>Can you prove that to be the case in very single transaction that takes place? Maybe BT has changed something which that particular subscriber weren't happy with before but you can't generalise with such a sweeping statement

Can you prove it's not?

>Again you are generalising that all the trouble makers on here are non customers. How about the ones that have left Plus.net but would like to join back at a later time? Of course there are the Buggerluz's (sp) of this world but surely you could be man enough to ignore their (possibly) childish rants on here?

Let me repeat for you what I have said before. IF you are a customer of an ISP you have the right to complain if you are not getting the service you pay for. If you are NOT a customer you have no right to complain because you are not paying for any service.

>Err, why do companies go on expensive marketing exercises where they ask the general public how they would like the company to go?

You obviously do not understand the difference between a company carrying out a survey and being told what to do!

>Have you ever benefitted from anyone ever raising an issue with a company such as Plus.net which gets the company to change something which has benefitted you?

What's that got to do with whats being discussed?

>I know that I have because my subscription went down when I was told that I could get exactly the same product that I was paying for at the time but for less money and that only happened because people on here and the Plus.net forums dedicate their personal time to find out why somethings were happening. If it weren't for these people I would be worse off in the pocket even though nothing had really changed. <

You might find this hard to understand but a lot of people, myself included, do not rely on others to keep them informed.

> Can you prove it's not?

I wasn't the one saying that all the people only go back to BT or their power company because they didn't get better service elsewhere, you made that comment. I said that sometimes a company does change positively for it's customers and ex-customers as seen by Plus.net's commitment to change for the better.

> Let me repeat for you what I have said before. IF you are a customer of an ISP you have the right to complain if you are not getting the service you pay for. If you are NOT a customer you have no right to complain because you are not paying for any service.

Let me repeat what I said, any company worth it's salt will be looking for new business and if they can get a newcomer to provide them an idea as to how they can get that business then I'm sure that the company will be trying their hardest to get your business.

I think that what you say is a complaint, other people would put it down as a suggestion.

> You obviously do not understand the difference between a company carrying out a survey and being told what to do!

And you've obviously never received a phone call from a company that asks you how you would like to offer talior made services in order to gain or keep your custom. Have you never been placed on a customer mailing list because you have had an interest in something?

Plus.net do make a point of asking for both positive and negative feedback though a company does have the right to completely disregard any suggestions put forward to it, it doesn't have to carry something out just because someone mentioned it in passing.

No company would be expected to change policy on the hoof just because someone mentioned something on here though it does seem like a lot of ad-hoc thinking goes on at Plus.net.

> What's that got to do with whats being discussed?

I am just curious if you've been complaining about people who cause a company to change it's policies but then you have benefitted from them yourself, such as gaining quicker download speeds or greater bandwidth limits because others have complained that the previous ones were no longer competitive.

> You might find this hard to understand but a lot of people, myself included, do not rely on others to keep them informed.

OK, so if a company such as Plus.net is going to keep something secret you can guarantee that you can find out what it is, just like that?

A lot of stuff only comes out after a whistle-blower or someone else with inside knowledge drops hints to places like AG or there have been times when even someone else makes a smart observation puts two and two together such as the traffic shaping debacle.

In this situation Plus.net denied it until the point where they had to come clean after their was evidence pointing to them of lying.

Are you telling me that you would be capable of knowing exactly where to go to look or who to ask in order to find out the truth? If so then you are probably a lot of clout with plus.net, more so than even Andrew or Don from AG.

Edit: engaging you in this thread has been a good insight and I will have to change my mind and agree with the others that you can be quite a condescending person at the best of times.

Edited by caesar_salad (Mon 28-Aug-06 00:38:01)

"Edit: engaging you in this thread has been a good insight and I will have to change my mind and agree with the others that you can be quite a condescending person at the best of times."

thank you ... i thought i was becoming paranoid

I'm afraid to say that I gave George the benefit of doubt but after engaging him on here I find that I will have to eat humble pie.

I have never dealt with anyone like him before and I worked for 20 years in customer facing Customer Services! LOL!

Edited by caesar_salad (Mon 28-Aug-06 00:23:53)

what gets my goat, is George on other forums can argue, twice as vocally as here, reasonably, without degrading the other posters.

Why not on here?

Well, apparently it's his God given right to complain because he's a customer I guess...

Does he feel that the non Plus.net customers are beneath him and isn't worthy of talking about Plus.net whether positively or negatively?

I wonder if the Plus.net CSC have used their "notes" field with him?

Edit: Bringing this thread back on topic, I still reckon that you'd be wasting your time asking for the PUG to open up the forum to non Plus.net customers as there isn't really anything that can be accomplished there that can't be done elsewhere. Sure, the Plus.net ISP will be using the PUG forum to post exclusive stuff but I'm sure that the spies from within will be able to glean as much out from there so you won't be missing much anyhow.

Edited by caesar_salad (Mon 28-Aug-06 00:35:19)

>I wasn't the one saying that all the people only go back to BT or their power company because they didn't get better service elsewhere, you made that comment. I said that sometimes a company does change positively for it's customers and ex-customers as seen by Plus.net's commitment to change for the better.

Why else would they return? They certainly would not return to get a worse service!

>Let me repeat what I said, any company worth it's salt will be looking for new business and if they can get a newcomer to provide them an idea as to how they can get that business then I'm sure that the company will be trying their hardest to get your business.

Yes of course any company worth it's salt looks for new busines but not at any cost and not by being bullied by a bunch of people constantly attacking them.

>I think that what you say is a complaint, other people would put it down as a suggestion.

I've seen very few suggestions on here from Non customers. 99% of what you see on this forum is individuals scrouing what information they can get and pulling it to pieces.

>Plus.net do make a point of asking for both positive and negative feedback though a company does have the right to completely disregard any suggestions put forward to it, it doesn't have to carry something out just because someone mentioned it in passing.

Yes indeed they do but constructive feedback. There is a big difference between constructive feedback and what goes on in this forum.

>Edit: engaging you in this thread has been a good insight and I will have to change my mind and agree with the others that you can be quite a condescending person at the best of times.

By that I presume because I cannot agree with everything you say!

Well I've worked in customer facing services for nearly 50 years from managing a small shop at 15 years old to running many hundreds of garages so please don't try to tell me about customer service or running a business.

> Why else would they return? They certainly would not return to get a worse service!

Again, you're just guessing. Unless you have personally conducted a survey asking every single person who has left a particular company only to return afterwards, you don't really know. Funnily enough if you read the forums youi can read that some people have gone back to Plus.net and did get a worse service than before!

I've seen people go back to a company after the said company has changed for the better so I can't see how Plus.net couldn't do likewise and even Soundsystem was considering going back to Plus.net earlier this year because he saw some changes in Plus.net that he liked.

> Yes of course any company worth it's salt looks for new business but not at any cost and not by being bullied by a bunch of people constantly attacking them.

Would they prefer to be attacked by their shareholders at the next meeting then for being incompetant and losing their share value and not gaining enough market share over the last quarter?

Personally I think that the word bullied is very strong to use in this context as it's not as if anyone at Plus.net has been bashed around the head physically or subjected to mental torture that they are no longer able to work at Plus.net. The plus.net reps certainly give as good as they get! Most people would have used the word bickering to describe what has been going on here because if it were deemed to be "bullying" I am sure that the mods would have started banning a few people because real bullying is unacceptable in any society.

In fact, some of the ex-Plus.net reps say that it's Plus.net that does the bullying with the work ethics and how they have sometimes unreachable targets and pressures placed on them.

For example, how many companies do you know that tell their workers to work through their own personal lunch breaks because they cannot afford to lose the staff for that 1 hour?

What you have to remember is that Plus.net are the cause of their own problems, if they hadn't screwed up so many times would their customers be angry with them for being kept on hold for over 1 hour on the phone or not get their tickets replied to or failing that, getting their tickets closed accidently with no resolution?

If Plus.net didn't keep creating all this issues then the anti-Plus.net people wouldn't have anything to say because there would be nothing to talk about. Until Plus.net can get themselves sorted out for the better there will be some criticisms, a bit like almost every football fanatic believes that they can do a better job than the manager of the football team that they support.

> I've seen very few suggestions on here from Non customers. 99% of what you see on this forum is individuals scrouing what information they can get and pulling it to pieces.

Again, conjecture, if you could be kind to pull out every link so that we can all see where this magical 99% is? It's funny how some of the suggestions that people on here make including advising Plus.net to get some proper backups for their email systems and to stop using dodgy scripts which haven't been tested properly have been conveniently forgotten! There were some non customers who even offered to help Plus.net design a system for backing up emails because that was what they had as their profession.

> Yes indeed they do but constructive feedback. There is a big difference between constructive feedback and what goes on in this forum.

The great thing about feedback is that you can ignore it, as Plus.net seemed to have done quite well, even from their own customers. No one is going to suffer a fate worse than death because they haven't agreed to anything that is said on here. If you take everything that you read on here too seriously then I suggest that you should switch off your PC and have a nice walk in the park whilst the weather is still good.

> By that I presume because I cannot agree with everything you say!

Totally wrong, if you re-read your words again you'll see what I mean, i.e. the put downs that you place at the beginning to some of the replies as if to say that no one on here can understand your superior intellect. That, I feel is condescending.

I may not be as experienced in life matters as you but I certainly don't resort to putting down the opposition just to make myself feel better about myself, probably because I don't feel insecure.

If you re-read my reply to soundsystem again you'll see that I never did tell you how to run a shop or about customer services. You're jumping to the wrong conclusion, again.

All I said that I have never met anyone like you before! I fail to see how you could have thought that I was telling soundsystem anything else.

Here's my quote to save you the trouble of searching..

<Quote>

I have never dealt with anyone like him before and I worked for 20 years in customer facing Customer Services! LOL!

</Quote>