Hi,

The Plus refunds were voluntary on our part. Obviously there was feedback from customers before that but the decision was made as an acceptance that the product hadn't performed as it should have

The whole 4/8MB arguement has been done to death so I'll leave that one, there's nothing I can add to that discussion and it's in the past. All we can do is demonstrate that things are different now, and our new products reflect those differences IMO, as they are very clear and concise and set the customer's expectation correctly. We've also emailed customers to let them know about the new products so there can be no confusion there.

We also refunded customers who had problems when we moved them to LLU, and regularly credit users who have extended faults or provisioning issues.

I agree to an extent, as I said in my post it's the principle that counts from a customer point of view (certainly from the feedback I have received from customers anyway).

However, an SLA like that would not be worth much to an end user, as the vast majority of connectivity issues affecting one individual user would be related to a line/exchange problem, so therefore no refund would be applied.

If an ISP suffers a problem which affects connectivity to their network it is more than likely going to affect many users, and would be fixed within a very short timescale, so again no refund would be applied.

Anyway, I don't work for Newnet, so I'll get back to some PN discussion before I get in trouble for going waaaay off topic.

I migrated November 2006, I was using on average 50GB per month Premier Option 1.

The general concensus at that time was the decision to offer a free month was based on past 3 months usage.

Yep, usage would have been taken into consideration at that point. This is not the case now though, retentions offers are made purely on the basis of the reason the customer wants to leave, and only where it's relevant to the issue.

Actually there is one thread at the moment in the Zen forum of a long standing issue. The why's/wherefore's are of course the other issue.

Anyhow, as It happens I've had a couple of faults over the last few years, inevitable with the length of service held and the number of active lines held. I've had a refund in a couple of cases but as with Plusnet it is a discretionary thing. To be honest, that sounds similar to my mobile contract too - I don't recall them guaranteeing refunds if I lose my service (which on Orange I did some years back for 22 days). I had to fight for a refund.

>I've had a refund in a couple of cases but as with Plusnet it is a discretionary thing.

Or so the company claim, doesn't mean they are right.

It is quite amusing when a company authorises a refund or compensation claiming it to be a goodwill gesture when it is anything but (they usually know they are obliged to give a refund). It doesn't matter what the company claim the legal aspect to be, they can't be trusted to do things to protect the customer's rights (the opposite is often true). In most cases for a refund it is only when a formal complaint is filed, escalated further through external means or a threat to take their custom elsewhere do they pay back the money.

In addition to the terms of the contract, the supplier's relationship with the customer is governed by the Sale and Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 and Sale of Goods Act 1979. The contract itself is subject to The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 (as amended) & The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. The rest is largely irrelevant.

>I had to fight for a refund.

The fact that you still remember it speaks volumes. How would you regard them today had they paid out without having to fight for it or even ask for it? If a company is going to relent in the end they might as well pay quickly thereby keeping the customer happy (in turn he will speak highly of the company to others) and save themselves costs by avoiding handling an escalated complaint. Instead, many companies fail to do that and often argue contrary to the consumer's rights as protected under legislation.

Edited by rsharma (Sat 05-May-07 07:36:15)

Simon's comment was.......
But PlusNet have never volunteered a refund to anyone which seems to me to be untrue.
I agree the refund numbers versus the BB+ customers is not great.......another challenge for them to communicate better.