Cancelling on price rise

Sghughes42_2

Not sure if I've been careless or if Plusnet are trying it on.

I got an email from them on the 8th if May saying prices were going up and I could cancel without penalty within 30 days. At the time I had an ongoing complaint about intermittent drops in the connection so I thought I'd give them a bit longer but then forgot.

Realised today I needed to cancel as it was getting nowhere, but when I phoned they said the time ran out yesterday. They are counting the 30 days as starting on the 8th even though the email didn't arrive until mid afternoon. Is this allowed? Is an email even allowed, reading up it sounds like it should be a letter.

Have I just been to careless and not checked dates well enough while giving them time to fix the problem?

Their great customer service carried on when I asked to speak to a manager and they cut me off..

mije1983

Yes email is sufficient and allowed.

Whether or not you could argue about when the 30 day clock started is another matter. Does it say anything like 'from the date on this email' when talking about the 30 day period. You could well be fighting a losing battle though.

oldagetraveller

"If you haven't already, look above to learn how we're making your service better. We hope you're happy with your products and services, but if you do decide to leave because of these changes, we won't apply any early termination charges. All we ask is that you call us on 0800 5871 935 to tell us within 30 days of getting this email and give us 14 days' notice=."


From the e-mail. My bold.

macman

Why leave it until the last day?
Switching your provider will make absolutely no difference if the fault is on the local loop or with your own equipment or internal wiring.

phillw

macman wrote: »

Why leave it until the last day?
Switching your provider will make absolutely no difference if the fault is on the local loop or with your own equipment or internal wiring.

Or a new router from another provider might fix it. I had intermittent drops and had to keep rebooting the (many years old) plusnet router, I was too lazy to go through the hassle of reporting it. It's too early to say whether switching to BT has fixed it. I've only been with them for a week and the problem occurred most often when people phoned me & I don't get many phone calls.

angryparcel

phillw wrote: »

Or a new router from another provider might fix it. I had intermittent drops and had to keep rebooting the (many years old) plusnet router, I was too lazy to go through the hassle of reporting it. It's too early to say whether switching to BT has fixed it. I've only been with them for a week and the problem occurred most often when people phoned me & I don't get many phone calls.

You do know Plusnet is BT as they are 100% owned by BT, so they will use the same system

phillw

angryparcel wrote: »

You do know Plusnet is BT as they are 100% owned by BT, so they will use the same system

Yeah & I know that my 3km of aluminium phone wire with 100 joins is going to be the same no matter who I switch to. However BT have sent me a new router, when I switched back to plusnet then I used my router that I had from around 8 years ago.

The new router may at least reconnect on it's own & maybe it will help with the line dropping in the first place. Or maybe it will make the problem worse and force me to report the fault.

sghughes42

Interesting, I've only just realised I've managed to have two forum IDs for the last 10 years with the only difference being the initial letter is capitalised! Wondering why this post wasn't showing up in my threads list...

Anyway...

Leaving it until the last day - as I mentioned, I was giving them one last opportunity to fix the fault and simply forgot how long had passed. Mea culpa on that one.

Also yes, I know BT own Plusnet. However, Plusnet do have their own infrastructure (WMBC and so on) and as the engineer who came previously couldn't find an issue it may well be that the problem is at their end not mine. I also want to upgrade from ADSL to fibre so that would cut out a section from the cabinet to exchange. I did ask Plusnet to upgrade me on the understanding I could cancel if it didn't fix the issue but they said no.

I'd also prefer Fibre from BT rather than Plusnet as the main reason for moving is the faster upload rate and Plusnet cap their fibre to 1.9MBps which isn't much of a step over ADSL while BT give you at least 10MBps.

Mainly though, Plusnet have been so utterly, utterly useless in handling my fault that I just don't want anything to do with them. I'm seriously considering just paying the early disconnection fee as it's getting to the point where I'm stressing about it and struggling to do anything online. They won't even send out another engineer as the last one couldn't find anything but I've tried multiple routers, filters, connected devices and the problem persists.

Oh, and as for the 30 days, yes it says within 30 days of that email but I'm not clear when that time starts. For example, I received the email in the middle of the afternoon but they appear to count between then and midnight as one day. The Ofcom guidance doesn't help as they say one month in some places and 30 days in others, the only thing I could use there is that the guidance does say they must make the start and end dates of the period clear and I could contest Plusnet don't for the end date.

JJ_Egan

Grab a calendar and start counting as 9th May is day ONE .I make that 23 days in May add on 7 days in June to make 30 .
I make that 7th June as the last day or day 30 .


PS all the price increase statements i have seen have on here said 30 days to contact us .

sghughes42

Yup, I got the same. Plusnet are claiming that the 8th is day 1 as they say the email was sent at midnight. Didn't arrive then and I'd guess that the same applies to emails as applies to postal notification - the date of delivery matters, not the date (or in this case time) of despatch.