I love PlusNet
I never thought I’d say this, but I love my ISP.
If you’re looking for a decent service provider, you could do a lot worse than opting for PlusNet. Yes, there are cheaper options out there, and there are providers (Sky most notably) who will tempt you with glamourous extras like being able to watch Extreme Makeover – Home Edition on UKTV Style. Well it would tempt me.
But for one reason, and one reason only, I’m sticking with PlusNet. Customer Service. Let me explain…
I’ve been running my website for a couple of years on my freely available PlusNet webspace. It’s worked for me. But in the last few months I’ve realised that writing and publishing plain HTML is no longer giving me the sort of flexibility I want. I tried learning PHP, but I got bored, so I learnt how to install Wordpress instead. Bingo! Good looking website with huge flexibility and very little actual coding.
Actually, installing Wordpress on my PlusNet CGI space proved a bit more difficult than I’d been promised, so I’ll write a whole post on that at some point. Suffice to say that the first time I tried it, I didn’t do it very well. I wanted to point my domain at it, but it didn’t seem to work.
Yesterday, being the Sunday of a bank holiday weekend, I was a bit bored. I thought I’d see if I could ‘fix’ the problem I’d been having. Ended up deleting the whole thing and starting again (it was rubbish anyway). Wipe MySQL database, reinstall Wordpress, the lot. Decide now is the time to get it all under my domain.
PlusNet have a members area, sort of like a users portal, where you can go for help. I must admit, the fact that you have to trail through the not very helpful ‘Help Assistant’ before they’ll let you raise a ticket is quite annoying, but here’s why I like it so much.
At 7pm on Sunday 24 August, the Sunday before a Bank Holiday, the customer service team’s average response time was (wait for it) one hour and nine minutes. That’s just about enough time for me to go downstairs, order a curry, watch TV while it’s delivered, eat it, and go back upstairs.
PlusNet, I salute you.
