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| plusnet. Keep up the good work! |
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| message from J Willis on 23 Jun 2005 |
I have recently joined Plusnet and would just like to say I am very
satisfied with their 2mb ADSL.
Getting through to their customer service is quick and their staff I've
found to be polite and helpful.
It is refreshing to see a company perform in such an efficient and
professional manner for there are so many that don't.
Well done Plusnet for you have set the standard for other Broadband
providers to try and follow.
JM Willis
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| Dave replied to J Willis on 26 Jun 2005 |
I think they're ****.
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| Martin² replied to Dave on 27 Jun 2005 |
TROLL - Ignore him !
Regards,
Martin
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| Dave replied to Martin² on 27 Jun 2005 |
PRAT - Ignore her!
Better?
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| Martin Underwood replied to Dave on 26 Jun 2005 |
You're entitled to your opinion, though I'd be most interested to hear the
evidence to support your argument.
I've always found their support line to handle calls quickly (either by
email or phone) and to give a helpful, professional, non-patronising
response - in a British English accent! (In this Brave New World, it's
probably un-PC to express a preference for the accent of the person, but on
the many times I've dealt with call centres in India - BT, Wanadoo - I've
had extreme difficulty in understanding and being understood. As a
communications exercise, Indian call centres fail badly. I'm a Brit and I
want to deal with Brits - is that such a bad thing? I wouldn't expect people
in India to be put through to a call centre in England. OK, little rant
over!)
The reliability of their service is fairly good, though their mail and/or
news servers do go down more than they should. Today their news server has
had several long interruptions to its in-feed, so there have been several
hours when no new messages have arrived - but that's fairly rare.
Once, a few months ago, they lost everybody's web sites because of a server
crash. Their not having a backup was unfortunate but their failure to email
everyone immediately to say "Ever so sorry - you'll have to upload your
sites again but we won't deduct that traffic from your monthly limit" was
inexcusable. I think that's the only time that I've been disappointed in
them. Of course I have my own copy of my sites so it was only an annoyance
to have to upload them all again - no real harm was done.
The cost is very competitive: I pay £14.99 for 2 Mbps 1 GB/month, with £1.90
for every additional GB. Having got several months' evidence of typical
usage, I might upgrade to a permanent 2 GB limit which would cost an
additional £1.50 (slight discount because it's not "unarranged borrowing").
I think that the so-called unlimited bandwidth costs £21.99, but I'm not
sure of that figure - someone from PN will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong.
The transfer rate is generally very good: on my 2 Mbps line I typically get
between 1.4 and 2.0 Mbps depending on time of day and hence the amount of
contention. Subjectively (and I've not done any quantitative tests) my line
seems to be faster than many of my customers' 2 Mbps lines with AOL, BT etc
whenever I'd had to download drivers for them.
You get Microsoft Front Page Extension web-space (not sure what the size
limit is), unlimited email addresses (addresses are of the form
anything@your_domain.f9.co.uk), CGI/PHP space and a MySQL database (the last
two are for designing dynamic database-driven web sites).
I'd certainly recommend PlusNet (specifically Force9, who I'm with) to
anyone.
By the way, I have no financial interest in PlusNet, other than as a
satisfied customer!
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| Mike H replied to J Willis on 23 Jun 2005 |
One key area of criticism against Plus Net is that their support is somewhat
variable. Sometimes they are prepared to "go the extra mile", sometimes they
really can't be bothered - and don't care if you notice!
You say that you have recently joined Plus Net, so perhaps you haven't
experienced this yet.
- Mike
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| Sniffer replied to Mike H on 23 Jun 2005 |
I am into the second month with PlusNet and have been having a sticky time
with their Customer Service. I moved to PlusNet from a smaller ISP which
had wonderful C/S but were rather pricey. Along with 300 others a day I
was lured by PlusNet's new price structure and the migration went very
smoothly. Speeds are good (down a bit on the last ISP) and then I had snag
with e-mail not being delivered. Without going into technical detail about
the issue, I opened a ticket eight days ago. As the days went by, there
was no resolution of the problem. There were a few additions to the ticket
informing me that my issue was being passed around. Nothing was done
during the weekend because the issue required the services of a technician
who only worked weekdays! On Monday the main issue was finally resolved
but a legacy snag remained. Since then, it has been passed around again
and my biggest complaint is that no-one seems to want to contact me to
tell me of any progress. I would even welcome an e-mail saying it is going
to take a while - but no, nothing. I still can't send e-mails to a
particular domain because of PlusNet's SMTP server's refusal to relay them.
Whenever I ring Customer Service, the staff are always courteous but all I
hear is the same mantra - "it is being addressed by our technical staff"
The last time I heard such polite but impenetrable stone walling was when
I suffered at the hands of BTOpenworld.
So yes, I agree. PlusNet's vaunted 24/7 Customer Service is brilliant if
the issue is simple and manageable by the front line staff. Once it gets
beyond them then it is decidedly inferior. I am beginning to wonder if
PlusNet are failing to keep up with the demands of their increasing
customer base. More punters = more potential problems = the need for more
staff to deal with them. It would seem that the number of front line
operatives is keeping up with the demand, but, second line and beyond is
certainly not. It is now reaching the point where I am considering using
the 45 day get out of jail free option and transferring back to my
previous ISP. They may be smaller but have reduced their price to within a
fiver of PlusNet and it will be worth paying for the customer service I
enjoyed when with them previously.
I hope I am proved wrong but I fear that as it grows from it's modest
beginnings into one of the country's larger ISPs, PlusNet is losing the
personal touch and joining the ranks of the anonymous giants like BTO, AOL
etc.
Sniff
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| J Willis replied to Mike H on 23 Jun 2005 |
I think you make a valid point Mike for you can only speak as you've found
but I hope what you've mentioned doesn't happen frequently.
Before joining Plusnet I attempted to subscribe to Bulldog's ADSL service
and what a nightmare that was.
Part of their 4mb ADSL deal was to take over my phone line from BT.
I was without a phone for weeks and getting through to their customer
services took over 20mins. Most of the time I couldn't
get through and on the rare occasion that I did I found the staff inept and
rude - they just hadn't a clue what they were doing.
My e-mails and faxes to their customer service department were never
answered.
ADSL with Bulldog never happened even though they had sent me an e-mail
giving the date my phone line would be activated.
I suspect to that many people attempting to subscribe to Bulldog have
encounted similar problems that I've mentioned.
Hopefully Plusnet will never allow their company to reach such deplorable
standards as that will be a sad day indeed.
Joslyn Michael Willis
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