The future of PlusNet

PlusNet has followed the same track as other ISPs during the past few years. The pattern is that a small provider gets a good reputation through good customer service, reliability and the expertise of its staff as well as its responsiveness. This attracts many people from other ISPs who have grown too fast, whose service has deteriorated, whose customer base is disaffected, and who have made some disastrous decisions on their business model and their desire to recruit people regardless of their abilities and potential.

Like many people, I have moved a few times. The last was from Pipex, who are now spending large amounts of money on national advertising and promotion in an effort to recover some of their lost customers. This is expensive, and very bad news for any business. Looking after your exisiting customers and keeping them happy is far cheaper and more effective than trying to attract new ones. Previously I moved from Videotron/C&W/NTL in its various guises.

Both were good when I moved there. Both were truly awful when I felt I had no alternative but to jump ship.

PlusNet is now in this position. Why did they not learn from the mistakes of others? The trail of failures was evident to anyone who cared to look.

1. The decision to offer to upgrade everyone at no cost to an unproven MaxDSL which was under the control of BT was a disastrous one. BT has let PlusNet down and continues to do so. All customers suffered because of the effects this had on Customer Service which effectively ceased to respond on all fronts.

2. Over expansion has meant that many of PlusNet's current staff seem to be under trained, have little idea of the technology and have low morale because so many customers are bombarding them with complaints they don't comprehend.

3. The message boards are full of complaints. These affect PlusNet's reputation. Most people would not now consider moving to PlusNet given the comments made about them in so many forums. MAC code requests are running at a high level, which wastes time as staff telephone customers, offer them 'free' months to persuade them to stay, and then fail to live up to any undertakings that are made.

4. Technology suffers through this sort of over expansion. All customers know the frequency of e-mail delays. Basic security principles are violated as hundreds of e-mails are lost, inexperienced staff push the wrong button and consign vast numbers of messages to oblivion, or failures in the network are not fixed and become obvious to the end users. PlusNet now resembles the London Underground, but without its expansion prospects, injection of cash, and political willingness to put it right.

My own experience is dire. For over 2 weeks I have been trying to get PlusNet to fix a stuck BRAS profile. All the stats and physical conditions look good. My router syncs every time at 8128. My stable speed is reported as 8000 on the portal. My noise margin is low and the wiring is new and efficient. I have done all the tests including running from the master socket. Yet PlusNet's latest response is to send me a message including the wrong template, blanks not filled in, and addressing entirely the wrong issue - that of possible noise on my line which is impossible due to the consistent nature day and night of its performance.

How much longer can this go on? Is there a future for PlusNet or its customers? Is this the time to move to Zen or another smaller ISP wilth a good reputation in the hope they don't make the same mistakes?

Good take on the situation Heelas.

As for
How much longer can this go on? I think if plusnet still exists in its current form by Christmas I'll be suprised.

Is there a future for PlusNet or its customers? For plusnet no, for its customers theres always their MAC.

Is this the time to move to Zen or another smaller ISP wilth a good reputation in the hope they don't make the same mistakes?

Being with Zen myself, (and having strayed from them to F2S for one month of hell) I can assure you they are a top class ISP in every respect. Infact everything Plusnet isn't Zen is. Zen is like the complete opposite of Plusnet. You really do get what you pay for if you move to zen, that I can assure you of.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on MaxDSL. While the product has problems, for sure, the fact that plusnet compounded it badly with tiscali LLU (which IMO has many more problems than maxdsl) on an _already_ overloaded support dept (something many forget about) was a silly idea.

Many ISPs have moved similar proportions of their customer base to maxdsl without this complete collapse that plusnet have suffered.

"Many ISPs have moved similar proportions of their customer base to maxdsl without this complete collapse that plusnet have suffered."

Some have actually left folks connections as they were unless they asked to be moved to MAX also, they've not just gone and put folks on MAX or LLU without informing them. You know, customers do come first with some isps.

In reply to:

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Many ISPs have moved similar proportions of their customer base to maxdsl without this complete collapse that plusnet have suffered.

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Plusnet moved the highest number of users to MaxDSL of any ISP and therefore it would make sense that they encountered the most problems.

I was moved to MAX a few months ago and despite initial teething problems am now happy with a reliable 4Mb connection.

Interesting - so how many out of the something like 700,000+ Max users are PlusNet ones?

Andrew

Is there a league table of ISPs and the number of MaxDSL users?
or
where did you get the information from that "Plusnet moved the highest number of users to MaxDSL of any ISP "?

Of course this time you can back this statement up with facts or is this another one of your special assumptions stated as fact? Used the Google search facility?

I agree, but is it more fool us or fool plusnet for moving people to LLU. Did they see the problems with Max a long way off. Who knows, only PN network management know.

I think plusnet were a great ISP still were when I left 4 months ago, pages loaded fast. I could not fault them but they said my only option was to terminate my contract and offer me migration.

I have also told somebody to stay away from Plusnet, he move house moved country in fact and they said to him I will give you a migration code and you can change to us in your new property. Well the property he was moving into had no broadband on the line But at the end he said he was fed up having to get up at 6am just to contact them and I agree.

I can always remember Alex the ignorant manager in PN. Great stuff when the manager is treating you like you are something on his shoe.

I had to admit I'm having max weirdness right now, with sucky bandwidth during office hours. Which is quite strange, as that's not peak time.

BTW is there any way to set the BBS to not show people's signatures? Seeing the same 4 lines over and over is tiresome already!