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[eugeneg]

In case this is viewed by whoever is responsible for having the router sent out when a new customer signs up, please initiate this as soon as the form is received.  I used to receive these routers on or before the day when the broadband connection went live, but now I am receiving them after. This causes me to have to take a loan router to my client and then visit again in a few days to exchange it for the PlusNet delivered one. Fuel & time costs are eating up my 25p referral commission for the next year or two !

Alternately, for anyone who has referred more than a certain number of new customers, send them an in stock router to cushion the delays.

[northbritish]

Some valid points there which Mark will probably want to look at.  Giving regular referrers a stock router wouldn't really help though as the router would be sent to the customer so the referrer would still have to make the additional trip to take back his stock one.  I doubt PN would send the customers equipment to the referrer as a replacement for his "stock" one due to the potential for an unscrupulious referrer to abuse such a system.

Tightening up the delivery process of routers to customers would IMO be the far better option.

[eugeneg]

There is an option on the new customer signup to have the hardware delivery address different from that of the broadband supply.  I always tick this to have the router sent to me - that way I know when it has arrived.

The hardware always arrives by special delivery i.e. next day, so whoever PN contracts to send them out must be sitting on the order for 4 or 5 days as new signups are currently taking about a week.

[Mark Kelly]

Hi there.

Apologies for the hassle you've had here. To be frank we have had a few problems recently with our 3rd party hardware distributors, due to their poor stock management processes and we have seen a few delays in getting hardware to customers in a timely fashion.

Rest assured that we find this totally unacceptable and are working very hard to improve this situation and are activley talking to alternative suppliers.

We purposely dont dispatch hardware on receipt of an order until we know we can supply service. This avoids the situtation where an order cant be fulfilled for whatever reason and we have sent hardware, only to end up having to chase it up and get it returned. If it is returned then it has to be deemed as grade b stock and I am sure you can imagine the difficulty that can cause.

In normal situations the hardware will arrive a few days prior to the commit date or activation date and thus we generally dont have any problems. However, as I have said, recently this has not been the case with some orders.

As you have mentioned, you can select an alternative ship to address for hardware at the time of order. Failing that I have no difficulty working with you to change the ship to address where one of your referrers completes the sign up themselves, if you want the hardware sent to your premises.

If there is anything else I can do to make this easier for you drop me a PM and I'll see what can be done. Going forward this situation should improve once we resolve our supplier difficulties.