PlusNet - A word to the wise

hamd01

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Perhaps I expect too much from a broadband provide, but in general the level of support at plusnet, in my opinion, is dreadful. The do not appear to read questions properly, and in my experience seem to offer a workaround rather than actually looking into fixing the issue. They seem to have no pride in their jobs.

I work in IT so hopefully I do use my brain before calling upon the support team.

A few examples of issues I have had;

I have my work voicemail emailed to me, so that I can access it wherever I am. This could be via a public computer, my laptop or even my phone. The attachment is sent via a wav file, but I was unable to open the attachment using the plusnet webmail system.

I logged it as a fault with plusnet, and after going round the houses a few dozen times, their best solution was as follows;

"I have investigated this for you and it would appear that this is occurring due to the email being sent using UU encoding. Squirrelmail doesn't like this format thus it is not showing the file in the correct format. I have tested this using Thunderbird and Outlook and the file is there as an attachment as would be expected. Can you please use a mail client such as the ones mentioned above in order to collect your mail. You can still use IMAP to download these mails so they are also accessible via webmail if this type of access is needed. Please let us know if you have any further issues."

So in short the answer from plusnet was: use outlook, which I'd already explained wasnt possible in all cases. Webmail is supposed to be used from a web-browser, hence the name. The plusnet responce is clearly them saying "sorry, we dont want to try and look into this problem any further, but webmail doesn’t work".

Another problem I reported was due to my bandwidth evidently being restricted. I received an email from them around the 15th of the month saying that my bandwidth had been capped. I had already paid for an increased usage that month, but had lowered my account settings so that I didnt get charged the higher rate next month....so surely I should be entitled to that I have already paid for. The PlusNet responce;

"1) If you move to a lower package then the bandwidth difference will take immediate effect, essentially you were on the lower package from the date that you made the change, therefore you wont get any of the extra bandwidth."

Great... so I paid for the increased bandwidth, but because I dotn want it again next month I dont actually get it! Great...money for nothing eh, fantastic guys.

Around the same time as my bandwidth issue, I found that torrents wouldnt work or msn, or FTP...so I contacted them to make sure no ports are being blocked. Their short and to the point reply read;

"2) We do not block torrents in this way, I would suggest checking the port forwarding options on your PC."

Ignoring the all important question of "are you using a router, or is firewall turned on"?! I then spent TWO WEEKS trying to resolve the issue, resetting my router, patching my router, double checking that PC firewall hadnt been enabled etc etc, but for love nor money could I get anything other than web browsing to work. So...I contacted them again, and guess what they said;

"I can confirm that you have reached your usage allowance for the month (20GB) and this now means your service will be restricted until your next billing date or until you add further data allowance to your account. Please log into the website for further details."

I dont know if I should laugh or cry.

These people seem to answer support calls without even looking into the issue further, or considering that the customer just might....might know what he is talking about. To be honest, Im not even sure they get to the end of reading a support ticket before they starting writing their reply, which usually involves the customer having to do some work, and not them!
I could also go into the dreadful issue of them loosing all their customers email accounts details, which resulted in me getting literally hundreds and hundreds of spam emails. Of course they owned upto this one, but did they offer the customers any compensation or bonus….no, they just gave us a watered down webmail system.

I have now decided, after this dreadful level of support, that its time to leave plusnet. I feel all of the above issues were valid and not via any fault of my own, yet they have been left unresolved. Now If only I can find out how to get my MAC code from them.....maybe I should log a support call.
 
I am with Force9 which are also plusnet, but I am sure BT have now bought out plusnet did you here that also ?
Force9 which are Presume are plusnet staff anyway can handle easy problems but difficult ones forget it !
They dont even talk to each other I had my line down the one guy posted there is no problem with your line we will pass it over but if its not a line problem you will be charged £120(when BT own them!!!) then another guy pops on said your line does have errors I am passing it to BT :)
 
I am currently with plus & am looking at moving away. I have had a problem with my Broadband since April. I was getting modem speeds for most of the time. The issue has finally been resolved (by me telling them what I believe the problem is). The customer service I received was at points awful. Just trying to figure out who to go with!
 
I left PlusNet for BE about a year ago for the same reasons you guys have outlined. The customer service is dreadful (even that would be complimenting it). They seem to be statistic chasing - "look I closed 10 tickets in under 5 minutes".

If you really want to stir them, tell them how you used to tech support at an ISP (it was my first job) and watch their attitude change as you tell them everything you have done to resolve the problem (and hence checking off their script) before they have a chance to read their script "for stupid users aka everyone"

With your torrents, they do not hide the fact that they are traffic shaping kings. As I have said before, expect rubbish connectivity/performance from anything other than email or web (ports 80 + 8080) traffic, and even then the performance isn't that great.

It wasn't always been there like this. Go back a couple of years ago - calls were answered within a few rings at any time of the day or night, performance was decent, and the packages they offered were second to none. Pity it went to crap.
 
The traffic shapping on plus is a nightmare, they really don't want you downloading big files which is the whole reason that I got broadband for.
 
The traffic shaping used to annoy me. I would try and stream a video but the video would keep buffering due to the low priority on that type of traffic. On BE the problem went away.

Getting MAC codes out of Plus are another pain point. Before the new regulation that came in or is coming in, it took me three weeks to get mine and they went ahead and charged me for another month anyways plus one month's cancellation fee (even though I was with them for 2.5 years)

hamd01, if you want a referral for BE, pm your email address and then we both get a month's free access.
 
I was with plusnet several months ago but had to leave. I only use my broadband for online gaming and web browsing. After they introduced traffic shaping I could no longer play Toca 3 due to terrible lag which their support engineers admitted (after 3 months of fault reporting) that the problem was due to that game not being included in a profile in their traffic shaping system.

My fault went round the system about 6 times and each time starting afresh with basic stupid questions when some new support guy took over my fault. I too work in IT, I'm a CCNP certified Cisco network engineer so I do know my stuff and being asked the same basic questions each week was very frustrating.

What really bugged me is that online gamers are good customers. We use very little bandwidth but we need high priority profiles for low lag. Instead of adding my game to their profile they just bounced me from one support guy to another. In the end I got my MAC key and left.

I had already stopped my direct debit. When I left they asked for a months payment. I replied by telling them that I would counter sue for 3 months of not being able to play. I never heard from them again.
 

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