plusnet discreet term! Beware before you switch

redux

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

... when their lousy web page on Line Advance does not make it clear what the hell you are getting and they are also quite despicably trying to provide different benefits to different customers on the Line Advance package according to when you joined but not making this clear in their Terms & Conditions page. Indeed their Terms & Conditions for Line Advance would seem to amount only to Unfair Contract Terms since some customers are getting more than others when they renew Line Advance even though they all paying exactly the same amount of money and these differences are not being made clear to them.

As well as my comment in a post above about the selection stage and the terms and conditions, it's also clear in a pop-up box on the main product description page

Pay for 12 months line rental in advance for £131.88, equivalent to a monthly price of £10.99 (only available online). This option does not include any inclusive calls.

http://www.plus.net/home-broadband/

Yes, it has changed, but it was several months ago, and discussed here last July by people who found the changes on the Plusnet website at that time.

Something else you didn't quite notice was that customers are not paying the same prices for the two versions of the product.

At the same time as the calls were no longer included in line rentasl saver, its price decreased.

T&C again:

4. Line Rental Saver provides 12 months standard telephone line rental with no minimum contract term for a reduced equivalent monthly charge of £11.49 if taken out on/before 7th May 2013 and £10.99 if taken out on/after 8th May 2013.

5. Line Rental Saver taken out on/before 7th May 2013 includes evening and weekend landline calls as standard, Line Rental Saver taken out on/after 8th May 2013 includes no calls as standard.

You may not like the change, but your claim that it it isn't and wasn't on the website is mistaken.

oldharryrocks

NonGeographicalMan your certainly a master at getting peoples backs up with your agressive posting,allegations about members, and arguments with people not just on threads on here but on the saynoto0870 forum. Is it any wonder that people think your a pain in the backside.

kwikbreaks

I thought I had disabled PM but found I hadn't. It is now. I really can't be bothered with abusive PMs.

NonGeographicalMan

kwikbreaks wrote: »

I thought I had disabled PM but found I hadn't. It is now. I really can't be bothered with abusive PMs.

So an abusive PM is one that merely tells you that you were wrong in your claim that this thread had not ever been Closed and to desist from your malicious and defamatory claims that I suffer from paranoia?

Idiophreak

At the risk of getting this all rather on-topic. I've just read post 5 and am pretty shocked tbh.

I was certainly sold E+W on the phone and then told I could save X amount by paying up front. If they've taken the E+W off I won't be impressed. Better go and find out.

ETA: OK, so because I'm on *evenings and* weekends, I should be OK...sneaky one though.

redux

Idiophreak wrote: »

At the risk of getting this all rather on-topic. I've just read post 5 and am pretty shocked tbh.

I was certainly sold E+W on the phone and then told I could save X amount by paying up front. If they've taken the E+W off I won't be impressed. Better go and find out.

ETA: OK, so because I'm on *evenings and* weekends, I should be OK...sneaky one though.

Shocking or not that it had been changed, it was stated on the website that no calls were included in line rental saver. You could still add a bundle of course.

At the same time the price of line rental saver dropped a little, so the effect of adding calls bundles wouldn't be quite as costly as it seemed.

Also BT retail increased line rental prices 2 or 3 months later (which might have been foreshadowed internally at wholesale level), so maybe the Plusnet change was a different approach to that coming up.

NonGeographicalMan

redux wrote: »

Also BT retail increased line rental prices 2 or 3 months later (which might have been foreshadowed internally at wholesale level), so maybe the Plusnet change was a different approach to that coming up.

Plusnet dropped the cost of line rental by 50p but removed evening calls that are worth at least £1.25 with other providers. Also disturbingly they introduced two tier pricing by allowing customers who joined before the change date to go on having evening calls at a 50p higher line rental but not allowing new customers to have this option.

Plusnet's only way to get evening calls covered now as a new customer is to buy the full Anytime package. All of this is in line with BT Goup's (Plusnet is a wholly owned subsidiary of BT Group and its CEO is a former BT employee as are several other senior staff) general endless relentless efforts to blackmail all their customers to take Anytime calls through the ever spiralling connection fee (for which there is no basis in terms of the underlying wholesale call cost and which is a pure marketing man scam to force customers to take call packages and so make it easier for BT Group's accountants to forecast their monthly and annual revenue stream) and per minute call costs for out of bundle calls.

Similarly Plusnet and BT tries to also blackmail its customers in to taking Line Advance for 12 months by charging nearly 30% more to pay for line rental out of bundle. This is even though Line Advance is not justified in terms of any underlying costs incurred by Plusnet on their own wholesale costs for the line, is massively discriminatory against people with lower incomes who do not have the requisite £140 to hand and is also very unfair to anyone who unexpectedly has to move during the course of a year.

Line Advance would only be a fair product if BT and other telcos reworked your bill on the basis of paying monthly line rental up to the point you ended the contract refunded the difference between that amount and what you had already paid up front in Line Advance. Instead it allows BT to capriciously steal large amounts from anyone unlucky enough to have cancel a Line Advance line in month two or three of the contract due to bereavement, redundancy and/or job relocation outside their own control. Ofcom or the OFT should make Line Advance in its present form illegal until there is a fair refund policy in place for people who have to cancel a line during the Line Advance period.

The only customers who it is reasonable for BT to penalise for leaving in the first year is customers who have had a new line installed or who have upgraded to fibre where BT has made a genuine new investment in its own labour and hardware (all fibre installations currently require an engineer home visit) that has to be recouped

redux

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

... Instead it allows BT to capriciously steal large amounts from anyone unlucky enough to have cancel a Line Advance line in month two or three of the contract due to bereavement, redundancy and/or job relocation outside their own control. Ofcom or the OFT should make Line Advance in its present form illegal until there is a fair refund policy in place for people who have to cancel a line during the Line Advance period.

As I said before, and despite what you said the terms and conditions were and are in full view on the website.

It's a discounted product based on making a commitment for the duration,as are certain others in the field of telecoms.

You chose it and signed up, and so far your complaints after that fact might be a little exaggerated.

For instance, you didn't previously mention, and haven't specified here, that you needed to cancel for any reason.

Redundancy or job relocation usually (but not always, if the firm goes broke suddenly) involve financial compensation from the employer.

Why anyone might suddenly decide to cancel their phone line in the middle of looking for new jobs would be a mystery to many.

You can buy term life insurance to cover the risk of bereavement, but possibly not for such low levels as to cover total payouts of under £100. If the sad event happens, talk the executors of the estate to see if they will compensate you.