Plusnet, why hast thou forsaken me?

[#1]

Right, this is a long story, lets try and shorten it. I have been with plusnet for about 4 years. Up until the 24th of November, i bragged to everyone i knew just how good plusnet was. That was however until this date. Then as if by magic, overnight my download speeds were killed. I went from getting 300+kb/s to 30kb/s. I rang plusnet and asked what's up? We went through the usual "switch it off, switch it on" Bull****.
Eventually i pretty much tried every test under the sun. Nothing was wrong with the line. Until one day i rang and actually spoke to someone human. He let me into a secret that plusnet has restricted Download speeds from my site in question "Rapidshare". He said that he thinks its disgusting and there's little he could do.
So i left plusnet. After 4 years of loyal service, i couldn't even get a "why are you leaving sir?" Just a ok, line will be terminated on such and such. Now in this time, it turns out that i have 1 other provider in my area, BT, which as we know is plusnet but at a greater cost for less value.
I had to return to this terrible service with my tail between my legs and start a new ridiculously lengthy contract. When i was reconnected, it took 2 weeks (c'mon this is 2010 England), so as soon as i was txt i connected, no issues, bam straight onto rapidshare, sweet i'm thinking 200kb/s, i can live with this. Then after that single download, yep i'm back to 30kb/s and have been ever since. Obviously as we all know i can get near 700kb/s at night, 12 - 8. But sometimes i like to d/l during the day, i pay £20 a month for 80GB downloads, why can't i expect to get one 100mb file in say UNDER AN HOUR!
Before that Specific date, the service was quite brilliant. Now it's turned to muck. I think it's time a few of us took our issues to watchdog, i'm sure they'd love to do a story on how we've been lied to.
No matter who i speak to, bar the one honest fellow, no one is willing to be straight with me and tell me "Sorry sir, but we're lying c**ts and you're f***ed, i suggest you become nocturnal"
£240 a year for 30kb/s, i hope some of that goes towards Lynyrd skynyrd's royalties, as Freebird is a joy to hear on the phone, and don't worry, i wait long enough to hear all 9 minutes of it. Just a shame that womans voice has to spoit it every other minute.
I have just opened up a question instead of talking to an idiot from Leeds for 10 minutes, so lets see what they have to say about my "complaint" this time around. I've got a fiver on it being along the lines of "nothing wrong with your speeds, must be a fault with rapidshares website". Haha i can't wait.

[#2]

well welcome back.
Did you change your package last November? as Premium and Pro have different speed limits.
and PN dont appreciate Binary P2p or Rapidshare downloads see http://www.kitz.co.uk/isp/plusnet_shaping.htm
Also since Sept last year, unless you have take A router of House Move option, PN's Contracts are all 1 month with 10 days notice, in the case of the router etc. if you leave before 12 months you have to pay for them

[#3]

Hi Simcard,
Sorry you're not happy with the speeds or service you've received.

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bam straight onto rapidshare, sweet i'm thinking 200kb/s, i can live with this. Then after that single download, yep i'm back to 30kb/s and have been ever since. Obviously as we all know i can get near 700kb/s at night, 12 - 8. But sometimes i like to d/l during the day, i pay £20 a month for 80GB downloads, why can't i expect to get one 100mb file in say UNDER AN HOUR!

We DO restrict Rapidshare, and are very open about it. It's classed as a download site and is limited to the speeds detailed on this page. We offer a Pro service which removes the limitations shown on that page, however this has a lower usage allowance (20GB) than your current product (80GB).
If this wasn't made clear on any support calls you've had, then I apologise as it's something that all our staff know about and is even linked during the signup process.
If there are any other queries I can help clear up, please let me know.

[#4]

Quote from: pierre_pierre

well welcome back. Did you change your package last November? as Premium and Pro have different speed limits. and PN dont appreciate Binary P2p or Rapidshare downloads see http://www.kitz.co.uk/isp/plusnet_shaping.htm Also since Sept last year, unless you have take A router of House Move option, PN's Contracts are all 1 month with 10 days notice, in the case of the router etc. if you leave before 12 months you have to pay for them

Well up until last November, i had been on the same basic package for the previous 3 years or more (30GB usage allowance). I can't remember its name, but when all this faff came to fruition i tried to upgrade my account to the premium. This upgrade changed nothing at all other than 80GB limit now and no chance in hell of reaching it at these speeds. Thanks for the link, i spotted it last night browsing through all the unhappy threads. It's amazing just how many people have turned from love to hate where PN is concerned. I feel like a drop in the ocean.
[quote=Chris]
Sorry you're not happy with the speeds or service you've received.
I'm just disappointed that such a good company can turn into such a crappy one within no time at all. I blame BT's influence, penny pinching and greed.
Just to clarify, of all the calls i have made, which would total to well over an hour, 3 times that if you include the waiting, only once and very discreetly have i been told that since the 24th of November Rapidshare has been restricted. I was not warned of this, i was not recommended to switch to Pro. Instead i have just been fobbed off from person to person. 10 minutes browsing this forum and everything is clear. Looks like i'll have to switch to pro and limit most of my D/L's to the night time. I feel like i have been miss sold a service, and not only that, messed around beyond belief.
As soon as North Yorkshire gets its act together and joins the 21st century, i'll be switching to O2 in a heartbeat, regardless of cancellation costs.

[#5]

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i had been on the same basic package for the previous 3 years or more (30GB usage allowance). I can't remember its name,

That sounds like Broadband Your Way Option 3.

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since the 24th of November Rapidshare has been restricted.

We've been identifying and managing traffic from download sites for quite a while now, certainly well before November last year. Download sites and servers were advertised as managed on the Broadband Your Way products and they were withdrawn from sale over a year ago now.

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I feel like i have been miss sold a service

Sorry to hear that, as I say all the information about the expected speeds is available before and during signup and we don't try to hide this.

[#6]

But how can you justify 30kb/s? If i were to download say the new firefox or a large adobe product during the day, i get around 300kb/s. So its ok for me to download this way, just not use Rapidshare. Unbelievable really.

[#7]

Its not unbelievable, it clearly stated out when you signed up, the download speed depends on who hosts the file, M$ is on a clamped supplier as is Rapidshare

[#8]

Quote from: Simcard

But how can you justify 30kb/s? If i were to download say the new firefox or a large adobe product during the day, i get around 300kb/s. So its ok for me to download this way, just not use Rapidshare. Unbelievable really.

Think of it this way.  PlusNet's available bandwidth (download/upload speeds etc.) imagine they are a reservoir full of water, the water being the available bandwidth available to PN at any given time.  Imagine each one contains 1,000 gallons of water, and at the bottom there are several pipes which let the water out.  During off peak hours all the pipes are fully opened and all the water flows freely to everyone.  During peak time PN will close off the pipes depending on what usage people are going through.  If they were to keep the pipes open fully all day, every day, people who *need* time critical applications (applications where they can't have high latency, like games and streaming) would start to suffer and degrade and the water from the reservoir would vanish quite quickly, so PN would need to add more water capacity which costs money so prices would have to go up to pay for that.
Now, certain web sites are by nature going to suck up a lot more water than others.  Downloading Firefox is something you only do once, you download the 14Mb file and move on.  Sites like Rapidshare though, you download a 100Mb file, then another and another after that, so restricting the traffic flow to that web site improves performance on other websites and also for time critical applications.  Would you rather suffer slow speeds on all traffic because the water is being used constantly?
Now, it is possible for you to switch to an ISP where you pay for your bandwidth, if you go for something like 50Gb peak rate per month and 300Gb off peak, it'll cost you something like £500 a month so the choice is simple, pay for a service which throttles certain web sites during peak hours, but gives you *truly* unlimited, uncapped off peak downloads (lets say 600K/sec download gives you 777,600,000 777Gb/month) download allowance, I challenge you to find any ISP that will give you 800Gb/month (roughly) for the price you pay PlusNet (excluding LLU providers).  777Gb would fill my hard drives up in 3 months!

[#9]

These are all fair points and i appreciate and know what you're getting at. In the big scheme of things it makes sense.
My point was that i didn't feel like i was abusing my amount of usage. I'm allowed 80GB (now, 30GB back then) of useage, why shouldn't i be able to use that how i like with no restrictions. The 80GB limit is my restriction. Instead i have both a speed and amount restriction. This is the sad bit. And you can wave those charts at me all day long, they didn't exist when i first joined plusnet, the rapidshare speeds were killed on my account overnight. A simple answer from a phonedonkey could have told me to switch to pro and limit my daytime downloading to 20GB per month. How hard was that?

[#10]

Hi Simcard,
I'm sorry you weren't told that on the phone, however the reply to your fault ticket on the 18th January did suggest upgrading to the pro service and advised of the difference in download allowances (this is on closed ticket number 31182704).