Customer services going downhill?

Hi everyone
I've been a pretty loyal customer to PlusNet over the years mainly because of the great customer service I used to receive.
I don't know if it's just me but lately I've been less impressed. Simple things seem to take forever and getting through to somebody on the telephone takes an age.
It took me nearly 25 minutes to get through to customer services recently and instead of being concerned about my issue they spent most of the time trying to get me to sign up to a longer term contract.
In a strange way it seems a shame when an ISP gets more popular as the customer seems to become less and less important. Has anybody else experienced this lately?
Cheers
Greg

I recently joined Plusnet and have been very impressed with the customer service, I have not tried contacting them over the telephone but have used the community forums and had my posts replied to quickly and the issues sorted.

Certainly not my experience of late. I had the very rare experience of my phone line being dead on Sunday. The broadband was fine so I hadn't noticed until someone told me they had been trying to call. I phoned Plusnet (on 0345 number from my mobile) at about 10pm on Sunday, got through in a couple of minutes, the advisor tested the line, confirmed it looked like an exchange fault, logged the call with Openreach, told me it should be fixed by 5pm on Wednesday (today) - which in my experience is the sort of time it takes BT to fix phone faults if you are not a priority case - and at 4.50pm today I got a call from the engineer - the fact that he got through obviously confirmed he had fixed it! Can't get much better than that.

Thanks for the response. I'll give the community forums a go!

Hi Geedee,

Sorry to here you feel that way, it has been quite busy as of late and we've been working tirelessly to keep wait times to a minimum.

Is there anything I can help with?

Hello Chris
I've been waiting for caller display and 1571 to be activated on my line for a few weeks now and it still doesn't appear to have happened. It's not the end of the world but your web site said it should only take 24hrs and it's a bit frustrated not receiving a service you're paying for.
I've also noticed of late that my broadband speed has dropped significantly. I used to get around 7mbps (download) but lately it's be around the 1.7mbps mark.
Cheers
Greg

All issues now resolved. I'm not sure if this is because you got involved Chris but everything started working today.
Thank You.

I don't know if you've seen this topic on the Plusnet Community forums, but around the end of January Plusnet changed the target time to respond to new queries from 8 hours to 24 hours!

They snuck the change out in such a highly secretive manner that even their own Digital care team were not aware that the change was going to be made.

So far we've had no justification for the change other than the pathetic excuse that it sets a more realistic expectation (right beside the target you get the current average which sets the expectation anyway).

So in response to your question "Customer services going downhill?" the answer is yes, and it's officially recognised that it is by Plusnet.

I'm entirely happy with the performance of Plusnet, if you bare in mind that they've just had lots joining them, which will continue I'm sure with BE/Sky changes. Like any business they have their peaks & trough's. We all want answers straight away in an ideal world, but I'm afraid that will never happen. Compare them to other ISP's.

At least they monitor the community forums & usually this gives the solutions without raising tickets.

I have another Customer Service story. I am on an old Plusnet Pro package at £16.49 per month, 20GB download limit.

I have only just seen a package "Unlimited" at £9.99 with no download limit. So I telephoned to ask about switching. All going OK until I was told I would have to commit to a new 12 month contract, or pay £12.99.

I have been with Plusnet since 2004 and consider it unreasonable after this length of time to expect me to sign up for a new contract - I am not a new customer.

I said I was unhappy about this and was told I would have to speak to the Customer Options team. This team is only available M-F 9-17:30, or I could send a letter! The person I was talking to would not contact this team on my behalf, and when I expressed my displeasure and would now look elsewhere, I was told that if I wanted to leave I would still have to contact the Customer Options team, M-F 9-17:30 only!.

Plusnet were renowned for their customer service, sadly to agree with the OP, this seems to have gone downhill.

Tickets 67973150 and 67973588

Edited by Nick_Russell (Sat 06-Apr-13 12:19:29)