** System Generated ** messages ?

Hello,

I have had an ongoing query regading my connection speed within the Plusnet portal, I responded to the Plusnet agents last post at 5:00pm on Saturday 19th August however I noticed today tha the question was closed with a message timed at 3:45pm on Monday 21st August 2006 that said:

** System Generated **
Your support query has been closed due to an extended period of inactivity. If you believe this to be in error please accept our apologies and re-raise your issue.

1/ Two days is clearly not an extended period of inactivity.
2/ The ball was in Plusnet's court, they should have answered rather than close the message so it clearly was an error.

Has anyone else experienced this?



Regards.

Yep, I had exactly the same thing happen. Last post by me was on the 19th, by the 21st was closed.

I immediately raised another ticket asking them why they had closed the first when they had not answered my query. Only to have that (New Ticket) closed by an agent.

I suppose this is one way for Plusnet to keep their response rate up! LOL! That and hiding the 'Contact Us' button.

Yes I've had the same - three tickets have been closed, when they were all waiting for PlusNet to respond to them. I'm really not a happy chappy right now.

It's not good enough, and I've posted about it asking for the tickets to be immediately re-opened, on the PUG forums. I doubt they will be, but lets see.

Closing tickets instead of replying to them is an old ebuyer.com chestnut. Really helps to chomp through the backlog it does.

Ya know, after reading soundsystems post regarding his phonecall with Ian wilde a couple of weeks ago, I really hoped pussnet would be starting to turn around and show customers how much they value them. since then however things have gotten even worse. I'm at a complete loss how a company can make so many cockups week on week, they just seem to keep happening.

Its obvious whilst some employee's of the company wield the staff of eternal optimism, it needs dipping in an enchanted well, because no matter how much good sentiment these staff have they can't possibly stop the sinking ship from going down.

I've had it before, as well.

In subsequent dialogue with Plusnet, they argued it had been my turn to action the ticket.

However, I still maintain (which they have never answered) that the ticket status was: "Awaiting support team response" at the time it was closed. What's more, my fault had been escalated to BT at the time, so I don't see what further action I could have taken, even if I'd thought I was supposed to.

T.

It does seem like a stupid way of generating more ticket traffic because anyone with an outstanding issue is certainly going to be re-raising the issue in order to get it sorted out.. and it's going to grate the subscriber even more becuase they weren't expecting the tickets to be closed before an agreed resolution was reached.

I think that 2 days is woefully inadequate for saying that a ticket is inactive because some things which are out of Plus.net's control are going to take longer than 2 working days to sort out with the third party.

Maybe this was what the Comms guys were talking about when finally getting on top of their ticket backlog?

Mine was admittedly open a lot longer than 2 days, before it automatically closed.

But in some ways, that's worse.

If you've had the ticket open for a week or two, and you just assume something is being done about it and you'll hear back soon, it's doubly infuriating to find it closed without a resolution.

T.

Think I menioned this in another thread, but I made a point of actioning the ticket every 10-13 days. Only really happened the once, on the 1Meg to 2 Meg upgrades.

I actioned a ticket after about 12 days waiting for a MinusNet response just to make sure that it didn't get killed off. I got a sniffy reply that it was waiting for internal action and nothing was needed on my part. A few days later it was closed. Shower of ***s

Whebever you raise a ticket post a response to it every day saying "bump"

That ought to keep it open

Or better still start using the support tickets to write your daily blog

Think about the PlusNet agent who finally gets to read it in 2 weeks time.

Edited by UKSMS (Thu 24-Aug-06 10:00:36)

One of mine was replied to (by me) on the 17th, and closed on the 21st... I don't think any amount of bumping would have solved that - it doesn't seem they've gone for a normal "inactivity" period and fired them off seemingly at random. Really not at all impressed by this latest farce.

Here is the answer from PUG and even wildmind seems to be getting frustrated with PN. What chance do PN have if even the most ardent supporters are starting to feel this way?

In reply to:

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PlusNet ran a query to close down a load of old tickets (about 3000) that were to do with DACS removals. HOWEVER - in the process they also closed up to an additional 400 that shouldn't have been closed.

Action is being taken to try and pick up the issues but users with closed tickets will need to open new tickets (and yes - that does mean going to the back of the queue and joining the wait for a response... I know... I can hear the screams now!)

Personally - I'm stunned at yet another cock-up... especially one like this Seems to be that it's just "The PlusNet Way" these days

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Seems to me a perfect solution to bring the backlog down a bit. Personally I am so sceptical about PN now that I wonder if they will "accidentally" delete all open tickets so that people will have to start afresh with new tickets and hey presto, no more backlog.

It seems that no amount of bumping is going to prevent your ticket from being closed in this way because it's on an automatic system which relies on Plus.net responses rather than the end users'.

Yes, you did mention it before.

Obviously, with the benefit of hindsight, I would do this now.

However, at the time, I had no reason to, because I simply didn't believe they'd close the ticket on me, when the status showed it was awaiting action from them.

It's simply ridiculous that you have to add some sort of inane comment every couple of weeks, just to make sure they don't close it. They shouldn't be closing it at all, when they haven't fixed it, and haven't had permission from me.

T.

Quite right!

It's probably part of their strategy to ensure that stats relating to calls logged vs calls actioned looks better, but that's the first time I've seen a support system which closes calls without at least attempting to contact the client in some manner.

In reply to:

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It's probably part of their strategy to ensure that stats relating to calls logged vs calls actioned looks better, but that's the first time I've seen a support system which closes calls without at least attempting to contact the client in some manner.

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Do not consider this to be deceitful, and a deliberate attempt to fob off the paying customer?.

Not directly, no. I don't think any company would willingly do that if they could wave a magic wand. I think it's more that strategical and operational decisions are making it this way by the reduction in tech support.

Whatever the reason, the end result is that customers are feeling that they are being fobbed off. How many times does PN need telling that customers are asking for the ability to speak to someone on the phone?. Whatever happened to the 0870 50ppm phone, they could have made a fortune on that

The premium rate number is turned off at the moment because there is an issue with customers being charged for calls not answered. The problem appears to be related to some incompatability between the BT ISDN30 lines and Telewest who provide the backhaul for Plusnet. In these circumstances Plusnet did the right thing in turning off the line until this problem has been sorted out.

Thanks, that answers that question. How about the other point raised?.

I think that the problem stems from the fact that in the way that Plus.net deals with tickets ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h *cough* questions is that no one "owns" the user's problem. This means that there isn't ayone there assigned who can take it to it's logical conclusion.

Where I work I get a polite email telling me how many tickets need updating and which ones are going to go over a week without any updates, this kind of reminds me to keep control of the situation with some of the tickets and even if no futher progress has been reached with a particular problem at least there is an update to say that this is the case.

Apparently it all comes down to the shift patterns that Plus.net use, I wonder how other companies that are in the customer services industry cope?

Edited by caesar_salad (Fri 25-Aug-06 13:57:08)

In reply to:

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.....tickets ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h *cough* questions........

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Shortly to be called "tickets" again, per PUG article:

Quote:
STOP PRESS: In a display of good common sense, we have just learnt that PlusNet are dropping the "Ask A Question" name and will be reverting back to the infinitely more logical "Raise A Ticket" as soon as possible!

In reply to:

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Shortly to be called "tickets" again,

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Oh well that should improve the customers experience

Thanks for the heads up! At least someone has seen sense because Raise a ticket personally sounds much better than Ask a question.

Taking this slightly OT, re: scripting errors, all I'd say is that the person in charge of implementing scripts at the time of the "scripting errors" should be carpeted for letting this happen at all. How can you have allowed a script which ends up deleting more than it should be passed through anything like change control?

I'm wondering what problems the next scripting error will produce next time? Deletion of users websites? Oops, that's already been done..

In reply to:

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I think that the problem stems from the fact that in the way that Plus.net deals with tickets ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h *cough* questions is that no one "owns" the user's problem. This means that there isn't ayone there assigned who can take it to it's logical conclusion.

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Sadenning thing about two (I think) of my tickets was that they had been "owned" (quite litterally now they've been deleted ) by members of PlusNet staff and my responses were going back to them rather than directly back to the ticket pools, so they were trying to reach a decent conclusion to the issues. And now all of that has been blown because the tickets were deleted ("closed", but it's the same thing really) and I've got to start from square 1 again.

Well just to update everyone. I got an apology saying that my Ticket should not have been closed. Initially they wanted me to re-raise the ticket, but instead went on to answer my question.

Keep it up Plusnet is what I say.