In reply to a post by professor973:

Actually, Sky customer support is one of the best.

Their TV side seems to be pretty good. It's a pity they can't guarantee me a static IP address though and their pricing is not particularly keen.

I have Sky HD (Sky Q from this weekend) so you'd think a triple play deal would be a great opportunity for me and Sky. Nope. Despite a wide-ranging discussion when I decided to upgrade to Sky Q when the dust has settled I'd be paying over £5pcm more and I wouldn't know if I could get a static IP address until after the service had gone live.

I got the distinct impression that they are only offering 80/20 because it exists and don't really want many customers to sign up for it.

@jelv
Well said. A good summary of the current state of Plusnet but things have been worse.

Back when Leeds call centre was just starting, I had a serious fault and spent 2 hours plus waiting for support to answer the phones. This was over a period of 3 months so not a one off bad experience. However in those days the support was 24 hours a day so at least you knew that you'd get through to someone even if it was at half eleven at night after a 9pm call!

As you said the feedback from the forums seems to just be ignored (if it every gets through to the correct people). A case in point is that in July 2015, I flagged up a page that tells users with mobiles to call a charged for number to get support. I was told it would be fixed. Last week, someone else flagged up the same page. 16 months and nothing has been changed.

After 7 years, I'm looking to move away too as I dread the idea of having to actually use the support.

In reply to a post by jelv:

When you looked at the router stats there were some distinctive oddities when on Marconi equipment - tones 33-36 are not being used.

You did post on my topic about this back in 2013!

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/btsupplier/4233352-...

Yes I did, sorry but I've now deleted the images that I linked to and I forgot about the Marconi issue that you mentioned. I assume that the SFI who inspected my line was not aware of a possible or relevant Marconi issue with a 20CN uncapped upstream rate and by the time Bob Pullen at Plusnet got on the case it was too late.

Edited by 4M2 (Mon 28-Nov-16 15:55:53)

Bob wasn't involved with my case so whether what I found out got passed around at Plusnet I don't know and the person who finally got it sorted left them some time ago. It wouldn't surprise me if someone had the same issue today and they were just as clueless as they were in my case.

In reply to a post by jelv:

Bob wasn't involved with my case so whether what I found out got passed around at Plusnet I don't know and the person who finally got it sorted left them some time ago. It wouldn't surprise me if someone had the same issue today and they were just as clueless as they were in my case.

Actually the reason I had the upstream uncapped was because I was having a few issues with uploads timing out before they had completed (no auto-resume was possible on the site to which I was uploading at that time.) To cure that problem Plusnet uncapped the upstream rate for free and the timing out problem was resolved. However after a while the phone ringing fault started and neither myself, the SFI or Plusnet considered reverting to a capped upstream rate. It's possible that Bob may have considered it since the exchange was only 20CN enabled (yet "low cost" because of TalkTalk LLU) and he may have established a Marconi issue if it was applicable - I guess I will never know for sure.

However moving from Plusnet to xilo TTB partial LLU (SMPF) turned out to be very favourable and I was really happy to have escaped the Plusnet haphazard ticketing system

In reply to a post by jelv:

I�ve lost count of the number of posts I�ve seen where new users have placed orders and some time if not weeks later they are wondering when they�ll be moved across. When they contact Plusnet it�s found that the order from Plusnet to their suppliers failed and it hadn�t been picked up. Again this points to issues with systems not being addressed when it would reduce customer dissatisfaction and reduce support requests.

Yep, been there. First (new customer) order got cancelled. Would have been nice to have been informed at the time - by email. As it was I had to go through the entire motions again to get an order placed. Moral of the story is never have an ongoing fault problem. It gets turned down by the system, at least that is what I found happened in my case.

The changed approach has also had other consequences:
It has changed the type of users that Plusnet attracts. They now appeal to those who are solely out for the cheapest deal and still expect first class support; they will show no loyalty at all and will leave again as soon as they are out of contract and a better offer is available.

Hey up, that me! I do it all the time. Loyalty, I've yet to come across any company (broadband, insurance, what ever) that can match the terms frequently on offer to new customers. When it come to renewing if it isn't the cheapest for like for like then I move. Simple.

And jumping to another ISP when problems arise might well leave one with just the same issues, simply because a fair number use the same Openreach network to supply the service. ISP's might say they can move mountains but usually that will come at a cost.

The most likely time for users to need support is when they join or upgrade to FTTC from ADSL. The current strategy means that there will continue to be high demands for support so I cannot see any prospect of a return to the high levels of service we saw in the past.

What sort of service are you referring to? CS, I try not to use. Otherwise, apart from the recent drop in connection speed (Openreach again) I really cannot fault Plusnet over the past year that I have been with them. This test seems to be normal for me. It's very difficult for me to justify paying extra for something that Plusnet already provide reliably.

What Plusnet don�t seem to realise is that just gaining new users isn�t the only way to increase the total user base � keeping your existing users happy is just as important. Plusnet�s churn rate is probably as high if not higher than any other ISP�s.

Something I would agree 100%. Sadly, it seems to be the way lots of companies are going. One reason I moved from BT and god knows how many other non telco companies over the years. All because in their books loyalty means nothing.

Wish you well in your move but I think I'll have saved far more money over the years having the same amounts of bits coming down the fibre/copper wires.

Secure email

Users have been requesting secure email for many years and Plusnet had been promising its coming for just as long. Late 2014 a selected number of users were told how they could configure their email to use SSL/TLS on their outgoing mail so it looked like Plusnet might be getting there. Since then nothing and all requests for an indication of when it might be available get a non-committal response (incidentally the outgoing secure email server is still there � I was using it up to the day I left).
None of the above will provide end-to-end encryption, you, and your recipients need to use a mail client that supports using certificates and encryption - you could send an email to 10000 recipients but if just one doesn't use certificates, then essentially the email you sent is insecure. Secure channel and encryption are not the same. Equally well, if your email provider (anyone relying on their ISP to provide email should really, really not be sending anything that they consider sensitive) is using a secure channel, unless all legs of the route are using the same level of transport or better, then the whole transmission must be considered insecure.

I'm in the throws of leaving after giving them a second chance.

Was promised things would change at the begining of my contract, but alas ....

I don't think there is such a thing as a good ISP these days, if indeed there ever was. I'm just hoping my next 12 months will be, relatively trouble-free.

Edited by hk11 (Mon 28-Nov-16 22:26:33)

That's good to know, as that is where I am heading.

Very much reflecting the fears for the future that made me leave in August 2015. I feared greatly when Andy Baker was appointed CEO in December 2013, and was not mistaken.

In my time with Plusnet the promises of more and better support kept being made, and not just broken by failure but made worse by deliberate structural changes. The most important of which was the effective removal of the ticket system, which although it needed major reform ,(adding info to it automatically sent it to the back of the queue), did at least let non-emergency problems sit on the back burner at the customer end while they got on with their life waiting for a reply.

The progressive hiding of useful information such as the Current line speed, (I assume it is still available using the direct link which is no longer published in the help pages), and the gateway loadings. I also found the reorganisation of the help pages appalling, with their emphasis on making you end up with the robot-chat which was worse then the previous maze built up over many years.

I couldn't even accept the removal of information of the gateway and node page, which incidentally gave approximate customer numbers and may have been the justification for the removal of the page. All the big ISPs publish them at least annually, so why not be better as before? The main information on loadings often gave clues for the customer as to what to do about performance issues. For example, simply try gateway hopping, or raise a ticket.

The effective muzzling and neutering of the extremely able and helpful online Care Team around the end of 2014 to early 2015, I forget the actual time, really struck me, with some of the best being moved to other jobs. Whether as promotion or sideways to get them out of the way I don't know. I see one at least still does post occasionally. If for promotion, I do not begrudge them that! They hugely deserved a reward. If sideways, hmmmm.

But they were not replaced by people with the same clout within the organisation. They were replaced by perfectly helpful, decent and competent people who did well, but seemed not to have anything like the power to actually get things fixed on a customer's account compared to earlier. Wasn't the team just absorbed into the main CS function as well?

Alongside that happening to them on the Community forums, they were clearly banned from significant contribution here.

I came across some telling stuff a link in the Tut! Tut! thread and posted an extract there. I am moving it to here as more directly relevant to jelv's catalogue. (Green = success/done; red = fail/withdrawn):-

So, without further ado, what does 2007 hold for PlusNet?

Summary:

Please see the detail below these points for more information, but in summary, these are our plans for 2007:
�ongoing improvement of customer support including the expansion of our Business Support Team.
�incremental broadband central capacity and continued improvements to our network management systems.
�a next-generation email platform with new features, enhanced Webmail, and vastly improved service performance and resilience.
�replacement of the �You Stay We Pay� payment scheme
�introduction of new �converged� products, such as � BT Home Hub�, �BT Fusion� and �BT Vision�, and an improved Voice over IP (PlusTalk) offering.
�new hosting and domain solutions.
�more transparency of our business policies, network performance, and a new community support website.

etc

Current promises don't look much different, and are no different from the repeated almost identical ones year after year . From the outside I now see the online chat developing into farce and the phone help system not worth trying - or at least no point in hanging on longer than 15 minutes. People have things to do! Sitting with a phone on loudspeaker is rarely an option.

Add to that the sheer management incompetence over the installation of non-IPv6 kit (the bng ones) to replace the older stuff that handled it fine as far as I could tell when on the trial, and the withdrawal of 24-hour support, and long ago I stopped recommending them. I'd be ashamed to do so.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 29-Nov-16 13:38:54)