Actually your staff DO pretty much say it's a technical issue:

"Our systems don't recognise the change in Market area and this needs to be done manually. As I'm sure you can appreciate it isn't viable for us to go through every one of our 600,000 customers accounts to check these."

I'd have thought it's very "viable" for a script to do that, and I very much doubt the "systems" can't recognise it - they do when you sign up!

Don't tell me, the "agent" will be "educated" or whatever you say...

At least you're honest to say it's a business decision, and not give me nonsense about being unviable technically...

If PN treated everyone the same, they would have to increase their prices. you would then be better off with BT proper.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Note - I was speaking about interest-bearing deposits, not charges.

So was I! Savings accounts' interest rates to be exact.

In reply to a post by therioman:

At least you're honest to say it's a business decision, and not give me nonsense about being unviable technically...

It seems the larger an organisation becomes then flexibility diminishes: an organisation may become a lumbering bureaucratic giant where decisions made in one department can take forever to be implemented throughout all departments.

With ISP's it's amazing though that if one requests a MAC key or speaks to a retentions department then their flexibility increases dramatically...

Quite - I've got countless experiences of this.

Although not quite the same, we had a case once where a customer had agreed to 14 day payment terms, but when it came to it told us they couldn't pay in less than 60 days, the system would not allow it etc etc.

A couple of late invoices later, some charges under the statutory late payments and interest legislation for businesses and voila, magically every invoice is paid on day 5.

Just enquired about the renewal of my buildings and contents insurance - foolishly haven't bothered to shop around for lower premiums during the last few years - and the retention deal offered was £116 and last year I paid £195 with the same company for the same cover!

Discounts would presumably have been available to me in previous years but because I didn't contact them the premium remained at the higher rate. Of course the discounts were not applied automatically.

In a way this is very similar to PN not contacting existing customers regarding the lower rate for market 2. Perhaps there is a culture of business practice where customers are left in the dark regarding financially advantageous changes to their accounts and the onus is entirely with the customer to check that they are getting the best deal, or negotiate a better deal?

In reply to a post by 4M2:

Just enquired about the renewal of my buildings and contents insurance - foolishly haven't bothered to shop around for lower premiums during the last few years - and the retention deal offered was £116 and last year I paid £195 with the same company for the same cover!

Discounts would presumably have been available to me in previous years but because I didn't contact them the premium remained at the higher rate. Of course the discounts were not applied automatically.

In a way this is very similar to PN not contacting existing customers regarding the lower rate for market 2. Perhaps there is a culture of business practice where customers are left in the dark regarding financially advantageous changes to their accounts and the onus is entirely with the customer to check that they are getting the best deal, or negotiate a better deal?

Have you tried the same company online with the same cover as a new customer? It halved the price of renewal for me this year.

In reply to a post by professor973:

Have you tried the same company online with the same cover as a new customer? It halved the price of renewal for me this year.

Thanks, I will try that in the future

However this time I had to contact them regarding auto-renewal and it was when I mentioned quotations from other companies that the premium dramatically reduced.

In reply to a post by Wagstaff:

It�s interesting to discover that it was, in fact, you who raised one thread entitled �Plusnet pricing��, where the whole matter of Plusnet�s reluctance to advise its customers of the Market 2 price change was discussed.

Crumbs. That's definitely news to me. I can only imagine (since I have been on a Market 3 exchange in each location I've lived since starting to use ADSL) that it was the result of a query that made me look (or somehow I spotted a difference in wording). Will have to go back to find that thread (unless you have a link handy!?!)

In reply to a post by Wagstaff:

As a Plusnet customer, I take a special interest in TBB�s Plusnet forum, and I took it for granted that others do the same.

If it was 'news to me' I might have posted it on the basis that it might kick customer-facing staff into the real world where the honesty and transparency of PlusNet as a business had been accepted by many as the way they had changed (with fairly regular [albeit annual] 'product refresh' alterations, mostly going in a positive direction for customers ), and where this Market 2 situation was a PR disaster in the making.

It might have been that the discussion was brought up on USENET and (given some people may not bother with that, and I must admit to being less involved in recent years with posting there), the next best place could be TBB, if only because PN could not exert any influence on whether the thread was visible (where there may have been a tiny chance of removal from the PUG forum, or PN's own).

I only dip in to the PlusNet section from time to time (months go by without regular interaction on TBB) and thus you seem to be more observant than me wrt threads on TBB affecting PN.

If the PN newsletter should have carried something useful, the change in pricing of Market 2 should have been it! That'd have been refreshingly 'transparent' whereas PN seems to have gone into an opaque world, and may no longer be relied on to make clear what changes they have made which could not only assist PN customers, but improve their reputation at the same time.

In reply to a post by professor973:

I would think the most important thing, is what about of the thousands visiting this site and witnessing one PN shambles after another.

I think you overestimate the number of people with clue who might check here.

Certainly a few threads spread over months about the Market 2 pricing issue may not be easily spotted. The more likely 'I hate PN' type of thread would probably catch the eye, and in those, not only are PN staff generally bending over backwards to assist the complainant, but other posters often ask pertinent questions in case it's not an ISP issue but a line or router problem.

I don't want to be negative about TBB, but surely most would agree that with millions of possible users (20 million households perhaps using broadband) the site would be heavily overloaded if even 20% were users and visiting the site daily.

Someone else suggested the majority on TBB would be classed as geeky by many, but however geeky you are, you might not be likely to search for "Market 2" threads and then find this PR disaster at PN....