Plusnet Overcharging and Harassment

Plusnethater

I've been with Plusnet for several years now, the first few years fine. THEN they gave me 3 weeks notice to end our contract because of some admin problem THEY had. Id done nothing wrong (In fact they owed me money), so stood up to them. After losing several days of my life trying to sort this out, the matter was sorted, but since then they have overcharged me again and again, taking up to about twice what they should by Direct Debit, causing me havoc and very unpleasant discussions with them which leave me feeling very bullied. I have asked them to monitor my account to stop overcharging happening, but they have refused to do so.

Does anyone else have problems with them overcharging, or experience of them bullying the customer? And, if they do get the bill wrong, is it ever an undercharge, or is it always overcharging?

 I initially thought they were just plain incompetent, but I'm beginning to question if I am being deliberately targeted by them in view of standing up to them so strongly when they initially threatened to disconnect me.

la531983

Begs the question then as to why you are still with them?

brewerdave

There have been multiple cases of "overcharging" by Plusnet in the past ,reported on their own customer forums. Their billing "system" has always been flakey ,particularly if you have agreed a discount to the basic price for ,say ,18 months..

JSmithy45AD

"THEN they gave me 3 weeks notice to end our contract because of some admin problem THEY had." What does this mean exactly?

elsien

Plusnethater said:

I've been with Plusnet for several years now, the first few years fine. THEN they gave me 3 weeks notice to end our contract because of some admin problem THEY had. Id done nothing wrong (In fact they owed me money), so stood up to them. After losing several days of my life trying to sort this out, the matter was sorted, but since then they have overcharged me again and again, taking up to about twice what they should by Direct Debit, causing me havoc and very unpleasant discussions with them which leave me feeling very bullied. I have asked them to monitor my account to stop overcharging happening, but they have refused to do so.

Does anyone else have problems with them overcharging, or experience of them bullying the customer? And, if they do get the bill wrong, is it ever an undercharge, or is it always overcharging?

 I initially thought they were just plain incompetent, but I'm beginning to question if I am being deliberately targeted by them in view of standing up to them so strongly when they initially threatened to disconnect me.

Unlikely. I’d stick with the incompetence theory. 

Plusnethater

I stuck with Plusnet initially as I wasn't ready to swap at three weeks notice and feared losing my phone number.... I had about 18 months of a 2 year contract to run. I renewed again before the latest overcharge because it has been several months since they had overcharged me and I hoped therefore it wouldn't happen again; also I had had problems with the line not long before renewal and, I have to be fair, they were excellent over getting it repaired, even though it took 3 engineers visits to sort it. I did shop around, but their offer was about as good as firms I had never heard of, and, as I am a bit of a Technophobe, and I hate having to reconnect everything to a new router, and my Plusnet router has been replaced by engineer whilst repairing the line, taking the easy option meant I didn't have to suffer another new router if I stayed with Plusnet. It was about two weeks later that the near 100% overcharge came. So I also questioned why the hell I had stayed with them!! 

In a sense it's reassuring if I'm not being targeted, but worrying if they are so incompetent, as some suggest, that the problem is going to keep recurring. I suppose the answer is to keep enough in my bank account to stop me getting overdrawn if they do it again, but as an OAP, that might not always be easy. I know there's the DD guarantee, but it's my credit score that worries me.
Shame that they let themselves down by not sorting out this problem, and hardly came across as fair, or helpful, when I tried to sort it.
So when the next renewal comes ..... 
A VERY BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS CONTRIBUTED .... MUCH APPRECIATED!

ladruid

I used Plusnet for business services for over 12 years for some customers. Their support was awesome, two rings to a real tech person, you could talk techy too, until they were taken over by BT. Then they turned to !!!!!!. Call queues, wait times, incompetent staff... They are ending their business service, so advised their customer to move to BT business... as I told them, I am more likely to sell a kidney than use BT business, and moved elsewhere.

forgotmyname

Only issues with Plusnet was the switch to EE for our mobiles.  Switch went ahead as normal (Nov 23) but still got emails
stating £0 will be taken this month for those accounts.

All well and good but where was my refund for the £2 odd they owed me?  Too lazy to phone them the refund happened
in February and no more emails.  I know phoning them would have given me the answer that they refund after a period just
in case there were late charges to go on or they would have refunded instantly.

Shame EE are not as efficient, they stopped overcharging me finally but where is the refund for the excess they took?

400ixl

Plusnet send an email informing you of your bill being created, how much it will be and when the payment will be taken. That should give you a heads up as to whether there is an issue. Or are you saying they take a different amount to the bill provided?

Generally Plusnet are one of the top rated ISP's for customer service. I have found them to live up to that for the various times I have been with them over the last 30 years. The only time I had any issue was back in the ADSL days over 20 years ago when they started doing traffic shaping whilst claiming the weren't. I could prove they were, so I left, only returning some years later when Fibre was available and the backhaul issues had been sorted and traffic shaping was not required.

Have you posted onto their forums? Quite often there are more senior people on there who can get issues resolved properly, bringing in the right teams to sort issues which the call centre don't have the necessary knowledge to actually know what the root cause is (or even how to describe it) so that the right fix is put in place.

Plusnethater

400ixl said:

Plusnet send an email informing you of your bill being created, how much it will be and when the payment will be taken. That should give you a heads up as to whether there is an issue. Or are you saying they take a different amount to the bill provided?

Generally Plusnet are one of the top rated ISP's for customer service. I have found them to live up to that for the various times I have been with them over the last 30 years. The only time I had any issue was back in the ADSL days over 20 years ago when they started doing traffic shaping whilst claiming the weren't. I could prove they were, so I left, only returning some years later when Fibre was available and the backhaul issues had been sorted and traffic shaping was not required.

Have you posted onto their forums? Quite often there are more senior people on there who can get issues resolved properly, bringing in the right teams to sort issues which the call centre don't have the necessary knowledge to actually know what the root cause is (or even how to describe it) so that the right fix is put in place.

A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE. AS TO 400ixi:-  Plusnet notified me by e-mail that the bill would be 2X . Problem is that that it should have been X. They immediately accepted that it should be X when I e-mailed back, but said they could do nothing to stop the direct debit being taken out of my account and this would have left me overdrawn, so I had to rush into town and transfer money into my account to ensure that I didnt become overdrawn.
IRONICALLY, NOT AS A RESULT OF MSE, IVE JUST HAD A PHONE CALL FROM THE BOSS OF THE PEOPLE I'D DEALT WITH SAYING HE HAD BEEN DOING QUALITY CONTROL AND WAS HORRIFIED BY THE WAY ID BEEN TREATED, AND SHOCKED AT HOW MANY TIMES THINGS HAD GONE WRONG. It doesn't resolve the issue, but how nice to just receive a straightforward apology! 
Thanks again to everybody who has tried to help.

brewerdave

PN billing really is a joke !
Left their mobile service in Jan. as advised the service was closing.. The next bill showed I was owed a few quid for the part month. No sign of a refund in Feb. ,so I contacted them via the PN Forum.
Received the refund end of March but I'm still getting bills - latest one today , still showing I'm owed the refund !