Plusnet now worst ISP in UK?
Fairly brief rant here.
The staff are somewhat good; very helpful when they actually reply that is although you might be waiting a few weeks for an actual reply.
The ISP itself (and I say the ISP; as the horrendous service I/we recieve is nothing to do with anything at _my_ end) has slowly but surely gone down hill over the years no doubt this is partially due to a huge increase in overall Internet contention as fast Internet has been adopted by the mainstream but there is absolutely no way on earth you can justify this service?
The internet between midnight and 8am? Average as you would expect. Any other time? Horrendous. So off peak getting between 13000-16000 (1.5-2mb) download speeds; 350k up (42k) and on peak getting 400-500k (50-60k) down and 350k up (42k). I am not talking about P2P; this is just in general; everything runs horrificly slow - you expect users in 2011 (lets say a household of 3 computers; hardly uncommon?) to use 512k on peak (the busiest time of the evening?)
Oh Plusnet PRO you say; £20 a month for a staggering 20gb usage allowance so you have a 'decent' connection? Average use of about 50gb a month on peak (not exactly hard even if you just factor in IPlayer/Youtube) and this will cost you £50 a month? Haha. Nice [Censored] joke.
Initially I was going to just move over to Pro because I was so happy with the lovely wonderful service I have recieved over all these years and couldn't be bothered with the hassle of swapping ISPs. The change to Plusnet Pro is due on the 3rd February; a request for interleaving/adsl upstream to be uncapped I put in on the 25th of January (a week ago) has still not been done. Yeah; Bethere sounds pretty damn good right now 24/3 £22/mo with a reasonable usage policy and decent routing so your not looking at horrible latency (45-50ms) to UK servers even off peak. Compared to Plusnet Pro's £50 a month for an average 50gb househould (which is very reasonable imho). Yep; should have done it a long time ago!
For all those who may try to tell me 'my exchange is overloaded' / 'your line is intermittent' - it really is not. my exchange has just been upgraded to adsl2 has completely fine capacity and im syncing 22800 with 19db... its entirely the traffic shaping plusnet enforce; and im currently on broadband premium afaik, £20 a month.. seems like a good price for 512k internet in 2011. not even consistent 512k either, varies between 200-600 spikes and is just generally awful.
Hey Plusnet! Wonder if it'll take you a week to answer the ticket for my MAC code? You just lost a customer of 6 years! Congratulations
The staff are somewhat good; very helpful when they actually reply that is although you might be waiting a few weeks for an actual reply.
The ISP itself (and I say the ISP; as the horrendous service I/we recieve is nothing to do with anything at _my_ end) has slowly but surely gone down hill over the years no doubt this is partially due to a huge increase in overall Internet contention as fast Internet has been adopted by the mainstream but there is absolutely no way on earth you can justify this service?
The internet between midnight and 8am? Average as you would expect. Any other time? Horrendous. So off peak getting between 13000-16000 (1.5-2mb) download speeds; 350k up (42k) and on peak getting 400-500k (50-60k) down and 350k up (42k). I am not talking about P2P; this is just in general; everything runs horrificly slow - you expect users in 2011 (lets say a household of 3 computers; hardly uncommon?) to use 512k on peak (the busiest time of the evening?)
Oh Plusnet PRO you say; £20 a month for a staggering 20gb usage allowance so you have a 'decent' connection? Average use of about 50gb a month on peak (not exactly hard even if you just factor in IPlayer/Youtube) and this will cost you £50 a month? Haha. Nice [Censored] joke.
Initially I was going to just move over to Pro because I was so happy with the lovely wonderful service I have recieved over all these years and couldn't be bothered with the hassle of swapping ISPs. The change to Plusnet Pro is due on the 3rd February; a request for interleaving/adsl upstream to be uncapped I put in on the 25th of January (a week ago) has still not been done. Yeah; Bethere sounds pretty damn good right now 24/3 £22/mo with a reasonable usage policy and decent routing so your not looking at horrible latency (45-50ms) to UK servers even off peak. Compared to Plusnet Pro's £50 a month for an average 50gb househould (which is very reasonable imho). Yep; should have done it a long time ago!
For all those who may try to tell me 'my exchange is overloaded' / 'your line is intermittent' - it really is not. my exchange has just been upgraded to adsl2 has completely fine capacity and im syncing 22800 with 19db... its entirely the traffic shaping plusnet enforce; and im currently on broadband premium afaik, £20 a month.. seems like a good price for 512k internet in 2011. not even consistent 512k either, varies between 200-600 spikes and is just generally awful.
Hey Plusnet! Wonder if it'll take you a week to answer the ticket for my MAC code? You just lost a customer of 6 years! Congratulations
Going to Be I'm sure that he will find that the grass is actually greener.
It's difficult to tease out how much of the responsibility for the current situation is Plusnet and how much is BT. Pricing and allowance is definitely down to BT.
Going to Be removes BT out of the equation.
It's difficult to tease out how much of the responsibility for the current situation is Plusnet and how much is BT. Pricing and allowance is definitely down to BT.
Going to Be removes BT out of the equation.
If it was down to Plusnet everyone would be seeing the same problem surely? In my experience it's BT that's the problem, not PN. And if it's your line that's up the spout you're not going to see much of an improvement.
I had a line problem last year where the phone line failed and was replaced with a line which picked up interference during daylight hours only. This had the effect of reducing download speed to tiny values, but not all the time. Eventually (and after about two months of PN trying to persuade BT that the "new" line was faulty, it was changed for a new pair and, lo and behold, perfick performance restored. The BT technician (chappie number six!) who replaced the pair reckoned it was picking up some kind of HF from somewhere, although a line check couldn't find any!
So there you go....
I had a line problem last year where the phone line failed and was replaced with a line which picked up interference during daylight hours only. This had the effect of reducing download speed to tiny values, but not all the time. Eventually (and after about two months of PN trying to persuade BT that the "new" line was faulty, it was changed for a new pair and, lo and behold, perfick performance restored. The BT technician (chappie number six!) who replaced the pair reckoned it was picking up some kind of HF from somewhere, although a line check couldn't find any!
So there you go....
Karmi,
I'm really sorry to hear about your problems and I'd like to help unless its too late, I'm happy to take ownership of your issues and give them the urgency they clearly deserve.
We have to respond within 5 days in order to comply with OFCOM regulations. However I've just checked your account and I can't see a request for a MAC key. Please bear in mind that we aren't able to accept cancellation requests via a support ticket. All such requests would need to be made either in writing or by a phone call to our customer options team on 0845 1406002
I'm really sorry to hear about your problems and I'd like to help unless its too late, I'm happy to take ownership of your issues and give them the urgency they clearly deserve.
Quote Hey Plusnet! Wonder if it'll take you a week to answer the ticket for my MAC code? You just lost a customer of 6 years! Congratulations Smiley
We have to respond within 5 days in order to comply with OFCOM regulations. However I've just checked your account and I can't see a request for a MAC key. Please bear in mind that we aren't able to accept cancellation requests via a support ticket. All such requests would need to be made either in writing or by a phone call to our customer options team on 0845 1406002
@karmi
You have to remember that it spite of Plusnet's preference for any support requests to be via the ticket system they steadfastly refuse to accept this method for MAC requests.
This is policy is deliberately designed to annoy and inconvenience customers who have the temerity to want to leave.
You have to remember that it spite of Plusnet's preference for any support requests to be via the ticket system they steadfastly refuse to accept this method for MAC requests.
This is policy is deliberately designed to annoy and inconvenience customers who have the temerity to want to leave.
jelv,
This isn't the case, regulations state that we need to provide at least 2 channels of communication for cancellation requests. The reason we decided to opt for by phone or letter is because we want to talk to our customers. We can't stop anyone from cancelling if they need to but we would be concerned if we received such a request and will always want to see if there is anything we can do to help.
Paulg78,
I've checked your account and can see that the next step for yourself would be an engineer visit. Please respond to the ticket and feel free to give me a nudge on here when you do so, that way I can make sure it's given the appropriate urgency.
Quote This is policy is deliberately designed to annoy and inconvenience customers who have the temerity to want to leave.
This isn't the case, regulations state that we need to provide at least 2 channels of communication for cancellation requests. The reason we decided to opt for by phone or letter is because we want to talk to our customers. We can't stop anyone from cancelling if they need to but we would be concerned if we received such a request and will always want to see if there is anything we can do to help.
Paulg78,
I've checked your account and can see that the next step for yourself would be an engineer visit. Please respond to the ticket and feel free to give me a nudge on here when you do so, that way I can make sure it's given the appropriate urgency.
Quote from: _Adam_Walker_ The reason we decided to opt for by phone or letter is because we want to talk to our customers.
So why do you make it impossible for anyone whose work means they cannot phone during weekday work hours?
If you extended the hours on that department to 9pm there wouldn't be half as much unhappiness about the policy.
I have to say Jelv has a very good point there.
You want to talk to people requesting a MAC but you make it very difficult by only being available during office hours.
Therefore they have only one choice but to write a letter which means no dialogue and little chance of a resolution.
You want to talk to people requesting a MAC but you make it very difficult by only being available during office hours.
Therefore they have only one choice but to write a letter which means no dialogue and little chance of a resolution.
Quote So why do you make it impossible for anyone whose work means they cannot phone during weekday work hours?
I'd advise anyone who can't find a good time to call during the opening hours of the customer options team to send a letter, after all we do take the notice period as starting from the date the letter was sent.
Quote Therefore they have only one choice but to write a letter which means no dialogue and little chance of a resolution.
We can and do call customers back in the interests of customer support and retention.
Quote We can and do call customers back in the interests of customer support and retention.
As asked time and time again; Why not let customers raise a ticket to ask for a MAC?
None of this we're adhering to the OFCOM guidelines by providing 2 methods fobbing off, a straight and honest answer please.
I think you are confusing the 5 day timeslot for providing the MAC and the 10 day notice period on all accounts. I bet they still only provide the MAC code 5 days after receipt of the letter.
As the MAC is 5 working days (i.e. normally 7 days as it will include a weekend) and the contract is 10 days it could easily mean that the MAC is provided after the 10 day notice period has expired!
As the MAC is 5 working days (i.e. normally 7 days as it will include a weekend) and the contract is 10 days it could easily mean that the MAC is provided after the 10 day notice period has expired!