Plusnet profits increase

http://www.thestar.co.uk/business/plusnet-downloads-...

Looks like continually being short of staff to man the phones and chat is benefiting their profits!

And it shows the CS problem in reality rather than the platitudinous piffle given to people on the forums both here and on the Community site.

Turnover grew 18 per cent in the same period

That's the year to 31 March. The turnover increase due to increased customer numbers and an increasing proportion on FTTC so paying more than they were on ADSLx.

... while customer numbers were up 13 per cent, although the total is deemed too commercially sensitive to reveal.

Employee numbers grew eight per cent to 1,200, with 1,000 in Sheffield, based in the Balance office block on Trippet Lane, and 200 in Leeds.

So 13% more customers and 8% more staff. Many of whom will not be on CS.

Seeing as for years they have been claiming to be recruiting to catch up with fast customer growth, but CS access and response has deteriorated every year for a long time, the truth is out. They are losing ground rapidly. To cope with an increase in customer numbers of 13% and actually improve the CS service, I doubt if a 20% increase in CS staffing alone would be sufficient.

Pah! Humbug!

Restricting upload speed has made a bob or two I expect - An old PN favourite grab.

They are not so generous as they used to be with their retention deals for existing customers either, as that well known supermarket says "every little helps"

I suggest they do need more CS staff.

Waited 20 minutes (not the announced 15!) to get through this week and after the preliminary chat was told I needed to be transferred to someone else. Waited a further 15 minutes (the muzak was rather loud) and eventually the call dropped out. By this time I was losing the will to live so decided to give up.

At least the CS posted the query on the website so I could follow it up.

The 'Will to live' factor, saves ISPs so much actual work, it's about all that makes some viable these days !

I would die for 15 minute wait times. Have you ever been a BT customer? 1 hour is not unusual once you are transferred.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I would die for 15 minute wait times. Have you ever been a BT customer? 1 hour is not unusual once you are transferred.

as the saying goes you gets what you pays for, cheap always means that some part of what they offer is going to be lacking in some way or other , Plusnot is what they should rebrand to, as for BT consumer, stay clear

In reply to a post by tommy45:

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I would die for 15 minute wait times. Have you ever been a BT customer? 1 hour is not unusual once you are transferred.

as the saying goes you gets what you pays for, cheap always means that some part of what they offer is going to be lacking in some way or other , Plusnot is what they should rebrand to, as for BT consumer, stay clear

But BT is not cheap, so waiting a hour is a disgrace, saying that so is waiting 15 minutes.
These ISPs should remember who it is that allows them to make these high profits.

It only takes me a minute to get through to BT support in the UK using one of their 0800 numbers

In retailing just after leaving school (early 60's), the word 'Cheap' was banned, as it rightly inferred a low quality product - It was always a 'Less expensive' item the customer was introduced to. Of course, those were the days of quality control before a product left the factory, with everything up to a quality. These days, suppliers hare happy with the down to a price mindset, and feel no shame about the rubbish they pass on to the customer.

But still folks rubbish a small ISP that responds near instantly. I remember the rubbish accusations thrown at me and Pulse8 when I first joined them. Fortunately, enough folks have since praised them as a decent provider, so the tribalism has subsided. My line taking a second Pulse8 stint on Wednesday, so possibly should keep my head down Lol

That's good - If only there was an 0800 number to avoid their long contracts and silly greedy prices ....... Well there is, but BT are not the ones that answer Lol

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

It only takes me a minute to get through to BT support in the UK using one of their 0800 numbers

Same, but then they transfer you to another department, for BT WiFI I waited 1 hour 15 minutes. For the options team I waited half an hour.

I guess it all depends when you call, but the BT WiFi team was not even peak hours, it was at 2PM.

I have a job that makes phoning CS a total waste of time (start early, finish late - even a 15minute wait is out of the question) so the issue with Plusnet's CS has never really arisen. When I had problems (not more than a couple over the past year) I've used the live chat or logged a ticket via the automated system. Both of which I really cannot complain about. They got a result. And the ticket version even supplied me copies of what tests had been done etc etc.

Yes, I do look at the cost of the package but given it's performance over the past year, (well over 65mb and unlimited to boot) I certainly am more than happy with Plusnet. Yes, I could go pay another £10 elsewhere but let's face it, how often does one want to chat to CS. In reality, Never! I just want the thing to work and it certainly does that.

I presume you are OK with the idea that if you report a fault which needs reporting to BT it may be a few days before anyone from Plusnet even looks at the ticket.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

It only takes me a minute to get through to BT support in the UK using one of their 0800 numbers

Things must have changed, when i was with BT it took me ages and when I got though I could not understand a word they said.

The only time I got to someone who was English and in this country was when I was on their broadband anywhere package and I had a problem with my phone sim.

In reply to a post by professor973:

But still folks rubbish a small ISP that responds near instantly. I remember the rubbish accusations thrown at me and Pulse8 when I first joined them. Fortunately, enough folks have since praised them as a decent provider, so the tribalism has subsided. My line taking a second Pulse8 stint on Wednesday, so possibly should keep my head down Lol

I used to be on a small ISP, in fact two, I went with ADSL24 and they was ok and then I went with a local one, which was fine until they could not cope with the amount of traffic. I would like to go to a small provider, but the prices are a bit high, saying that I just had a look at Pulse 8 and it is £38 for the 38Mb/s FTTC package, so not that much more than what I am paying now and that includes line rental.
If i was earning more or there was another lot of wages coming into this house I would look at it, but i am trying to cut down, not spend more.

In reply to a post by jelv:

I presume you are OK with the idea that if you report a fault which needs reporting to BT it may be a few days before anyone from Plusnet even looks at the ticket.

Bt is no better, took a week to even get someone to look at a mates problem when they was with BT and then it took nearly a month to sort it out.

There are complaints in our local paper about BT at the moment.

It's not BT, Plusnet should be looking at but Openreach. They ultimately control a fair number of the various ISP's customer cables. OR either fix it or leave it broken. Any ISP can jump up and down as much as they like but if OR cannot get their act together, the customer will still be having problems after the 'engineer' has left the premises. As to the delay, I think you'll find that is par for the course. BT, Plusnet, Talk Talk, Zen, and a few more over the years and have yet to find one that will come the same day. Businesses tend to pay much more but even there will have to pay a hefty premium to get a same day response.

But the current system doesn't serve the customer and never will, all the while that customer has to go through a middle man to get a fault sorted. If you have a problem with your electricity, you don't start talking to the account department to get it fixed. You contact the distribution side. Plusnet as it is, doesn't install wires, doesn't repair wires etc etc. All it does is bill me.

You missing the point. There are big delays on top of the delays experienced by all ISPs.

Plusnet last updated their customer support stats on 5th October when the average closure time for faults was running at over 13 days.

In reply to a post by 69bertie:

If you have a problem with your electricity, you don't start talking to the account department to get it fixed. You contact the distribution side. Plusnet as it is, doesn't install wires, doesn't repair wires etc etc. All it does is bill me.

Your electricity supplier does nothing but record your usage in one way or another, and bill you for it according to their own tariff.

They have nothing at all to do with the supply mechanism.

ISPs have a much greater impact on the supply of broadband to each customer than an electricity company has of electricity supply, which is always by National Grid. An ISP controls the supply to you. An electricity supplier doesn't.

Is it National Grid you contact if you have a problem?

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 22-Oct-16 22:27:58)

Have you missed the posts by Plusnet staff on their own forum which state the they do not have sufficient staff to support customers and that any fault now has a 5 working day update cycle. Note I didn't say fix cycle just that they will try to update you in 5 working days. (and they failed to update their status message last week in that time frame too by taking 6 working days)

This is absolutely not down to Openreach but to the incompetence of Plusnet management who give priority to customer acquisition at all costs.

I wonder what metrics the management have for their wages and bonuses? Bet it is not on customer support but on increased revenues. And it is absolutely not on providing fit for purpose accounting systems, payment systems, customer portals, fault logging, email , ordering and provisioning systems. Plusnet is a mess and not one promised change to their systems has been provided since I started as a customer seven years ago.

In reply to a post by georgelnx:

Plusnet is a mess and not one promised change to their systems has been provided since I started as a customer seven years ago.

But ... you are still a customer.

What is your opinion on the latency spikes?

I think you'll see more users you associate with Plusnet moving elsewhere! There is only so long that people will wait on their promises of improvements.

Still a customer as I have no issues (touch wood) and the next best supplier for my needs would cause a monthly increase of 150% in my bill.
However I wouldn't recommend them to anyone in the current state. (Nor have I ever done so)

In reply to a post by wingco1:

What is your opinion on the latency spikes?

Mine or yours? TBH it doesn't really have any practical impact on me and I've seen far worse.

In reply to a post by jelv:

I think you'll see more users you associate with Plusnet moving elsewhere! There is only so long that people will wait on their promises of improvements.

I had cause to telephone support for the first time in ages last week due to an outage - my first for years. Apart from the 50-minute wait for an answer their performance was exemplary. In my experience it's the wait and response times they need to do something about, the actual support when you get it is fine.

In reply to a post by georgelnx:

Still a customer as I have no issues (touch wood) and the next best supplier for my needs would cause a monthly increase of 150% in my bill.

Same here, with what I am paying I can honestly cope with having to wait a bit for support.

Mine or yours?

Both. I take it your happy with a substandard connection? This only started for me around August time. Prior to that This was the norm It seems it's not only PN who has this problem. Yet no ISP will give an opinion on the cause or the remedy.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I would die for 15 minute wait times. Have you ever been a BT customer? 1 hour is not unusual once you are transferred.

You were lucky.

I never got through on the phone and web chat just timed out after 3 hours of "we are finding you an agent - please wait" or whatever it said.

In reply to a post by 69bertie:

I have a job that makes phoning CS a total waste of time (start early, finish late

So ring them when you get home, they have been 24/7 for the past 10 years +

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

So ring them when you get home, they have been 24/7 for the past 10 years +

Customer support
_____________________________

0800 432 0200 (from within the UK)
+44 345 140 0200 (from abroad)

7.30am - 10pm, every day

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 24-Oct-16 12:50:05)

It has no practical impact on my usage. It has got slightly worse recently, but looking back I have always had spikes, usually hourly (is that the Samknows box?). It has never been as flat as the example you posted, but my base latency is lower than yours.

I take it as simply when the new CEO took over a few years back he had a brief to maximise profits with everything else second to that.

In reply to a post by georgelnx:

Still a customer as I have no issues (touch wood) and the next best supplier for my needs would cause a monthly increase of 150% in my bill.
However I wouldn't recommend them to anyone in the current state. (Nor have I ever done so)

Oh I would, and have done so. But I advise people of possible issues with new installs and if they have a history of line issues they might want to go elsewhere. But I've been a PN subscriber for over 2.5 years now and despite being out of contract am happy to stay. They had a wobbly period in the first half of '15 but otherwise they've been giving me full speed 24/7. For £23 pcm that's a damn good service.

So yeah, their CS is poor (a lot better if you go via the forum staff) but if, like me, you almost never need to talk to CS the service is good value for money and very effective.

In reply to a post by jelv:

I think you'll see more users you associate with Plusnet moving elsewhere! There is only so long that people will wait on their promises of improvements.

Nah. They aren't having that many problems really. Not as a %ge of their total customer base. Now sure the handling of those with problems can be poor but from a purely business perspective I see no reason to expect hordes of people to leave. FTTC is generally a trouble free technology, a lot more reliable than ADSL. My experience suggests they have plenty of network capacity. There has been an issue recently for some people moved onto their new network but they can always postpone the move if they think people are getting itchy feet.

So PN is not the place to go if you often have to contact CS. But for the other 95% of FTTC customers it's good value and a good service.

In reply to a post by wingco1:

What is your opinion on the latency spikes?

What would they be then?

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

The spiky x6 is something to do with my browser/flash or laptop. I can't even run the test under Chrome now.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/6f28e1bd2a1...

All's quite on Sunday night

The forums don't seem overly active at the moment so I'd say their network is running well for most people. I'm not sure what's happened with those moved to the new network though.

Here's mine LOL

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/40f79fbe5c7...

I suspect this is due to trying to run CrashPlan to backup my system on a PN 2Mb/s upload !!!

Only 8 months to go!

http://www.pingtest.net/result/153966255.png

Edited by watsonm (Tue 25-Oct-16 09:34:17)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

So ring them when you get home, they have been 24/7 for the past 10 years +

Customer support
_____________________________

0800 432 0200 (from within the UK)
+44 345 140 0200 (from abroad)

7.30am - 10pm, every day

Thanks for the update - they now officially suck in my book.

In reply to a post by 69bertie:

Any ISP can jump up and down as much as they like but if OR cannot get their act together, the customer will still be having problems after the 'engineer' has left the premises.

Clearly you've never been on AAISP.. they kick OR's [censored] and that justified their high price tag for some who used them.

In that case I wonder why they are not commenting on the latency spikes.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

So ring them when you get home, they have been 24/7 for the past 10 years +

Customer support
_____________________________

0800 432 0200 (from within the UK)
+44 345 140 0200 (from abroad)

7.30am - 10pm, every day

I just remembered. I was referring to Business which I was on for a long time - and before that it was 24/7 residential as well.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by 69bertie:

If you have a problem with your electricity, you don't start talking to the account department to get it fixed. You contact the distribution side. Plusnet as it is, doesn't install wires, doesn't repair wires etc etc. All it does is bill me.

Your electricity supplier does nothing but record your usage in one way or another, and bill you for it according to their own tariff.

They have nothing at all to do with the supply mechanism.

ISPs have a much greater impact on the supply of broadband to each customer than an electricity company has of electricity supply, which is always by National Grid. An ISP controls the supply to you. An electricity supplier doesn't.

Is it National Grid you contact if you have a problem?

Interestingly this isn't a very useful comparison because:

With Electricity, if my power goes at home, I don't call the place that billls me "my energy supplier" - I call the distributor - Western Power Distribution

With an ISP, if my broadband goes at home I have to call my "broadband supplier" who in turn pass it to either BT Wholesale, or BT Openreach, if the issue isn't actually caused by them in the first place.

And even then it depends if I have my phone line with the same people or not as the problem might need to be bounced through 2 chains of suppliers, all of which typically end up with some part of BT plc.

It's quite different so not a very useful comparison at all. I do have direct access to contact the distributor with electricity, I do not with broadband.

In reply to a post by kasg:

In reply to a post by jelv:

I think you'll see more users you associate with Plusnet moving elsewhere! There is only so long that people will wait on their promises of improvements.

I had cause to telephone support for the first time in ages last week due to an outage - my first for years. Apart from the 50-minute wait for an answer their performance was exemplary. In my experience it's the wait and response times they need to do something about, the actual support when you get it is fine.

50 minute wait? That's ridiculous, it doesn't matter how good the support is if you have to wait almost an hour to speak to someone. For what it's worth my experience of Plusnet support has been abysmal.

In reply to a post by therioman:

50 minute wait? That's ridiculous, it doesn't matter how good the support is if you have to wait almost an hour to speak to someone. For what it's worth my experience of Plusnet support has been abysmal.

Have to agree the wait times are unacceptable.

Their answer? Use web chat: it just sits there loading, so use their ticket system and wait a week for an answer!

In reply to a post by therioman:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by 69bertie:

If you have a problem with your electricity, you don't start talking to the account department to get it fixed. You contact the distribution side. Plusnet as it is, doesn't install wires, doesn't repair wires etc etc. All it does is bill me.

Your electricity supplier does nothing but record your usage in one way or another, and bill you for it according to their own tariff.

They have nothing at all to do with the supply mechanism.

ISPs have a much greater impact on the supply of broadband to each customer than an electricity company has of electricity supply, which is always by National Grid. An ISP controls the supply to you. An electricity supplier doesn't.

Is it National Grid you contact if you have a problem?

Interestingly this isn't a very useful comparison because:

With Electricity, if my power goes at home, I don't call the place that billls me "my energy supplier" - I call the distributor - Western Power Distribution

With an ISP, if my broadband goes at home I have to call my "broadband supplier" who in turn pass it to either BT Wholesale, or BT Openreach, if the issue isn't actually caused by them in the first place.

And even then it depends if I have my phone line with the same people or not as the problem might need to be bounced through 2 chains of suppliers, all of which typically end up with some part of BT plc.

It's quite different so not a very useful comparison at all. I do have direct access to contact the distributor with electricity, I do not with broadband.

Rubbish, for the reasons I gave Bertie. All you have done in essence is repeat what he said. Not exactly useful. OK, you brought in the local distribution companies. Not relevant.

The point is with internet supply the ISP (ignoring vISPs) is the final and weakest link in the supply chain. So the prime point of contact has to be them. It would be idiotic for people with a broadband problem or even failure to be contacting BT Wholesale or Openreach as prime link.

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 20-Nov-16 23:06:28)

In reply to a post by therioman:

50 minute wait? That's ridiculous

It's not ideal and they need to sort it out, but it's not the end of the world, you just leave the phone on speaker and get on with life.