plusnet landline 'call credit' misleading?

RogerBareford

triade said:

I could ask them to review it. I felt pretty confused about the services at the time so I don't really remember everything from the call, but the fact that I got confused by it, may lead to them reassessing how this has played out. After all, that phone call was made specifically to set up a call plan so I wouldn't be running up these kinds of charges.

edit:

thanks for prompting me to talk about this and investigate further. from my perspective, he told me he was putting £20 credit in my account and that screen with the £55 credit was the only reference I could find and their website is failing to load properly for me lately so that is why I struggled to find information. I remembered this when I visited just now because it's still struggling to load pages. anyway, not only did he use language that led me to the bills page where it shows £55 credit, he did not tell me he was placing a deduction on my next bill, he specifically told me he was adding credit into my account and that I would be able to use that credit to make calls. moreover, when looking for that page, the button used to access it says this :"You can also check how much credit you've used or top-up your credit.". this language is almost identical to the language used for payg phones. I wouldn't be surprised if this is intentionally misleading so I now feel confident that they should cancel those charges. I feel empowered to write to them and explain these things and request they remove the charges. if they don't I will take this case to the ombudsman. I appreciate you guys spending time to talk to me about this.

So you confirmed that he said he was putting £20 in your account, so anything else would have been wrong. Like i said before when you spot things that are wrong or you don't understand you need to contact them and check and not just assume. Just remeber morals go both ways. So if they had applied £55 instead of £20 credit and you spent the whole £55 it would have been morally wrong to benefit from that mistake. So you can make a complaint about the wording on the online account and they might change it if they find it to be misleading or add extra descriptions. But you will need to pay for any calls you made above the £20 credit they offered as it wouldn't be morally right and you said earlier you had high ethical standards so i'm sure you will agree with that.

triade

RogerBareford said:

So you confirmed that he said he was putting £20 in your account, so anything else would have been wrong. Like i said before when you spot things that are wrong or you don't understand you need to contact them and check and not just assume. Just remeber morals go both ways. So if they had applied £55 instead of £20 credit and you spent the whole £55 it would have been morally wrong to benefit from that mistake. So you can make a complaint about the wording on the online account and they might change it if they find it to be misleading or add extra descriptions. But you will need to pay for any calls you made above the £20 credit they offered as it wouldn't be morally right and you said earlier you had high ethical standards so i'm sure you will agree with that.

no, as I was saying, due to the language on the account page when I was looking for the credit he had given me, it appeared that i already had some credit before he gave me the 20.  due to the difficulty in navigating their website, I found it very difficult to find any information on what had gone into that credit and when. due to how phone contracts generally work, for example, my mobile contract with thousands of minutes, I made a standard logical conclusion that my account must naturally come with £35 credit already there. I realise now that the reason I arrived at this conclusion was due to how the guy on the phone was explaining it to me and the language on the account page.

Neil_Jones

triade said:

RogerBareford said:

So you confirmed that he said he was putting £20 in your account, so anything else would have been wrong. Like i said before when you spot things that are wrong or you don't understand you need to contact them and check and not just assume. Just remeber morals go both ways. So if they had applied £55 instead of £20 credit and you spent the whole £55 it would have been morally wrong to benefit from that mistake. So you can make a complaint about the wording on the online account and they might change it if they find it to be misleading or add extra descriptions. But you will need to pay for any calls you made above the £20 credit they offered as it wouldn't be morally right and you said earlier you had high ethical standards so i'm sure you will agree with that.

no, as I was saying, due to the language on the account page when I was looking for the credit he had given me, it appeared that i already had some credit before he gave me the 20.  due to the difficulty in navigating their website, I found it very difficult to find any information on what had gone into that credit and when. due to how phone contracts generally work, for example, my mobile contract with thousands of minutes, I made a standard logical conclusion that my account must naturally come with £35 credit already there. I realise now that the reason I arrived at this conclusion was due to how the guy on the phone was explaining it to me and the language on the account page.

Aside from the fact accounts come with £55 and this has been the case for at least the last five years, maybe even longer... (and if you find yourself spending more than £10 on calls its a no brainer to have the all inclusive calls package)

You need to look at the link I posted regarding the Plusnet Help Assistant.  That is the only place (beside your next bill and the original call) that this £20 credit of which you speak will be documented.  If there is no ticket, it didn't happen.  If there is no mention of it on the call then it didn't happen.  If it doesn't appear on the next bill then it didn't happen.

I'm sorry but I don't know what you want to hear.  If you won't go back and find out what you've actually agreed to in favour of just speculating on what you *think* you've agreed to (which is an entirely different thing from what you agreed to) then we're just going round in circles.  All a complaint to Plusnet will do is dig out the same information you can get yourself right now, and if it gets to an an ombudsman, again the decision will be based on what you agreed to, not what you think you agreed to.  The morals of the situation are immaterial to an extent.

I would strongly suggest if you do nothing else then go looking at the Plusnet Help Assistant using the links I've already posted.  Before you complain to anybody you need to know where you stand.  If the £20 credit you're referring to has never existed then filing a complaint is a waste of time because the issue is of your own making due to a misunderstanding on your part.

triade

I looked all around the website and couldn't find a help assistant, so I'll try your link when I get back to my computer. The website is like a labyrinth.

edit: I had a look and I can't find a link to a help assistant in your posts.

I've tried searching in the plusnet site and aside from it sending me round and round in circles, I can't find any records of any support requests.

edit 2: okay now i'm really confused, I don't see how a link to a wizard search, takes me to my account with this help assistant that I've never seen despite extensive searching. I don't understand why they have to be so blooming obtuse!

triade

okay, here is one of the emails they sent me :

Dear Miss Kendrick,

Account username: triadne

We thought you should know that you are £15.13 away from reaching your Home Phone credit threshold.

Call credit details
===================
* Credit threshold: £55.00
* Credit used: £39.87
* Credit remaining: £15.13

What you should do
==================
We suggest that you top-up your Home Phone call credit.

If you reach your credit threshold, an administration fee of £5.76 would be charged on your next subscription payment.

Also, any non-emergency calls made would be transferred through to Customer Services, who'd be able to help you top up your credit. Your incoming calls would not be affected.

We're sure you'll agree that it's worth adding a bit more credit now - https://www.plus.net/plustalk/index.php?page=wlr_add_credit

it is clearly telling me I should "top up" my credit.  they also mention "adding a bit more credit". I can't imagine any regular person reading that and not thinking it works the same as a payg mobile.  especially after the guy on the phone said he was adding credit to my account. 

I mean, I had no interest in topping up the credit, but I imagine it would involve me putting money into it and therefore increasing the amount of credit available. how else is anyone supposed to perceive that other than a purse of money owned by the customer to spend on calls?

if it wasn't mine, if it was actually a buffer and everything spent from that credit was going to be owed to them, then how on earth would a customer 'top it up'? that doesn't make any sense at all.

and this more recent email :

We are contacting you today as, looking at our records, we can see that you have already used 95% of your current credit limit of £55.00. Your current remaining credit is £2.64.

After further investigation into your recent calls, we can see that these are to UK Mobiles. We believe it would be beneficial to you to be on our Unlimited UK and Mobiles package for £9.41 per month. This package includes 2000 minutes to UK Mobiles at any time. In addition, all your calls to UK landlines will be inclusive at all times.

Exceeding your credit limit before your next bill date will result in your phone being restricted, and in order to use your phone again you must wait until your credit resets on your next billing date or pay the overdue credit plus any further credit you wish to use until your credit resets. Should you wish to increase your overall credit limit, please aware you would have to clear your overdue credit first.

where they clearly say that if I go over my credit, I will have to pay it off before I can use calls again. and put more credit in to make more calls. I'm not sure exactly what else I am supposed to interpret from this other than, I have credit and this credit is reset each month as part of my contract and if I go over the credit then I have to pay the extra.

edit: and I did want to double check some details at some point but their website was refusing to load my account details. I have been unable to view the details of my package for quite some time. I don't fully recall, but it's very likely that I tried to view my package to see what was included around that time, but I do recall at the time, I couldn't access my call plan or my contract details.

Neil_Jones

So there is no mention whatsoever of £20 worth of "extra" credit.  It should have been emailed to you as per the ticket.

https://www.plus.net/help/phone/about-phone-credit/ tells you exactly how the "credit" works.  "Every time you make a call, we take the amount it costs from your credit threshold and add it to your next bill. Then, at the end of the month, you pay for the calls you've made."

So you have made (for argument's sake) £50 worth of calls.  Your credit threshold is and always has been £55.  If you make more than £55 worth of calls before the next billing period you will have to pay a portion of it off before you can make more.  The whole credit thing is just a buffer towards phone call charges that appear on the next bill.  That has the effect of effectively capping your bill to around about £73 a month and means you have to either get involved or wait until the next billing date to reset it.

If you've added a call package since you made those calls (the £9.41 thing) that will start from your next billing date.  But you've made the £50 worth of calls before you added the call package so this is just a case of you being on the wrong package from the outset.  If you'd added the £9.41 before you made those calls, you'd be covered.  But you didn't, so you aren't.  They are chargeable as per T&Cs as they are outside of your call package.  Sorry.

If you are going to have trouble paying this you need to phone up Plusnet and say so.  They may arrange a longer period of repayment.  Please don't just ignore it.

triade

I appreciate your feedback. I won't put myself in a position of refusing to pay it and I have already spoken to them when they told me to do that deferred payment thing. I'm not doing that right now though,  I want to exhaust all avenues first. I understand that you're saying its all there, but my feeling is, as most consumers never read those things as they are way too long and in very difficult legalese, I think I have a case.   Also because of how difficult their website is to navigate, I believe plus.net should have been clearer about this. When I first took out the service I had no intention of using calls so I felt I had no need to read all that stuff.  Now when I added the call plan so my brother could call me, I expected the basics to be told to me as I added those features. I also discovered on the phone to support that even with the call plan, if I go past an hour, they will charge me anyway, despite the service advertised as free calls evening weekends. In my account I can't even click on the 'evenings and weekends' to get clarification on it so it's a good job she told me that or I'd still be getting charged through the roof. And I probably wouldnt know about it. I think consumers have a good faith expectation that things mean what they say and that we shouldn't have to read reams of small print to make sure we aren't getting screwed. That's what the ombudsman is there for I think. Anyway, I'll see how I go with it.

Neil_Jones

Well complain if you must but ultimately if you don't read what you're signing up to before you sign up to it, then the only outcome will be more fool you.  The 1hr call thing is documented on the website, you don't need a call plan to receive calls (or make them for that matter - it just caps the monetary amount) and with regards to "good faith" - this works both ways.  It has always been the case that it is your responsibility to ensure the service you have chosen is right for you.  If it turns out not to be because of an unwise decision that you made, that's not the provider's fault.

If you want to take it to the Ombudsman, go ahead,  But you need to complain to Plusnet first and get to deadlock (which will take six to eight weeks to get to that stage so you've going to have to pay anyway in the short term but you may get that back):

https://www.ombudsman-services.org/how-it-works/process

This is why I kept telling you to go back and get the evidence, because if you can't prove the credit was ever applied/agreed to, all the Ombudsman will say is provider not at fault, case closed.

triade

Hi, thank you very much for talking through this with me and helping me get my thoughts straight and my emotions validated.

I sent off a message to customer support just after my last post here and explained my situation fully.

I received a phone call today from customer support and summarised the situation. they agreed with me that the way the information had been presented both on the phone and on the website, was unclear and potentially misleading.

They offered to resolve this by placing a further credit on the account to cover the majority of the excessive call charges.

I agreed to pay a little towards it as I could have gone to further effort to resolve my confusion despite how information was presented. I am satisfied with that.
that will go onto the next bill.

I had already paid the base amount of my bill, less the additional call charges.

unfortunately, the only way to defer the payment of the extra charges was to set up a payment plan and the minimum term for that is two months, so I couldn't make it so the credit (and my contribution) will cancel out the entire charge on my next bill, but my next bill will be less than usual and the following bill will be more than usual. I can account for that in my finances.

altogether, I am satisfied with this resolution.

thank you for your replies and your time and energy