Were Plus.net right to remove 2 users for forum posts?

UK ISP, Plusnet, have terminated the service of one of their Broadband Users for asking too many questions and taking up too much Customer Support time on their portal Discussion Forums.

Early last year, Plusnet decided to cut its prices for all of it's Broadband Products, but it decided not to inform it's existing customers of the move. An implication which has meant thousands of customers are now paying almost twice as much for the same service.

Within the last month they have begun packet shaping P2P transfers for users of it's 'Premier' service. A service sold and described as a 'clean' connection. They also recently introduced severe throttling of customers using more than 150Gb/month. Throttling which gives users on a 2Mb service, just 70kbps, and a throttle that is permenant.

As a result of this, Plusnet have recently been receiving a large number of Customer complaints, both privately, and through their publically accessible member discussion forums.

One customer, 'wadev1589', recently stared a thread in the Plusnet Member Discussion Forums challenging Plusnet on a number of Customer Service Issues - one of which was this fact that countless customers were paying a premium for the same connection. In the thread he mentioned he was assisting Trading Standards with an investigation into the legality of Plusnet's Terms and Conditions and the recent changes they have imposed on the service.

Yesterday afternoon he received a telephone call from Plusnet stating that if he didn't stop posting comments about Plusnet in their forums, they would terminate his entire ADSL connection and not just his forum access. The reason they gave was that he was using up too many Customer Services resources.

Neil Armstrong, Head of Marketing at Plusnet commented "Our comms team is there to serve all our customers, not to be drained by one unreasonably demanding custome."

The Plusnet forums are led by a team of Moderators, also Customers, whose job it is to deal with problem posters amongst other things. Forum Moderator Liam Martin said : "Part of our moderation involves restricting access to those users causing problems... and this is always carried out at our discretion when we belive somebody is causing a nuisance and/or breaking forum rules. Wadev1589 didn't come close to being banned. This has come as a complete shock"

Today, Customer Services Manager at PlusNet plc, Carol Axe, contacted the customer to inform him that they would be terminating his service and he has 30 days to migrate away or his line will be ceased. Refusing to allow the conversation to be recorded Wadev1589 had this to say : "her voice was that of rude arrogance, not listening at all, it was a true ultimatum of a call".

Another forum user, chuffbears, commented : "Carol is in a position where she should be taking responsibility of Customer Service: in my book she should be issuing an apology over this entire situation."

Interestingly, their Forum FAQ states "Customer feedback is essential to our continued success and we appreciate it all - good and bad. Please do get involved in any way you like.". Apparently this doesn't quite ring true. Say anything bad about Plusnet, and you risk having your connection terminated.

Please sign here if you disagree with the actions taken by plus.net of removing a user from their service for posts on their forums.