Warning to Plusnet Unlimited users

It's becoming apparent that some Plusnet Unlimited users are being caught unaware of the £5 increase in the price of this account. They were notified at the beginning of December in an email, but the price increase was buried in the small print.

A copy of the email can be seen here

It's easy to see how people missed the important information about the price increase (some read the first part and dismissed it as marketing bumf).

We have now had confirmation from Plusnet that the email was written by their marketing department:

In reference to community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,91211.msg780535.html#msg78...:

however I can also see why our Marketing department elected to write the email as they did

Typical for a marketing person - concentrate on the marketing aspects and not the important contractual notification of changes affecting the users account!

Edited by jelv (Fri 04-Feb-11 10:58:53)

What the hell were marketing doing writing an email informing existing customers about changes to their accounts?

Quite.

Would the accountants be expected to inform us of great new offers? Of course not. The marketing departments should not be informing customers of billing changes.

This is most likely due to past contractural changes where package prices dropped or speeds increased. From a company perspective it made sense to 'market' the change as a feature/bonus, but rest assured the 'good news' would be in big colourful wording. Why on earth was such an important change buried in small print? Simple. Marketing departments can't sell bad news, so they hide it. Financial departments don't see it as bad news. It's 'just fact', so they print it as such.

Here's the meat of one I got in December:

we're freezing your broadband price until 2012

Your Talk Anytime service will stay at £5 a month too

From January our charge for line rental will change to £11.99 a month.

We'll no longer offer a 25% discount on our call rates to mobiles

off-peak hours are changing to 7pm - 7am.

Call prices are changing too

If you pay your bill by credit or debit card, we're introducing a £1.50 processing fee from 1st February.

Now considering I signed up in October, that one had me blinking a few times.


"Hey...use our products, they're cheaper.

Now that you use our products we're changing things."




Message for Plusnet HR Dept.

Reassign marketing staff to ticket answering (Eleven days unanswered and counting).


Message for Plusnet Marketing Dept. (Mr Rawlins)

Keep churn rates down by satisfying existing customers; not by raising their prices, ignoring their queries, and spamming their e-mail accounts with "Get up to a year of free broadband when you recommend friends."

I'll have precious few friends, given the concerns I raise.

I don't know what people are complaining about!

Compared to the cost to the ISP what you pay is peanuts! I pay as much and only get 60GB a month you can do whatever you want within reason!

Wanna swap!?

Margins are so small for ISPs right now, your free to migrate, although at your peril.

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-Feb-11 15:06:56)

I meant swap unlimited for extra not migrate. I love Plusnet I would never migrate unless the choice was not mine!

Post deleted by billford

No idea. I can only comment on Plusnet sorry

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-Feb-11 17:51:31)

What has this got to do with VM?

Everybody is used to you slagging off Plusnet and they don't take much notice any more, but lay off making insinuations against individuals.

The unlmited product was really good in it's tiime and it is a shame it was made legacy a long time ago BUT the new products do seem better. People used to really download TB's and it was not suprising Plusnet canned. it. The Extra and value prices even at market 1 level are more reasonable.

I joined up Plusnet in 2003 and I started off on £99 a month always on dialup and then 2MB ADSL at £65 a month. Plusnet have never hidden anything from me and even with the unlimited they made the traffic management crystal clear.

It was a question which always came up in briefings. (Traffic management and fair usage policy) and credit to the Comms team they really did iron it all out