. Was planning to migrate to Plusnet in August but these threads and the 300 or so recent posts in Trustpilot are concerning.

How many posters making those posts, and how many (possibly some the same) posting here with complaints? We often used to get multiple threads here in multiple forums by single posters, who then post many times in each thread. These things always need looking at a little more closely than post counts.

How many complaints are there about the actual service and the actual quality of support. Admittedly getting to support is still too difficult.

There are now over 736,000 customers. If things were bad, we would be seeing huge numbers on this forum saying they are leaving.

Relax, once you get through the deficient order system reporting it's fine .

I wouldn't say Plusnet are hiding any information. What they are doing is not fixing a broken order tracking system in the Member Centre. I've always regarded that tracker as next to useless anyway. It would be better scrapped.

How many ISPs have a comparable user control panel reporting system for orders? Not giving is not the same as hiding, and giving some is better than giving none.

Re orders themselves, there is a Provisioning Team. They are the ones with the real information. Unless things have changed in the last couple of years first line and even Digital Care support do not have access to that system. It is the updating from that to the Member Centre that needs sorting out, plus a revision of what and how it is displayed.

I agree that things are not what they should be, but it is failure to fix things, not deliberate hiding. There are few if any more open ISPs.

Yup fair points. There were 300 posters on TP but as you say, there are over 700k customers.

300 posters? Or posts. It's amazing how much "noise" one poster can make .

I looked at the TrustPilot site. I couldn't see any way of searching so assumed I would need to register. Which I don't want to do.

Hi RobertoS. You are right about noise levels - I am afraid I too make a lot of noise when dissatisfied. . I am registered as I bought an item where the retailer uses them for feedback and went through a fair number of PN entries - they do seem to be individual posters. Also satisfied customers tend not to say so and these things tend to get negatively skewed.

Edited by deleted (Fri 18-Jul-14 12:52:02)

In reply to a post by bkaz:

Hi RobertoS. You are right about noise levels - I am afraid I too make a lot of noise when dissatisfied. . I am registered as I bought an item where the retailer uses them for feedback and went through a fair number of PN entries - they do seem to be individual posters. Also satisfied customers tend not to say so and these things tend to get negatively skewed.

I'll pipe up and say I'm a satisfied customer with Plusnet Fibre since last autumn.

I didnt say was deliberate although its logical to withold information that might "scare" a customer.

In my mind as long as a correct date is shown or something like "on hold please contact us" when is a problem that is good enough,

What they got now simply seems broken.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

What they got now simply seems broken.

It has been as long as I've been interested. That's what I was saying. Even if it worked, it's not much use from what I remember.

I did keep getting text messages though. Which were very confusing re the dates.

"Hiding" does to me imply a deliberate act .

In reply to a post by binary:

I'll pipe up and say I'm a satisfied customer with Plusnet Fibre since last autumn.

Me too. I've been with them for ADSL for a while and just upgraded to fibre this week. I placed the order a few weeks ago, they gave me a date, the engineer turned up on that date and everything works fine

In reply to a post by bkaz:

Yup fair points. There were 300 posters on TP but as you say, there are over 700k customers.

How many people are happy on Virgin?

Problem is, there are different classes of people. Some people expect a different class of service. Some people are happy with one provision that another would be unhappy with.

My issue is regarding the lack of clarity on the member centre portal, but so far, all seems to be progressing quite well, and the PlusNet agents I've spoken with have been very helpful actually and not been reading from a script. They seem to be working miracles.

Got my router today, fantastic. Looking forward to next week.

yes in the end my service got activated, and I wouldn't tell people to stay away from plusnet for this reason.

But also it would be nice if plusnet fixed it.

I'm not sure if it will help, but once you have an account, you can go into the Member Centre, click on HELP & SUPPORT and then point to Help Assistant. A sub menu appears where you can "View all my questions". When I signed up to PlusNet, I found that viewing the open and closed questions gave a full record of the progress of my order. It's a bit convoluted and certainly not an obvious place to look.

Edited by rjh321 (Sat 19-Jul-14 14:38:48)

Plusnet was well broken a few years ago when I joined them. Nothing has changed.

Plenty of promises, but little gets fixed. The restricted upload is a prime example. I found billing description the worst ever, with email addresses even worse. Extra addresses always show the main email address. Add a TT unbundled Market 1 exchange into the mix and there are far better no tie-in services at a lower cost.

The restricted upload is a prime example

What restricted upload? Unless you have recent experience of PlusNet your views and opinion are at best worthless.

There is plenty of recent Plusnet experience within this site, so to me, your comment is equally worthless.

As with the vast of your posts on this site you post misinformation and falsehoods.

I strongly recommend anyone reading posts from the self-proclaimed "professor" (what a joke!) to take them with a great pinch of salt and ignore them.

I've yet to see any evidence of you having any relevant knowledge and would strongly recommend you to stick to posting on subjects where you have real first hand experience and unless you are a current user of Plusnet that doesn't include the Plusnet forum.

It really is not worth replying to him. I have made that mistake before. Why he continues to troll the Plusnet forum is a mystery.

Edited by kasg (Sat 19-Jul-14 20:02:44)

Everything I have stated about Plusnet shortcomings and oddities is 100% correct. Nothing has improved since I suffered the Plusnet nightmare of being connected to another persons line, up to an hour wait for a phone to be answered, 24 hours plus for an answer to a ticket, and fighting off a charge for a fault outside my property. The broadband delivered is OK, but getting connected, or fast knowledgeable response from most of customer service is still the same poor service it was. One only has to visit here to see that, but that does not stop fora pondlife playing the man instead of the ball when faced with how it is for many.

In reply to a post by professor973:

There is plenty of recent Plusnet experience within this site, so to me, your comment is equally worthless.

My recent experience of Plustnet has been trouble free.

I think the standard thing applies here as elsewhere - those who don't have problems mostly don't post about it on forums, because it works and so they don't need to, instead they're just getting on with things.

In reply to a post by rjh321:

I'm not sure if it will help, but once you have an account, you can go into the Member Centre, click on HELP & SUPPORT and then point to Help Assistant. A sub menu appears where you can "View all my questions". When I signed up to PlusNet, I found that viewing the open and closed questions gave a full record of the progress of my order. It's a bit convoluted and certainly not an obvious place to look.

At the time I was getting a Plusnet FTTC installation, this helped me. I could see by reading the tickets that the original booked installation date had been rejected (I think by Openreach) and then see that a new date had been booked (which I then got emailed about).

I've had no problems with my Plusnet service, but would agree that the customer communications regarding a new install could do with some work.

Thanks kasg. The troll's clearly got problems best dealt with by others elsewhere.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

Got my router today, fantastic. Looking forward to next week.

Don't get your hope up too high because Plusnet Router wifi is very very poor indeed but if you are using it with ethernet directly to your pc or laptop from router, you're be ok.

I got Plusnet Router and the ethernet lan speed only support up to 100Mbps and I am getting 74.56Mbps but on the wifi I only getting range between 21 to 48Mbps all over the place. So, it doesn't bother me because I know my smart mobile phone, apple tv, android tablet, smart tv are using limit wifi.

Edited by adslmax (Sun 20-Jul-14 10:55:40)

Your honesty is refreshing, so how about refuting the suspicion that you are Simon Chapman aka pr100 who Plusnet kicked off their service almost 10 years ago and waged a one man war against them? You post like Simon Chapman, your username has some resemblance to "pr100", there's only one conclusion I can come to ...

In reply to a post by Spud2003:

Your honesty is refreshing, so how about refuting the suspicion that you are Simon Chapman aka pr100 who Plusnet kicked off their service almost 10 years ago and waged a one man war against them? You post like Simon Chapman, your username has some resemblance to "pr100", there's only one conclusion I can come to ...

More than happy to old man. I hooked to Plusnet 4 years ago, at the time, my username was my Amateur Radio callsign of m0aur. Here is a link to episode 1 of my Plusnet nightmare. http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/plusnet/t/4037204-r... Many here know full well how I am, but will never speak up for me as I say it as I find. Continual accusations such as above, along with the abuse most of my posts get, may allow you to see why I will always stand my ground, which has led to many bans here, all of which I am happy to admit, though many, such as the ban for just mentioning the picture quality of vipbox were totally unfair.

OK, then I apologise for accusing you of being pr100 ... even though your persistent posting style, and username, does provoke me to think otherwise.

OK, accepted. But, I take so much of the same from those that know better than me. I am sorry for my deep rooted hatred for PN, but to me it was a period that I refer to as 'The rein of terror' - Others feel the same way about BT or TT. Been with my current suppliers here over a year and no complaints from me, so they must be good. That is more than I can say for my Scottish friend's EE service. She is down here for the summer, and just had her bank busted AGAIN with a £117 direct debit instead of the correct £26. £60 was for an engineer visit for an underground fault in the street that should not have been charged. Many here will remember that nightmare around six months ago.