Plusnet... Now recommended by Which?

[#1]

We're delighted to bring you the news that today, one of our broadband packages has been officially recommended by Which? - the UK’s largest independent consumer body! Plusnet Value home broadband from only £6.49/month has been given a five star recommendation for “value for money” and a four star recommendation for connection speed, connection reliability, customer service and technical support. Which? Recommended Providers must score well for customer service, ease of set up, connection speed, reliability and technical support and receive an overall score of 70% in their consumer survey. Over 750 Plusnet customers were questioned in the survey and gave on overall score of 72%. Which? magazine also lists Plusnet as a “Best Buy” product. This is fantastic news, and adds to the already admirable recognition we've had over the last year or so. In 2011 alone, we've won seven awards and been highly commended 13 times across the industry for our products and services* In a recent Which? survey, 77% of consumers said they would be more likely to purchase a product or service with a Which? endorsement than one without, and a further 75% agreed that the endorsement recognises companies that have produced the best products and services. Jamie, our CEO, had the following to say about this latest show of recognition:

“This is a landmark achievement for Plusnet. What is great about this award is that it is an independent survey with the findings fully dependent on the feedback of actual customers.”

For those interested, the latest edition of Which? magazine was published today and carries the full results of the survey. So all that leaves is for me to say is 'well done!', and a hearty pat on the back to everybody here at Plusnet Towers who helped contribute towards this latest accolade!

* Several accolades in the 2011 uSwitch Broadband Satisfaction Survey including; "Best Overall Customer Satisfaction", “Most Likely to be Recommended”, “Best Customer Service”, and “Best Quality of Connection”. JD Power award for “Best Fixed ISP”, Best Budget Broadband" at the Broadband Genie Home Broadband Awards 2011 & Broadband Choices 2011 “Highly Commended” all providers quality and reliability.

[#2]

This not surprising. Plusnet has taken on my connection which had a running fault and had slow speeds of 1.5 - 0.5mb, when it should have 6/7mb for 16 months, and rectified it where two previous ISP's failed. My connection is rock solid where it should sit @6.7mb

[#3]

Oops. Have been a member of Which for over 40 years now. At the VERY time that Which recommend Plusnet my usually reliable and stable connection goes belly up for the THIRD time in as many years. Maybe it is my router, maybe not, maybe a filter but I already changed that with no change to speed. My router and phone are STILL plugged into the BT master socket because last time it took 3 months to sort and only got sorted when I approached BT directly, as a BT line rental customer. Reluctant to return to normal. It can't be BT because they already replaced my sockets and wiring twice. the router? Well I actually have a spare because I bought one last time when I didn't actually need to do that. My speed is no longer a regular 6.5 but a paltry and painful 0.13. Ping rate varies between 400 and 1300 ms instead of 50-70. All happened overnight. I changed nothing but suddenly lost all speed. As I said have changed the filter but also the router power supply. Next is the router itself. Won't make a difference I expect because my line is now no dount "capped" at 125 or 256kb. I no longer trust Which and I no longer trust Plusnet. In fact I trust NO ISP at all. I shall not be giving up my line rental to anyone . Staying with BT. because that allows me to approach them directly - and get great service.May even revert to dial-up because it is at least reliable even though slow. Sorry but I'm feelin rather peed off.

[#4]

I'm a Which member,I can not see where in the Which report any ISP is given "best buy" rating. There are Recommended Providers but PNet is not on that list. Perhaps I'm not looking in the right place.

[#5]

A correction ,to previous post. In the Which magazine PNet is listed as recommended. When I posted I looked at the online Which.

[#6]

Well if it is what it says the value package is a winner for me after £17 a month to £6.50 and as much overnight usage I can now afford an occasional drink. As to the comments on speed -I have yet to see what happens. Peter

[#7]

@John, sorry to hear you're having problems. Have you raised the issue with our helpdesk, and if so do you have a support ticket reference so that I can take a quick look at your account?

[#8]

Which have a excellent reputation as a buying guide because of thier independent and unbiased reviews. This is a great feather in the cap for plusnet broadband.

[#9]

John I know how you feel. I have spent years with poor speeds and huge latency. I spotted the add on TV one night and thought that I had been over ccharged for years. I was offered and accepted what seemed like a good deal (at the time) Now over 3 months down the line I still have poor speeds and huge latency and a support ticket that is so long it gets closed and a new one started. the latest excuse is "the 7km line length" (I am 942 mtrs from the exchange) Strange how next door get an average of 11.5mb I wish I had stuck to my original plan of demanding a few years refund. and you think your peeved!

[#10]

having had a few problems with download speed recently I tried several speedtest sites and can tell you that the http://speedtester.bt.com/ is the only one I would trust, though http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk/ is not far out. However I looked at http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/ as I wanted to see what others were getting. I can only conclude that it is a fraud, as it quoted my rate as significantly lower than I actually measured simultaneously with Netmeter, and told me that TalkTalk was much faster in my post code. Looking at the map revealed no TalkTalk tests anywhere near my location, so I can only conclude that they are taking money to distort the data presented. Incidentally I get around 7 Megs actual most of the time (measured with Netmeter and BT) with Plusnet and am some way from the exchange.

[#11]

@Keith, sorry to hear you're having problems. Perhaps you can post a support ticket reference so one of us can take a look to see if there's anything we can do to help?

[#12]

I would like to say been having major problems with my Broadband dropping and internet connections,but now as been rectified by Plus Net they are first class for there time and effort they gave me,also Great value for the money. Many Thanks.

[#13]

Glad to hear we got things sorted for you michael!

[#14]

Have been a plus net customer for 2 weeks, have been reading reviews about this company and most of them put me off the company, but I don't listen to what people have got to say, my connection has been fab so far and just a bit worried about my bill for october, as i fear it will be near £300 as my sister had that from BT.

[#15]

You can check what you've paid in call costs/additional bandwidth charges by logging into our website. Unless you've received notification emails from us then I doubt you've much to worry about.

[#16]

Hi bob how do i check my bandwidth charges ? darren

[#17]

Hi Darren, You can check them here - https://portal.plus.net/view_my_broadband_usage/index.php

[#18]

thank you bob, i have used 18GB within 2 weeks, quite shocked I have used quite a bit

[#19]

Plusnet must have won this on their historical status of being a small and very good ISP years ago. Now I doubt they deserve this. My family has had 3 plusnet connections for over 5 years and I have been a loyal referrer, than two really bad experiences in a row make me want to migrate: 1) In September my broadband just disappeared for a week due to a card fault at the local exchange. It took a week of me phoning up every day saying "there's a fault at the exchange" and Plusnet tech support didn't listen once, they just followed a script and booked an engineer to visit my house. Surprise surprise, a week later another engineer (working on a fault reported by another ISP) replaced a line card at the exchange and I'm back up and running, no thanks to Plusnet. 2) A new Plusnet broadband and telephone line for my daughters student house was "activated" a week ago but ADSL was never connected at the exchange. We're now in the same scripted sausage machine of waiting 48 hours for tech support to even look at the fault, then 72 hours of "testing" when all that needs to happen is for Openreach to be told to plug it in. Now she's been paying for a service for 2 weeks already without being able to download a single byte. Question #47141983 if you'd like to take a look. It must be the effect of becoming too large to sustain what was previously an excellent service. Until BT bought out Plusnet, I would always get an answer to my questions same day, but now they have outgrown their ability to properly support an expanded customer base, and they longer deserve my recommendation let alone one from Which?

[#20]

Sorry to hear of your problems Richard, I'll give one of our faults bods a nudge and ask them to update your fault ticket today at some point.

[#21]

well after almost 10 years of being a plus net customer i left to go to talktalk(yes with all the bad press)but what a transformation it has been.my speeds have tripled with no problems whatsoever. half the cost and 3 times the speed than iwas getting with plusnet i would suggest they not spend their money on crappy advertising and trying to sell it like yorkshire folk are more honest than others and put some cash into their infrastructure i cant believe i have 3 times the speed and all questions answered from talktalk than i had for years at plusnet goodbye you straighttalking yorkshire folk

[#22]

Sorry to hear we weren't able to resolve your problems Brian. Did you ever report a speed fault whilst you were with us because I can assure you that our infrastructure is more than capable of dealing with demand? Sorry to see you go anyway and hope it goes well with Talk Talk.

[#23]

Bob, I'm afraid I'm still unhappy with fault resolution, download allowance, and line speed. 1. Faults. After eventually getting a repair and my daughters up and running, both well outside SLA, my broadband has has dropped out again with no sync. Looks like another fault at the exchange, but what is really frustrating is the 3 day wait before the plusnet faults team will even look at this. I explained I had experienced two previous faults in breach of SLA and asked for my new fault to be looked at straight away, and that it was likely to be a repeat of the exchange line fault, but it seems this isn't possible. So do I face another week without broadband ? (Ticket number 48639893). I was with AOL for the 2 years before switching to Plusnet, and I never had a single outage the whole time. 2. Broadband packages. When my broadband is working a 60GB daytime allowance is no longer enough, and the £5 per 5GB extra is a punitive tarrif. With the rollout of ADSL 2+ the download allowance really needs to be at least 100GB per month. I'm happy to pay a bit more for this, but it seems this just isn't an option. 3. Line speed, especially for gaming is poor. I have been on the "Pro" package previously but found this made no difference and the miserly download allowance made this package unsuitable. Since the fault was repaired, the line speed performance has got worse even though I'm supposed to be getting 4.7 Mb/s the performance isn't commensurate with this. All in, I think I really have no choice but to leave plusnet and move to an ISP with a higher download allowance and decent response time on faults.

[#24]

Hi Richard, Sorry to hear you're still having problems. 1. There is no SLA for the resolution of a broadband fault. Admittedly we aim for a closure target but there's no strict SLA as such. Only customers who pay for 'Enhanced Care' on business accounts have that privilege. 2. There's not a great deal I can do about this however our Customer Options Team might be able to offer you something more attractive. You don't seem to have come close to the allowance over the last quarter though? 3. Pro is an add-on and not a package now so if you were to opt for it your allowance would stay the same - http://www.plus.net/addons/pro/ Your IP profile has fluctuated between 3500 and 6500 so I really can't understand why you're having throughput problems unless something is saturating your bandwidth, your wireless connection is playing up, or there's some serious peak time congestion affecting the virtual paths at your exchange. You'll probably find that other ISP's fault resolution turnaround is very similar to ours unless you're prepared to pay a *lot* more for your broadband compared to what you're paying at the moment. Anyway, I've given our faults team a nudge and asked them to take a look at your ticket... Hopefully we can turn this one around in a more timely fashion this time.

[#25]

Thanks for taking the trouble to look at this ongoing issue Bob. An engineer visit was booked, then my broadband mysteriously sprang back to life this morning after 2 days of downtime. With regards to your comments: 1. SLA. I'm referring the 72 hours you allow for the Plusnet fault team to look at tickets, not the service backed off to BT. Your own targets were not achieved on the previous two faults. Incidentally, I'd be interested to know if you have a target for answering calls, as I was on hold for 45 minutes on Thursday and again last night. Based on these wait time I'd say you don't have nearly enough agents, although when I do eventually get through they are doing their best to be helpful! As a network manager myself, I know all about enhanced care on business accounts, and I may end up switching my home account to a business service ISP who allows me to speak directly to the faults team when an outage occurs. 2. Download allowance. This relates to my daughters Plusnet account, she's regularly exceeding the 60GB "extra" allowance. You're right that my account doesn't use more than about 40GB. How about letting families pool unused allowance, as my mother who is also with Plusnet only uses 2-3GB a month. I'll see what customer options team can offer us, but they only work Mon-Fri... 3. Pro and download speed. Thanks for pointing out that Pro is now an add-on. I only used to get 20GB with Pro, which is why I switched to "Extra". I note from my ticket that I'm supposed to be on the 21CN part of the exchange, so should be getting much better than 3-4 Mb/s. I suspect that the nudge was helpful to my ticket being looked at a bit sooner this time, but your personal involvement shouldnt be necessary to sustain a good service.