Plusnet - Abysmal Internet and Even Worse Customer Service

Jaith

Long post - part rant with some questions at the end - apologies in advance!

We switched to Plusnet several months ago after being with Sky for a year, during which time we had near-perfect internet. We switched simply for a better deal after our Sky price went up, and never thought twice as Plusnet have excellent reviews compared with most ISPs.

Our service on Plusnet was poor in comparison from day one, and gradually got worse, so I began contacting their tech support around 2 months ago to try and resolve the issue. They admitted line quality was poor and initially tuned some settings and tried setting up interleaving on the line. None of this helped much.

Without going into too much detail, the peak speed is typically absolutely fine (though sometimes very poor for periods), but there appears to be a packetloss or DNS resolution issue as we frequently have periods where simple webpages can take 30 seconds to load, fail to load at all, or load only partially rendered. The internet itself also tends to drop several times per day as can be confirmed by logging into the router. We are fairly tech literate short of being network engineers, and have tested across devices, with various devices isolated and even used network protocol analyzers to eliminate questions around abnormal network traffic or high utilization at our end.

We continued patiently following Plusnet's support route for around two months, swapping filters, connecting through the main test socket, changing wireless channels and such, while trying to eliminate all possible issues at our end by testing on different devices, while switching off certain devices, to rule out internal wireless issues. Eventually they sent an engineer out, who could not detect any faults but changed some of the main socket wiring as it appeared mildly corroded apparantly. Again, none of this helped.

By this point we were getting quite fed up and the agent I spoke to at the time told us if this did not work they would allow us to exit the contract without penalty. They sent out a new router 'as a precaution' which again did not help.

Eventually, about two months after first contacting tech support I quite reasonably insisted on being allowed to exit the contract without penalty and to receive a pro-rated refund for the up-front line rental, as they were clearly not capable of fixing the issue and we were not getting the service we paid for - which is quite simply breach of contract on their side. The customer service agent was unapologetic and unrelenting, telling me that 'they could not detect any problems' and therefore we would have to pay fees to exit the contract. I explained that their inability to detect let alone resolve the issue did not absolve them of responsibility for fixing it, and that I would certainly not have spent many hours on the phone to them just to exit the contract if I were fabricating the issues - since at best I could stand to save several pounds per month for the next 8 months or so - a grand total of perhaps £20 for countless hours on the phone!

The agent did not disagree, but was unwilling to shift their position, so after around an hour on the phone (50 minutes wait time) I insisted on speaking to their supervisor. They told me they would arrange a supervisor to call back and it would be within 20 minutes. Nobody at all phoned back that day, nor indeed in the 10 days since...

I was not willing to spend hours on the phone again only to be ignored, so I emailed the complaints department services last Thursday. I essentially restated the points I am making here, and gave them a 7 day deadline to agree to allow me to exit contract without charge and provide a pro-rated refund, or I would be forced exit AND pay the fees, then take them immediately to CISAS (the ombudsman) and if necessary to court, for the full amount plus compensation for my time and inconvenience.

It has now been 6 days since my email, one day short of my deadline, and I have not heard a word back; their estimated reply time was 23 hours. It's possible they are investigating behind the scenes and will call me back promptly tomorrow, but given my experiences thus far, I consider this unlikely.

I am amazed and quite baffled with my experience so far, given the impressive ratings that Plusnet generally have. I appreciate mine may be an outlier case, but this is precisely why good firms need to employ good advisors and allow them a little discretion, not employee staff who can only follow inherently limited scripts and procedures to the letter, and could just as well be replaced by a machine. I also do not think it unreasonable to expect to be phoned back when promised, and failing this, for the complaints department to at least acknowledge correspondence within the week.

It appears to me that Plusnet must be a company whose standard procedures work well 95% of the time, but who have nothing in place whatsoever to deal effectively with the exceptions - this is the only way I can reconcile my own experiences with their high average approval rating.


I am now left with the question as to how to proceed. I am fully committed to using the ombudsman and beyond if necessary, but I would rather not spend significant amounts of time if there is a better way I can get through to somebody with some sense at Plusnet. It would also come down to my word against theirs on the actual issue of internet service quality, so I am wondering whether I should start collecting any proof - is a log file sufficient or should I even take screencasts of the browsing experience to demonstrate simple webpages repeatedly failing to load? Does the fact that I have contacted them many times and that they have failed to reply count for anything?

Any similar experiences or suggestions for my approach?

prop

Sounds Awful
We are at the end of our contract with BT and fiber is now available in our area so I am looking around for suppliers and Plusnet were the cheapest and with them being a BT owned company I thought they would be fine.
I have now changed my mind, maybe I stay with BT for a year to majke sure the fiber is installation is working.

With your case any evidence you can gather must be in your favor, maybe take video of the slow rendering and record any future conversations with their reps as well.

Thanks for the warning and hope you get some satisfaction, let us know how you go on.

Paul

Browntoa

Bt and Plusnet are the same , BT own them . Despite the above plusnets customer service is normally way better than BT

This looks like a specific line problem which is weird as Sky would have used the same copper pair from the exchange to your house

At you using standard ADSL or fibre broadband ?

JJ_Egan

Tried changing the DNS server ??

https://www.opendns.com/home-internet-security/opendns-ip-addresses/

https://www.whatsmydns.net/dns/uk

jem16

Have you tried using Plusnet Community forums? They have Customer Relation teams who frequent the forums and often sort out issues better.

There are also some very knowledgeable posters on the forum who might have ideas to help solve the problem should you still want to do that.

starving_artist

I also swapped from Sky to Plusnet encouraged by the high customer service ratings. Like you I have been less than impressed. They almost lost my telephone number when they took over my landline and the broadband service has been unstable and frequently grindingly slow. I insisted on speaking to a manager over the landline number issue and he did take action, kept me informed and called me back when promised. I wasn't impressed by the technical support during the initial broadband set up and am not confident they will be able to resolve the ongoing problems which I keep hoping are only temporary blips but sound rather more like yours.
It seems to me we are constantly being urged to switch utilities to get better deals but the reality is that it can turn in to such a nightmare that it creates a real disincentive to change.

Gloomendoom

On the other hand, I've been with Plusnet for several years now and can't fault them. I've only had had occasion to ring them up once and that issue was promptly dealt with.

patman99

I beleive it depends on which Plusnet server farm your connection runs to as to the level of service you get.

I'll explain further.

I switched from Sky (who told me I would get 16Mb/s on my line, but actually achieved an average of 22mb/s) to Plusnet back in Feb. 2014.
Plusnet promised 16Mb/s, but on average I get 11Mb/s (on the same copper pair as Sky used).
Having spoken with Plusnet's t/s, they are blaming the line and want to send out an engineer at my expense (not a chance).

Now, about 2 months back, my son who is also a Plusnet customer phoned to ask if my broadband was down, it wasn't, so he phone Plusnet t/s who informed him that the server he was connected-to had failed and so had the back-up unit.

He lives between Colchester and Ipswich and gets 8Mb/s.
He can watch streaming media without any buffering.

I live between Colchester and Chelmsford.
I get frequent buffering and drop-outs when watching streaming media.

I never had buffering issues with Sky, or with demon (I was a Demon customer for 10 years without any issues whatsoever).

Will I be staying with Plusnet when my contract expires in September ?.
Not a chance in hell.

jem16

patman99 wrote: »

I beleive it depends on which Plusnet server farm your connection runs to as to the level of service you get.

It depends on what your exchange is capable of. sky is an LLU provider and has their own equipment in the exchange which will provide the faster speeds of ADSL2+.

PlusNet uses BTw equipment at the exchange and if your exchange is not 21CN enabled you will get lower speeds than you did with Sky and Demon which is also LLU.

patman99

At the time I was a Demon customer, they did ot have their own kit in my local exchange (and still don't).
My exchange is fully-upgraded to 21cn, whereas the exchange my son connects too is only able to offer ADSL and nothing newer.

Jaith

Thanks for the replies.

I'm on standard ADSL and certainly do find it strange given that Sky was fine, but the fact info some posters have given suggests the hardware at the exchange could possibly different so that could explain it.

The peak speed is often fine as I mentioned, e.g. on speedtest it can take 30 seconds to load the webpage page but then achieve 8Mb/s which is marginally faster than Sky and good for my area.

I have tried switching DNS previously but will try some more, and may also try posting on their community forums to see if that gets me anywhere.

Ultimately I can appreciate that ours might just be a rare odd case, but it's the awful customer service that has surprised me so much - no excuse for this.

Thanks for the tips, I'll let you know how I get on.