Thank You Plusnet

[#1]

Thank you Plusnet, thank you for the £65 charge for the visit from the BT engineer who informed you that the dreadful wifi performance I'm receiving is due to my equipment. Thank you for awesome piece of kit that is the hub one, the router you need to be either plugged into or stood next to, to receive a signal from and anything approximating half decent speeds. I'd like to thank you for the way it's speed halves and constantly disconnects if I'm in an adjacent room or more than 3 metres away and regardless of how many times I seek out the best channel the performance never improves. I'd like to thank your advisor who advised me to purchase more equipment to compensate for the poor performance of the equipment you provided but most of all I'd like to thank you for the dejected acceptance that I'm facing the remaining 16 months of my contract with. You once did me proud, you don't anymore. 

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Labels added after moving thread.

[#2]

I wouldn't mind the £65 charge if I hadn't been fobbed off so many times and you'd actually resolved the issue.

[#3]

you would have been advised of the charge should the fault be found inside your property and not with the BT line.
i assume you accepted that would be the case before the appointment was booked.

you would also have been advised that you needed to get your line using the test socket and NOT with wifi before proceeding with raising a fault - did you do that?

[#4]

I did and in the past at previous properties BT have found faults with the line and replaced it. The symptoms were very much like we'd experienced previously. I'm bitter about the charge because even after the engineers visit on ethernet there were still outages and periods of poor speeds. Our thinking was along the lines of "it will be worth the £65 if the result is satisfactory service", but it wasn't. The only faulty equipment inside my property was the hub one.

My question is, why as a Plusnet customer is it so a ridiculous to expect half decent speeds and range from the wifi router you provided me with? If I'd been advised that I'd only get satisfactory speeds and service if I was a couple of feet away from the router or via ethernet and that rather than get charged £65 for a rather pointless visit from a BT engineer I'd be better off putting the cash towards a half decent router I'd be a little less incensed. 

Supplying customers with these terrible free routers reflects badly on Plusnet, the performance of these units reflects badly on Plusnet and this whole experience has left us with a much changed attitude towards the company. Not quite a bad as Talk Talk, but you're getting there.

[#5]

WIFI is one of those things where you can't guarantee any sort of speed due to local environmental differences.
that router might provide very good coverage in one location and very good in another.
no ISP will ever guarantee any sort of speed on WIFI on any router.

you'll notice the current BT advert where they say their router has the best...... and then they use a word that can't be narrowed down to any specific, they never claim any sort of speed.

however, if you are getting dropouts even when using ethernet then the router *may* be faulty, but the fault may also be with the line. i assume the router was connected to the test socket whilst this ethernet test was done?
did you try more than one ethernet cable? what device did you make the test one? and what test did you carry out? what were the "dropouts" you experienced?

i never use ISP supplied routers. i always buy a router that i know will perform to what i require.

[#6]

To be fair the drop outs have dropped off recently, but that isn't to say they won't re-occur. Ethernet tests are done via the test socket on an old MBP. Speeds do drop off and have only ever reached the lower echelons of the estimated line speeds on good days but it would be refreshing if as part of their customer service Plusnet could advise customers that the wifi on their router's is only useful if you live in a bedsit or a caravan.

"i never use ISP supplied routers. i always buy a router that i know will perform to what i require."

Costly lesson learnt.

[#7]

This is a bit of a strange one   the Fault is not with your equipment , its with the Plusnet supplied router yes its a cheap and nasty thing , if it can be found faulty Plusnet should pay the £65 out of courtesy .

And yes its not the first one to go faulty and is out of your control , if its your internal wires yes then you have to pay .

Ps i dont use the Plusnet Pinkey

[#8]

This is a bit of a strange one   the Fault is not with your equipment , its with the Plusnet supplied router yes its a cheap and nasty thing , if it can be found faulty Plusnet should pay the £65 out of courtesy .

I'd imagine that would be the case, should the router be within it's warranty period, AND found to be genuinely faulty.

As said previously by another poster.  No supplier, heck even any manufacturer can guarantee wireless range/reliability due to the multitude of circumstances and environments.

[#9]

Not sure the router is even faulty, I think it's just terrible. Purchased a new router as suggested. Even the ethernet is faster which I find strange. Getting 55+ over wireless, even from the bottom of the garden.

[#10]

It's not pretty, but Zen internet levied a BT engineer charge of £165 + VAT when the BT engineer couldn't find a fault on my line, so you got off comparatively lightly.

I bet that doesn't make you feel any better

[#11]

By no means does Plusnet pass on the whole of the BTOR charge.  IIRC BT Retail charge over £100 in such situations.

WiFi is becoming problematic with so many stations in an area - some very badly configured such that there can be no clear / clean spectrum.  Co-channel operation is not so much of an issue as over-lapping channels, which is why it is recommended that only channels 1,6 and 11 are used, as they avoid channel over-laps.