New to Plusnet, can I cancel within 7 days on connection?

nickyjay21

So, as the title suggests, we just changed broadband provider to Plusnet, was with sky before and wanted to lower the renewal price. Plusnet were offering a lower price for the same speeds, so singed up to them 18th December. Due to change on the 6th Jan. 
6th Jan arrives, no router. Me and 2 kids all working at home with no Internet, so had to use our mobile data. Que call to plusnet to inform them I wasn't happy with the situation, but was promised 3months credit for the broadband and that the router was on its way. 
Had to put a holiday day in for my job as there was no way I could work using mobile data!
Router turned up later that day so I connected it as advised that our service was live, and since we have received the most disappointing service I've ever seen. We can't connect more than 3 devices at once or signal cuts someone off. So sons xbox and daughters TV connect, meaning either I can work or hubby can watch Netflix, not both. I'm dreading us all being back on it for work at school in the morning 🙈
My question is - given that we are out of the 14 day cooling off period, but we so far, despite several phone calls to customer service, are yet to receive a usable broadband service, can I cancel our contract without having to foot the 24 months bill? I refuse to pay for a service we were promised but aren't getting! 

washingclip5

Have you tried to speak with plus net? To try and figure out what the issue is? It is highly likely a lot of the physical cabling and connection is identical to what you had before....

nickyjay21

Yes I've spoken to several customer service advisors who promised to check what was happening and call me back, I've received no phone calls as yet.

washingclip5

nickyjay21 said:

Yes I've spoken to several customer service advisors who promised to check what was happening and call me back, I've received no phone calls as yet.

That is certainly very frustrating. I can understand where you’re coming from, especially with the pressure to be very productive when working from home. 

“If it's been eight weeks since your original complaint and nothing is resolved, contact either CISAS (cedr.com/cisas) or the Ombudsman Services for communications (ombudsman-services.org/sectors/communications) about the problems you're having.”

what are the cancellation terms?

brewerdave

The issue isn't with the broadband connection as such - sounds like the problem is the router not being able to maintain that number of wireless connections. Can you connect some of the devices via ethernet cable ?
Also are you using a fibre connection  rather than ADSL ?

jsmith9

I know you shouldn't have to, but maybe you could look at purchasing a better-spec router than the one Plusnet provides. 

macman

It's 14 days cooling off from sign-up, not from start of service. 
So you would have to seek cancellation without penalty on the grounds of mis-selling, which is most unlikely. The contract does not guarantee that you will be able to connect an infinite number of devices at once: the bandwidth is finite.

nickyjay21

From a response I've finally got from plusnet, they have indicated we had dropouts, but that they haven't happened today - my laptop however says otherwise and won't connect, surely this isn't right! I really don't want to have to be buying boosters etc, when previous to changing to plusnet, we had no issues at all - really regretting changing now 😢

JJ_Egan

Wifi is not guaranteed , a lot depends upon the router and your own equipment setup .

Do you get the same problem connecting via Ethernet cable .

wongataa

nickyjay21 said:We can't connect more than 3 devices at once or signal cuts someone off. So sons xbox and daughters TV connect, meaning either I can work or hubby can watch Netflix, not both. I'm dreading us all being back on it for work at school in the morning

Plusnet and pretty much all other ISPs will not guarantee any sort of WiFi connection.  Wi-Fi can affected by so many things outside their control.  They will only guarantee the connection to your house.

You are free to use your own router.  I use Plusnet and my own router.  The Plusnet one was rubbish.  Using your own router means that if you change providers it is simpler because you don't need to change router, just change the login details in the router.

If you think you are having internet connection issues you will need to check with a computer connected to the router with a network cable to rule out Wi-Fi problems.

Neil_Jones

nickyjay21 said:

We can't connect more than 3 devices at once or signal cuts someone off. So sons xbox and daughters TV connect, meaning either I can work or hubby can watch Netflix, not both. I'm dreading us all being back on it for work at school in the morning 🙈
My question is - given that we are out of the 14 day cooling off period, but we so far, despite several phone calls to customer service, are yet to receive a usable broadband service, can I cancel our contract without having to foot the 24 months bill? I refuse to pay for a service we were promised but aren't getting! 

The inability to connect more than three devices suggests a Wifi issue, not a Plusnet issue.  My parents have the Plusone router and there are four regular Wifi devices on it - a phone, a kindle, the laptop and the TV, plus other wifi phones when people visit.  Not a problem.

You should try where possible to wire what you can to the router via network cable.  Phones won't be possible but you can almost certainly wire the consoles, the TVs and the computers to it.  If the issues you describe then clear up, then the wifi is the cause of your complaints, and all Plusnet will do is basically say "not our problem".

Depending on who you switched from and your configuration, are you able to reuse the old router?  Who were you with before?  If its a third party router you should be able to reconfigure it for your new provider.