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PlusNet broadband - problems getting connected

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I bought a monthly contract from PlusNet online and my ADSL line was finally activated on 15 August.  On the 17th August the internet promptly failed and after spending an hour trying to connect without any success, I realised that there was no way I would be using my broadband connection to work from home that day and rushed off to work (luckily, this time the failure was fixed in a couple of hours).

The following Monday, which is 21st of August, the broadband died again and it has never worked since.  Instead of enjoying a PlusNet broadband service, I have been forced to sit on their customer service help line, (which is frankly useless without an Internet connection as all it does is direct you to their online trouble-shooter) and spent lots of time and energy on sorting out the broadband service problem...

I was told that the cause of the problem was BT lines fault and PlusNet had raised the fault to BT.  I called BT help line and BT refused to help me as BT only deals with this sort of problem directly with broadband providers.

A network connection In desperation, my husband finally persuaded an operator to send an engineer from BT to look at the problem.  I then spent a whole afternoon off work waiting for the engineer - who never turned up.

As there is no way to speak to anyone from the PlusNet support team (as I am only ever directed to leave a message), I rang the PlusNet sales line and was told that they did not know how long it would take for the problem to be fixed.

The Internet is a vital part of my daily work and I cannot afford to wait any longer.  Seeing the hopeless situation, I asked for a cancellation of my account and a full refund as I am paying for a service I am unable to use.  Instead of releasing me from an unusable service, PlusNet demands further £72.00 for line activation and hardware fee, they have refused to give me a migration code or disconnect me and so I am unable move to any other ADSL service.

Apart from calling NTL to install a cable broadband, do I have any other options?  I rang OFCOM for help but all the specialist adviser I talked to suggested I do was to wait for PlusNet to fix my problem which I simply cannot afford to do.

It does not sound quite right to me.  Is there not any industry regulatory body to protect consumers from such unsatisfactory and virtually non-existent services?

By: Mrs Qian


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nonaki

nonaki

I've been a plusnet customer for nearly five years and they used to be good, but after I upgraded to fibre, I've experienced regular line dropouts, every single day, and now the whole o.tetnet and phone connection is lost. They blame Openreach (read: OutofReach) and stopped responding, not an update for days on end, so I think their standard has fallen severely.
22/10/14 nonaki
1
Another angry customer

Another angry customer

Don't bother with PlusNet the potential savings are outweighed by the woeful customer service and despite being part of BT shockingly bad communication between PlusNet and BT engineers
01/07/14 Another angry customer
0
Bob Pullen

Bob Pullen

@jojo,

Sorry to hear about the confusion over the Openreach engineer visits. Are you still having problems getting online? If you are then I'll happily take a look and see if there's anything I can do to help? I'd just need some means of identifying your account like your username or a recent support ticket reference.

Best regards,

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Digital Care.
12/03/13 Bob Pullen
0
jojo

jojo

signed up for fiber optic with plus net as i had not been happy with sky they missed 2 failed appointments for the engineers visit then came a day later. Installed equipment and left saying that they do not check if my equipment connects to the internet although i couldn't get a wired connection on my pc left and said ill have to call plus net. Wireless seemed to work although slow.After having really slow service slower than my 2mb speed with sky although its supposed to be 52mb on the 1st day thought it must be settling in. When i checked it later on my pc and tablet my phone and husbands phone none of us could get internet at all wirelessly. Tried wired connection and nothing. Phoned plus net for an hour checked line said nothing wrong with line. Connected without router and still no internet. He said my pc had broken !! what? said he couldn't help me any further. Until i dug my laptop out and same thing happened on that. I said my old service had worked fine until they changed the wires ect to fiber. Now i have no internet at all and important thinking i made a big mistake. I work from home and this is a nightmare. I have only been connected 2 days and important wondering if they can't be bothered to fix the issue can i go elsewhere?
20/02/13 jojo
-5
Bob Pullen

Bob Pullen

@Tricia,

The engineer fee is standard fair to be honest. It's a charge levied by BT Openreach themselves and any ISP that uses them will be subject to the same terms. If we didn't tell you about it and you got charged then I doubt you'd be happy. If you've carried out all the diagnostic tests we've asked of you then there's no way the problem can be specific to your equipment so you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

I'm sorry you're having problems though and hope the engineer managed to get to the bottom of things. If you're still having difficulties then feel free to provide me with a support ticket reference from your account and I'll happily take a look to see what I can do to help.

Best regards,

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Digital Care
31/10/12 Bob Pullen
4
@Tricia

@Tricia

Hi Mrs Qian
No offence ,but am I glad you are having this problem as it is identical to the one we have been having for the last 6 months.I have just received a call from them now to say an engineer is coming out to inspect the fault ,but if its faulty wiring etc ,I have to pay them £60 for the priviledge ! Never had any faults before with our other providers.I hope you get yours sorted soon ,but I will keep you informed of our outcome,needless to say I would never recommend Plusnet to anyone and will not be continuing the contract with them either.

Pat
09/10/12 @Tricia
-8
Bob Pullen

Bob Pullen

@miserablemoaninggit,

OK, thanks for the clarification. Leave it with me and I'll see what I can do ...

Best regards,

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Digital Care
13/06/12 Bob Pullen
0
miserablemoaninggit

miserablemoaninggit

Bob Pullen,

Thank you for your comments, including the acknowledgement about the less than desireable nature of my experience with Plusnet, and the fact that a lot more could have been done.
In answer to your question about whether I was using a Apple MAC, the answer is "no", just a windows 7 based computer - primarily built for online gaming.

I appreciate your offer of some reimbursement for the costs incurred when I left. I am still living at the same address. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.
11/06/12 miserablemoaninggit
2
miserablemoaninggit

miserablemoaninggit

Saw an advert for Plusnet on the TV which included reference to the Which Award. So much for Which. So much for these awards. The advert just makes me laugh! Seems to contradict the great many complaints on The Weekly Gripe, and elsewhere on the internet. I think I know where to put my trust - and I'll certainly not be subscribing to Which.
07/06/12 miserablemoaninggit
-10
miserablemoaninggit

miserablemoaninggit

Oh, you will not be able to contact me by telephone. Such was the chaos and surreal craziness of my move from Plusnet to BT, I had to have a change of telephone number. BT told me that was the only way of doing it because my old number was still 'tagged' by Plusnet, despite my efforts to get it released. Obviously, I'm not going to leave my telephone number on this forum.
29/05/12 miserablemoaninggit
-4
miserablemoaninggit

miserablemoaninggit

My user name was frankie67. Any serious attempt to trawl through all the correspondence I had with Plusnet would necessitate quite some time.
The engineer appointment was made on the internet, with the date and time confirmed there and then. I do not recall any follow-up text or email though.
29/05/12 miserablemoaninggit
-7
Bob Pullen

Bob Pullen

@miserablemoaninggit, did you see my earlier replies to you? Did you not receive prior notification of your engineer visit via email or text?

If you provide me with your old account username then I'd be happy to cast my eyes over your account and see if there's anything I can do for you based on your circumstances?

I can't really comment much further without knowing all the details. I can guarantee you that we won't have deliberately left you without service whilst you waited to migrate though.

As I mentioned before, sorry we let you down and it's a shame to see you go.

Best regards,

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Digital Care
29/05/12 Bob Pullen
0
miserablemoaninggit

miserablemoaninggit

Until fairly recently, Plusnet advertised stressing an award won in 2010. I see that Plusnet have won a Which? 2012 award which I find highly surprising. Plusnet wouldn't even allow me to leave smoothly - at one point I was in a 'limbo world' between Plusnet and BT, with no Broadband service to the extent that I had to purchase a T-mobile dongle to give me temporary access over a period of about a month.

It was surreal to the point that I almost concluded that there was some deliberate vindictivness on the part of Plusnet, before finally concluding that it was just another piece of evidence for a company unable to provide a high level of customer service.

What about the problems with your customer service portal? The fact that if a problem is not addressed immediately, necessitating further input from the customer, it is picked up by numerous different employees, many of them who don't bother to read previous posts, and then give irrelevant answers, often clearly cut and pasted from some body of stock answers?

What about the fact that despite the enormous problems I experienced with Plusnet, including the fact that they got the engineer problem wrong, they still insisted on charging £75 to be released from the contract, adopting a don't give a damn attitude when I decided to leave? This smacks of downright arrogance and does not bode well for any present and future Plusnet customer.

I was lied to when joining Plusnet, as simple as that. I was lied to! I was told that I should get the same speed that I had with Virgin, and then got about half of that speed, and the cop out was the fact that Plusnet had used its speed checker on my line, showing a slower speed. A technicality. Plusnet completely ignored the fact of the reality of my previous speed. In fact, a Plusnet employee admitted that Virgin used different equipment, hence my faster speed with them. I certainly was not told this when signing up to Plusnet!
29/05/12 miserablemoaninggit
-10
Healeyguy

Healeyguy

Plusnet are appalling. They paint themselves as the friendly local Yorkshire firm with an English call centre (big deal). Firstly they are a subsidiary of BT which may surprise some people. One week after my service began they cut me off due to incompetence on their part. It took 6 weeks, I'll repeat 6 weeks!!! for my service to restored. My speed is again rubbish and there are many sites I can't access because the connection is timed out.
#
You can't contact them by email, only by phone and there is only one number, if you get through you will be on hold for 20 minutes. They will blame you and infer the problem is with your equipment (which In my case they supplied). They will never call you back.

Summary - they are utterly useless.
30/03/12 Healeyguy
-5
miserablemoaninggit

miserablemoaninggit

Finally given up. I had decided to stay with Plusnet and upgrade to fibre optic. I duly applied, arranged an engineer visit for Wednesday afternoon - the only time I could get back early enough from work. Came home today, BT engineer card left stating that he could not gain access to install the broadband upgrade. According to the engineer, Plusnet had informed him that the appointment had been made from Monday AM. I've cancelled everything with Plusnet - had to pay out £75 to be released from my contract.

Plusnet is shockingly bad - both in terms of sales and customer service. Never again! Their customer service being based in Yorkshire is just as bad - worse in my experience - than overseas call centres.

They keep banging on about a customer service award received in 2010. It is now well into 2012! Thinking of changing your Broadband provider? Take my advice based entirely on experience - Plusnet is definetely a PlusNOT!
12/03/12 miserablemoaninggit
0

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