Some of you may know me, others won't. It doesn't actually matter who I am. But for right now I'm the Marketing Director at PlusNet. What does matter is that I've been reading the various posts over the last few months and been watching how this forum has degenerated into a personal conflict zone pandering to self righteous egotism. Hmmm, big statements maybe. Consider this though, why do the same people feel the necessity to spend an unhealthy proportion of their leisure time making postings (I'm assuming they are all gainfully employed and therefore using leisure time to post). It doesn't stand to reason that all these people feel *so* passionately about lambasting PlusNet that they spend a disproportionate amount of time doing so. Unfair comment? Perhaps. But that's what it looks like to anyone who's been observing. Then you start looking at people's potential motivation for doing so and you start to realise that there's more to it than just 'protecting the weak and fighting just causes'. I won't start down that road; it won't help anyone or anything.
PlusNet is not going through a great time right now. That much is obvious. The reality is though that it is in a period of reconstruction, recreating the service that it became known for in the last few years. In the meanwhile time doesn't stand still and neither do markets. PlusNet has weathered worse. It continues to grow and offer great value. It's done some messed up things. God knows I've been responsible for some of them too. Could we have done things differently? Sure. Is it an evil empire headed by a dastardly Sith Lord plotting to annihilate the republic and free speech? Nah.
We work hard and believe that what we do is the best for the customer. We've truly screwed up our support on the back of the ADSL Max rollout and our implementation of the migration to Tiscali LLU process. We've screwed up a couple of other things too. But we're painfully honest about it. We will tell you and put our hands up to it. How many people talk about what's good? Not many, because that really isn't any fun is it?
Anyways, back to support. We're fixing that. It doesn't happen overnight. And yes I am expecting a bunch of customers to take their business elsewhere. But most customers will stick with it. Why? Because for all that is said and for all that we screw up, we still do it no more than anyone else does. Financially, most people who both count the pennies and want a good product know that they get a better deal here. Is that me justifying ourselves in the face of the rest of the market and 'better the devil you know' or 'best of a bad bunch'? Not really. I can see most of you thinking 'LMAO' and 'ROTFLMAO' or some other clever acronym laden with irony. I'm past caring what you non-interested parties think. Why? Because you have no moral stake (or shareholding probably) in PlusNet or the service that we give. You actually have no right to judge. Customers who have problems with us have every right to feel annoyed and ticked off. Those people deserve for us to make time for them. Some of you guys? Not in a million years.
ADSLGuide was the first place I used to look when trying to see what customers felt about us. Now? I look at the feedback we get in other ways. I also look at all our numbers (customer growth, churn etc) and see what's going on with them. I use the service and get as frustrated as customers do. That motivates me to make stuff better. It motivates me to speak to customers directly and hear how bad we've been directly from them. That's the only way we can improve. Not pandering to the over inflated egos of ex-customers and people who have never been customers who clearly have agendas that only they can truly be interested in. So ADSLGuide no longer plays a huge part in keeping me in touch with what customers are feeling and experiencing. But if I want to see hard working members of PlusNet staff, who are just trying to help, being personally attacked and vilified, then I will come straight here.
Excuse the diatribe and potentially lax syntax and grammar. Therapeutic though it was for me, I'm sure it made for <delete as appropriate> painful - amusing - boring reading for the majority of people who could be bothered. The outcome is that I'm asking all people who work at PlusNet and who post in here to stop from doing so. Immediately. I’m sure this will make for some colourful debate. We’re not going to respond or take part. If you want to use any part of this as an out of context quote, then go right ahead. Again, we won’t be responding (oh and I’ve already sent it to the Register and ISP Review before you ask). When the people who moderate this place can be bothered to bring it back to what it used to be, we'll get stuck back in. And gladly so. For right now, we're not. We'll keep an eye out and check for the odd actual customer who may have ventured in here. If you’re actually a PlusNet customer and you want to talk to us, we'll be in our own
portal forums and the forums on the
PlusNet UserGroup site , as well as any other 3rd party forums that provide a home for a healthy community to engage in reasonable debate about broadband. But wasting time responding to some of you self-absorbed phonies? Not any more.
See you on the other side
Marco
Marco Potesta
Marketing Director
PlusNet Plc
