Plusnet no line rental broadband top pick, we want your feedback

brewerdave

jem16 wrote: »

You've still not explained why you would have been charged for leaving. Properly done migrations from one network to another are not chargeable.

Either he cancelled =cease fee OR left within minimum term = E.T.C

jem16

brewerdave wrote: »

Either he cancelled =cease fee

Of course there would be no need for that unless moving to/from Virgin's cable network as I said in the previous post.

OR left within minimum term = E.T.C

Well quite.

DavidP24

When Plusnet get it wrong they tend to get it very wrong.

One of the biggest causes of complaint in the market are moves back from LLU, for some reason this seems to really throw BT Wholesale who do the actual work.

Often this is because the engineer gets there and finds no kit to plug into and has to order something.

Plusnet quoted me 21 days to put new line in and 5 to 8 days to get BB going.

Seems forever when you have not got broadband but I have been without it for a while now and have learnt how to scrounge data from libraries and internet cafes.

alyscaff wrote: »

Any one thinking of going to this firm , please avoid at all costs,
i went to this site after advised on martins site ,
paid £192.87p upfront on 8th november,
was told would migrate on 11th december from ee,
i still have no internet, have been now told 5th january,
been on the phone 9hs in total up to now to call centres a joke,
been online chat 3 hours ,
no manager , or anyone has ever called back ,
i would not go with these if £5 month,
i am now writing to c.e.o.
Andy barker ,
tho expect nothing ,
martins site should not recommend this company,
they will have had my money 58 days , before i get internet,
wish i had have read reviews first
total nightmare
if i can stop 1 person wasting there money and time ,
avoid , avoid avoid

pentop

Completely agree with this and very similar to my experience. I went with PlusNet largely based on the recommendation of MSE and I hugely regret it. Appointment cancelled at 1am on the day the engineer is due to come round. Huge amounts of time wasted on the phone, with nothing to show for it. I will be raising this as a dispute with my credit card company and hoping to get some of my money back, but MSE folks please take off the recommendation, and if you are considering switching to PlusNet then my advice is likewise to avoid, avoid, avoid.

Kernel_Sanders

froggy27 wrote: »

I am BB only but I have phoned them and queried if they could go lower and they did. i'm on a longer contract but as I have been with them so long and happy, I agreed so now my monthly fee is £5.50 which is pretty good for unlimited BB. :j

I don't believe you got this deal.

JAG

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

I don't believe you got this deal.

Neither do I.

Without Line Rental they won't offer any deals.

DavidP24

pentop wrote: »

Completely agree with this and very similar to my experience. I went with PlusNet largely based on the recommendation of MSE and I hugely regret it. Appointment cancelled at 1am on the day the engineer is due to come round. Huge amounts of time wasted on the phone, with nothing to show for it. I will be raising this as a dispute with my credit card company and hoping to get some of my money back, but MSE folks please take off the recommendation, and if you are considering switching to PlusNet then my advice is likewise to avoid, avoid, avoid.

It always amazes me when people blame this sort of thing on Plusnet, Sky or others when it is BT Wholesale who send the Engineers.

You are entitled to your reasonable costs, e.g. the cost of a days work because you have to take a second day off.

Plusnet entered into a contract and although they will have terms thar attempt to limit their obligation they would be called an unfair contract term.

Send them a 14 day warning of your intent to take legal action WITHOUT FURTHER NOTICE along with an offer to settle for the sum of X.

They will start off quoting the terms but you say "I feel that is an unfair contract term and I am sure the Judge will agree with me" you say that you wish to avoid Court costs which will be added to your claim and you give them a further 7 days to settle, recorded delivery copy to their legal department.

They WILL settle and most likely offer you free BB and Land Line Plus Anytime calls for a year or 18 months.

There is plenty of case law that supports similar actions against other utility companies, it is simple not fair and reasonable to cancel at 1pm (typo?) on the day

editor1

My family have been with Plusnet for 12 months, and presently if you are not signed up with them for BB and Phone, they are offering some good regular deals if you go via Quidco - with a total CashBack of £150 for new customers, thus making a yearly contract less than a tenner a month if you go for unlimited calls, which is cheap I can assure you - so worth changing.

Although I'm in noway affiliated to PN, I changeover last January went smooth, I had one technical hitch that was sorted out professionally via the phone - a router issue as using a TalkTalk provided router as a bridge, rather than take the PN router that we did not require as have a high-end wireless router for internal wifi.

I changed over to PN after more than a decade with TalkTalk and its assorted businesses that it acquired on the way to gaining our original contract. We are more than a mile from the exchange and our speed is a consistent 6.5MB on a regular copper line of 17MB and just downloaded more than a 1000G in less than 3 weeks - Xbox One games being very big indeed.

Had I been the property owner or actually living in the UK I'd go fibre, but as it stands Plusnet seem reasonable and no surprises in charges, although I think all ISP's are ripping us off on Line Rental Charges, which have increased dramatically over the past two years.

Anyhow, had considered leaving PN after our 12 month contract expired at the months end, but was able to negotiate a decent deal for my folks that means they have a decent phone service and calls (all calls) that works out at about £20.00 per month for everything our actual plan now costs £17.00PM, twice what we were paying as a new customer last year, but over a two year timescale actual cost works out at less than £12.00 PM for unlimited calls, SSE our next cheapest option working out at £16.00PM.

Lets be blunt, many ISP's !!!!-up, and on these boards we usually hear the bad-side, but again, I'm giving a positive review based on a good experience, but have only remained with PN because threatened to cancel if they did not provide free BB and heavily discounted anytime calls, which they duly did - but only got deal after they began advertising a new deal for new customers this week, otherwise was going to join BT for the year and then switch once that 12 month contract expired. My folks being non-PC literate are happy and my mother only needs a phone, which she uses extensively - so PN are a good mix for them and costs are better than TalkTalk, who I now avoid like the plague.

DavidP24

I was with Plusnet for many years until I became homeless some years ago, they were a breath of fresh air after BT who had moved their call centres abroad and so offered no personal service at all.

They had their own forums which tolerated more than most and had a customer community that often helped before Support got their act together. The problem with support is that for every problem they pushed you through this whole "remove backplate of your master socket, connect your router to that socket and allow to settle for a week" thing, which ignored the first rule of engineering diagnosis "what has changed". You could have had a working system that suddenly goes wrong and they want to exclude internal wiring, well the wiring did not change, but they do this because BT will charge for a call out. Getting telephone support was always dire, very very long wait times and some impolite staff when you finally got through.

I never found the Plusnet kit worth paying for, even now they provide a basic WirelessN router, yet with their buying power they could rebadge an AC router and add some value to their deal. TalkTalk do a reasonable router, I had three in my time with them and although not AC it was a decent rebadge. They also provided me with free Power over Ethernet when I was in flat with port in the hall. This was not some sense of altruism, they wanted to sell me TV services.

I would consider going back to Plusnet if the right deal came along but therein lies the problem, TT and Sky will put loss leader offers out there, but Plusnet will not compete. You settle for £20 a month, I had deals with free international calls, line rental, BB with evening and weekend calls for under £3 a month with TT. Sky recently offered a year for £5 with no line rental fee.

You are absolutely right that these companies have been hiking up line rental and it is time OFCOM stepped in and abolished it, companies have made it worthless by only including weekend calls in a typical PAY MORE GET LESS stunt. They have also hiked up the cost of Anytime calls by over 50% at a time when inflation is 2% or less.

The mistake these companies are making is that this disdain for customers results in very little brand loyalty, so they become like petrol stations.

You mention the Quidco offer and this is one of my problems with the Broadband market, I would far rather see low pricing in the product than have to sell my personal data to the likes of Quidco only to end up not being paid.

I want REAL savings, not a saving I only get if I spend money on something else. These offers are also variable, you quoted £150 so I looked it up and it only offered me £110 and the first thing I saw were a plethora of bad reviews from customers saying they had not been paid out, so what, the deal is you might get paid if we decide to? I don't think so, for me the reviews below are reason enough not to deal with Plusnet, a company MUST be good for its word and honour the deals it promises.
"Their awards must be fixed

Although no company will ever get it right 100% of the time - Plusnet seem to have a non existent customer service base and like to blame everyone else when things go wrong Mine cashback tracked but was declined with no reason - funny that they reel people in with all these promises and then fail to pay up"

Cashback declined for no reason

I read lots about people not getting there cashback. Friends got theirs. Mine was confirmed for ages then declined. Have asked why but this won't be the end of the matter. Very slow rubbish broadband. Insecure router. Waste of money."

New customer signed up for cashback and declined

Very unhappy, part of the choice of moving from BT to Plusnet was the associated cashback which has been declined. Thought Plusnet were a good companY!



Absolutely dreadful

One week without a phone line. Three weeks without any internet service. They claimed they couldn't offer the service we'd signed up for (fibre) once we didn't have any service at all. Then magically the service became available a few days later. Perhaps this is how they managed to decline my cashback - because they wouldn't and didn't give me the service needed at the time I'd ordered it. Fobbed off continually - different story from each rep I spoke to. Eventually pieced together that they had forgotten to put the order through for our transfer to them - not that they admitted this. Would they take responsibility and pay for an expedited service to get us connected again? No they would not!

plusnet awful

I took out a new plusnet fibre broadband account via Quidco in October 2015. They offered £90.00 cashback. plusnet were due to visit me on 6th November to carry out the installation. I stopped my direct debit with my old provider because of this. I was then told that my initial installation was cancelled and it should now be happening on Monday 16th November. In the meantime, my old provider cancelled my broadband so I am without internet (I'm using my Mums at the moment) and home telephone. I contacted plusnet today asking them to send an engineer asap but they cannot arrange an appointment before Monday 16th November (date of my new installations) I asked for reimbursement - I work from home and without internet I am losing income - but they told me they cannot do this. Why they cannot get someone out sooner I do not know. If they had come out when they were initially should have done then I would not be having this 'gap' in internet service. Why they cannot reimburse me for the upfront cost I paid them, I do not know. Just beware, don't cancel your old provider until plusnet have visited you and installed everything. Customer service was awful so I have made a complaint only to be told that I will be contacted within 5 days. "

These were the first 5 reviews which were then followed by a positive review but who wants to be put through the stress for a deal that MIGHT payout in March?

Then I saw a deal on Quidco for £175 with BT, I clicked on the deal to see what it was offering and got
BACS payment details required to proceed

BT will only pay cashback to members via BACS transfer. Entering your BACS details below will update your preferred Quidco payment method to BACS transfer and allow you to visit the retailer."




Err what, hand over my bank details before I have even decided to deal with you, I don't think so.

What that shows me is that Quidco do not understand the basics of customer purchasing, that you have to go through Attention, Interest, Desire and Action, all they list is

"for new customer BT Broadband + BT Calls + BT TV + SIMO"

Well the discount of £175 got my attention but they fell at 2nd hurdle, to be "Interested" I need to know more, I do not know what Simo is and I want to see the small print, asking for my BACS details before I have trusted them is a big mistake, just lost them the deal and probably me from the site.

One thing I have learnt is NOT to give my personal details to websites that may be hacked at some point in the future, it does not matter how big they are (eBay, TalkTalk etc) it is just a matter of time. So I do not think quidco is for me. There are better ways to get a deal.

So whilst I quite like Plusnet and I can see why for a hassle free "parent" install their offer made some sense to you I am not sure I would have done the same. I do not value anytime calls but considering the rip off £8 that some ISP's charge it sounds like you got a good deal for the needs of your folks.

What you demonstrate is that the real value of these deals is to use them to negotiate, even if you see a deal that says online only, the best deals are done on the phone.

At least you did not have to deal with TalkTalk, amazing how I now despise that company after they did things so well for 4 years. I guess they just made a decision to not value customers, dealing with them is like walking through a minefield.

If Plusnet wants to build itself a loyal customer base that will not respond to market deals it will be the first to offer existing customers the best deal Plus £5. I mean where is the logic of paying Quidco when you can just pay the customers. I know it is supposed to be for buying new business but as any business school will teach you; it is much harder to win back a customer you have lost than win a new one, so don't lose them. Do whatever it takes to buy customer loyalty, if that means you have to offer the best pricing without haggling then do it. The key to this is to do it product by product and to include anytime calls, free international calls, unlimited broadband but to have different speed offerings.

I have said before that if Virgin wise up and offer a low speed fibre service at the low end for £10 with no line rental they will clean up.

These companies are all worried about losing their high paying customers but it is only a matter of time before they do anyway, we had a 75 year old on the forums the other day, !!!!ed off that she had been ripped off for years by TalkTalk. Nobody likes to be stitched!

editor1

That was quite a rant you gave and whilst I'd prefer straightforward cheap deals with the ISP's themselves, the fact remains only a handful of consumers actually chop and change every year - as for the deals and your praise of TT - please give that one a rest, I say this because of TT's strongarm sales tactics, tactics that cost my folks dearly but one year ago and wasted a large amount of my personal time sorting out on their behalf. As such, Plusnet seemed like a breath of fresh air.

As for what my parents requirements are, we'll I know what they are and PN delivered on the service they need, which is a landline and cheap call UK-wide - my folks don't have mobile phones, don't use computers and don't watch expensive TV that is cheaper to actually download in all reality.

Now, if it were me, I'd be with BT now as the deals they had on offer until today were quite reasonable for fibre.

I suggest you try living elsewhere globally, perhaps the USA or even here in HK, you'd some come to appreciate the market that exists in the UK and note that its broadband speeds are not too bad when compared to its international competitors. Now I live in Hong Kong, have a choice of one ISP only and get 2Mb if I'm lucky, this in a nation that supposedly delivers speeds of 100Mb and over - well if you are lucky, also no CashBack and no real competition anymore.

Anyhow, I give praise where its due, won't touch TT with a bargepole and actually checked all deals and suppliers out that our local exchange hosts before opting for the simplest and most cost effective solution, namely Plusnet - although, I'd have been happy with the Quidco cash-back. And talking about CashBack, initially PN messed up with our cutback last year, but it was sorted out and our total money back at the time was £110.00, which nearly covered the cost of the line rental, which as stated as increased drastically in the space of 12 months with everyone, among them TT, who once did offer Value Line Rental, but not anymore I'm afraid.