Have just accpeted a job at Plusnet. Story goes that i turned them down orignially due to the number of working weekends in the shift pattern, then they phoned me and offered me a monday-friday shift pattern! Initially i was overjoyed, but now im wondering if they are gonna screw me once i get in and say "oh we want you to work the other pattern". I was wondering if anyone has worked for plusnet before (or currently), and are they a company of their word?

Does that make any sense? :confused:

Originally posted by Avalon
Have just accpeted a job at Plusnet. Story goes that i turned them down orignially due to the number of working weekends in the shift pattern, then they phoned me and offered me a monday-friday shift pattern! Initially i was overjoyed, but now im wondering if they are gonna screw me once i get in and say "oh we want you to work the other pattern". I was wondering if anyone has worked for plusnet before (or currently), and are they a company of their word?

Does that make any sense? :confused:

wot will you be doing

Plusnet a good company?

To get your broadband from..... NO!
To work for on the otherhand.... er.... NO!

Good Luck mate :thumbsup:

Originally posted by Avalon
Initially i was overjoyed, but now im wondering if they are gonna screw me once i get in and say "oh we want you to work the other pattern

Thats what should be in your employment contract! if you sign the contract agreeing to only mon-fri shift then they can't really force you to do otherwise.

Originally posted by DaBouncer
Plusnet a good company?

To get your broadband from..... NO!
To work for on the otherhand.... er.... NO!

Good Luck mate :thumbsup:

It's interesting that a company that had such high standards is now a relatively poor ISP.

:)

Originally posted by Zinger549
wot will you be doing

Technical Support

Originally posted by JonnH
Thats what should be in your employment contract! if you sign the contract agreeing to only mon-fri shift then they can't really force you to do otherwise.

Contract simply says "You are contracted to work a 40 hour week, working 9 hour shift, including a one hour break, within the core hours of 07:00-00:00."

Thats what should be in your employment contract! if you sign the contract agreeing to only mon-fri shift then they can't really force you to do otherwise

technically thats not entirely true. The law states that for every year you work they have to give you a weeks notice before forcibly changing your hours.
i was in a dilema like this when i worked at coles in town.

I worked for plusnet ( or force 9 i should say ) about 7 years ago for about 9 months.

During that period they changed the working hours from 8 to 6 ( 2 shifts 8 while 4 and 10 while 6 ) to a shift that went from 7am while 3pm and 2pm to 11pm and this was over the weekend too.

They also gave us a paycut and introduced a bonus scheme that meant you could only get the same pay if you basically had no lunch hour or breaks at all.

When customers doubled over the space of about 2 months they'd introduced the shift change and also halved the size of teams so at least 80 calls were always waiting with average wait time around 30 minutes.

O yeah and you were penalised if you spent more time than i think 2 minutes for a sales call and 5 minutes for a technical call. So basically if you tried to really help the customer out and care about their problem you got paid less and disaplined.

Not sure what it's like no though so this post probably doesn't help.

I too worked for Plusnet about 6-7 years ago.

If memory serves, they originally advertised 2 jobs. One shift work, the other Monday - Friday 9am - 6pm. When I went for the interview I made it clear I was only interested in the 9-6 position.

After doing tests, more interviews, a week of god-aweful training and a few weeks of work for them, they shifted the policy so that everyone who worked there had to do 2 days on 7am - 3pm. 2 days 2pm to Midnight. 2 days off. (we must have worked there at the same time AaronD - I don't recogonise the name though).

A lot of people who started at the same time that I did left straight away. I stuck it out for a while before eventually accepting a better job with another ISP. I think a couple of other call centers opened in Sheffield around this time too and a lot of people left to go work in those.

Plusnet was the worst working experience I've had. I got on really well with everyone who I worked with but there was (at the time), a couple of people in management who thought they were running a boot camp not a business.

For instance, two instances that spring too mind:

Lots of people all getting verbal warnings because they got to work late on a day when all the buses were cancelled due to snow. (iirc this was on the early 7am shift!!).

100s of accounts getting changed so that they no longer had "unlimited webspace" (which was one of F9s selling points). One of the manager's wrote on a white board a prescripted reply to anybody who phoned up to complain. Obviously I cant remember the exact wording but it went something along the lines of "These accounts have exceded bandwidth limitations and this direction has come from *** ********". (anyone who has worked there can probably fill in the blank spaces).

"*** ********" got a rather rude phone call from a customer who shouted at him apparently (well... Boo Hoo!). So he stormed out and confronted the tech support guy who had given the customer his name. Tearing into the poor guy and telling him he was on a his final warning. Right in the middle of the call center, right infront of all the other employee's. The guy didn't do anything but read our was he was told to say!

It wasn't all bad in all honesty. Some days were better than others and I'm sure people have "horror" stories in jobs far worse than these. I've just worked in places since then that have treated employee's with more respect and a little more like adults.

I recently applied for a job with an agency and was told that it was at Plusnet. After saying I wouldn't want to work for them again because I previously worked there the lady on the phone told me that lots of people had been put off when they had told it was Plusnet.

Punk, i was there roughly from december 98 to august 99 i think and worked as a 'Technical support agent', whatever that means.

Did you start before or after the takeover from Insight? There was a recruitment drive a few months before and at the takeover meeting we were all told that our jobs were safe and then 3 weeks later everyone hired during the recruitment drive were fired.

Then they hire an load more people as replacements but i left shortly after that.

Hi Avalon,

I've been lurking around this forum for a bit, probably right time to make my first post here.

I work for PlusNet and have done for over 2 years now and the company have been very good to me in that time and would certainly recommend others to come here.

When we called you did we say what the job would be?

You can probably break the company into 2 parts as regards working hours. There's the Customer Support Centre (CSC) who cover every hour of the day and there's everyone else (networks, broadband operations team, marketing, development, finance, HR, etc.) who give or take an hour work 9-6 Monday to Friday.

CSC has a day team who work Monday to Friday and 1 Saturday in too as well as shifts, the shifts are 2 days of 7am - 4pm, 2 days of 2pm - 11pm and then 2 off.

If there's anything I can answer let me know, I'm sure you'll like it here.

I know of three people that have worked for +Net, all were treated shabbily, all have now left and all have vowed never to work there again...

Let us hope that your experience will be different, though if the postings about +Net on the ADSL-Guide site are anything to go by, I have my doubts!

Originally posted by dtomlinson
Hi Avalon,

I've been lurking around this forum for a bit, probably right time to make my first post here.

I work for PlusNet and have done for over 2 years now and the company have been very good to me in that time and would certainly recommend others to come here.

When we called you did we say what the job would be?

You can probably break the company into 2 parts as regards working hours. There's the Customer Support Centre (CSC) who cover every hour of the day and there's everyone else (networks, broadband operations team, marketing, development, finance, HR, etc.) who give or take an hour work 9-6 Monday to Friday.

CSC has a day team who work Monday to Friday and 1 Saturday in too as well as shifts, the shifts are 2 days of 7am - 4pm, 2 days of 2pm - 11pm and then 2 off.

If there's anything I can answer let me know, I'm sure you'll like it here.

I think i know you...PM'd you

EDIT: Just remembered you cant PM unstil you have made 5 posts! Ooops! Email me at Jonathan@joltweb.co.uk?

Originally posted by dtomlinson
and would certainly recommend others to come here.


isnt that coz you get paid for bringing in people for interviews :rolleyes:

ive heard that plusnet emlployees get ...bonuses...for recommending people for jobs.

Hi Avalon,

I've replied by email to your PM.

Originally posted by dtomlinson
Hi Avalon,

I've replied by email to your PM.

:thumbsup:

Hi,

I worked there for 18 months and I quit (best thing I have ever done)... I wouldn't work for them now for any amount of money.

The management structure is awful... the directors and MD imho are bigheaded and arrogant... even lower management are on power trip. PM me for more info if you want to here what actually goes on there.

And btw... "Hi Dave".... "get out matey"...

I once worked there too, worst idea ever.
Dont do it if you like being treated like a human.