John Lewis Broadband to Close

elsien

brewerdave said:

DullGreyGuy said:

brewerdave said:

mjm3346 said:

Perhaps it is a clear out prior to the Plusnet brand ceasing to exist

The CEO of BT’s Consumer division, Marc Allera, has revealed that the future of their low-cost phone and broadband ISP sub-brand, Plusnet, is under assessment

Plusnet are not offering a phone service when upgrading to full fibre and are "suggesting" that if you want a phone line/keep your existing number, then they will help you move to BT (more expensive)-if you try to move elsewhere you can't keep the number.

1000s of customers still need a home line (eg mobile signal is bad/unusable) so as Openreach switch exchanges over, looks like PN are prepared to lose the customers which will result in BT declaring PN unsustainable.

Doesnt your mobile support calls over wifi? Cant remember the last one I had that didnt

Obviously you dont need a phone line to make phone calls these days, VOIP was a bit odd to have at home when I started using it in 2005 but many ISP now offer it and you can always go with a third party provider.

Nope - Plusnet don't support it on their network. BUT the issue is mainly that 100s of contacts have our landline number, and to change them all over to a VOIP number would be b**ls aching! 

I'm a bit late to the party - only got my email today.
For various reasons, I do still have landline calls with JL along with the broadband. When I tried to move back to plusnet last year, they told me that as I'm on fibre I could not keep my landline number (for reasons that I didn't fully understand.) So I stayed with JL.
Am now wondering what will happen with my phone number now? The JL FAQ indicates that I should be able to keep it, but that contradicts what Plusnet previously said. Anyone got an inkling how this might now work?

LuckyMoose

I was going to leave anyway, worst modem I've ever had for range. Had I realised BT were behind the John Lewis operation I wouldn't have gone with them anyway...I'm allergic to BT, hateful company.

tonybalaji

I switched to Plusnet (from John Lewis) on Monday evening 7th November. Some how, I spoke to somebody, since then I've not been able to speak to anybody at Plusnet about my order. Been calling since Tuesday morning. Now fed up, so sent in a complaint. Not expecting a great response. Not sure how they get a high score for customer service. It appears to me nobody wants to answer the phone - v. poor for a communication company!

However

Just come across this. I still have two working waitrose email domains created in dial-up days from a CD acquired from Dixons, as you did. I still use one of them (e.g. for car insurance) - if it an't broke, no need to to fix it. This is the first I've heard of JLB's total closure. My first broadband contract in 2009 was with PlusNet, then JLB which finished in June 2022, now back with PlusNet. I always kept the 2009 email domain (for free) and it's still my main one. I know PlusNet can see all my email domains - because they said so in June and the Waitrose ones still work - I know PlusNet have closed my JLB account (I never used their email so no issues there) and as far as I know I don't have a Waitrose account although I last received an Email Alert from Customer Support in Mar 2021.

So I guess I'll have to migrate away from my Waitrose email domains. Ah well! I knew I was living on borrowed time.

When returning to PlusNet in 2022 I had to have a fresh account for broadband (PlusNet said) but PlusNet continued with the old email domain name because they didn't want to create a second email domain name (which was fine by me). But the message was clear: they were intending to close their PlusNet email service, and this will be a whole new level of aggravation for me. I well recall several organisations who use email addresses as user names making it impossible to change email address because that meant an account had to be closed under the old name and a new one created under a new email address. Try that half way through the year with your car insurance company. 

Some say PlusNet's email is closing by the end of 2022, but some said by Mar 2022!. So maybe closure is always a few months in the future. I hope so. I cannot find anything definitive, not from PlusNet's Community nor PlusNet's website. And on the subject of phone numbers, when you've had the same phonenumber for 50 years, changing it fills me with dread not just because of the sheer administrative burden in itself but also I'm getting too old to cope with said administrative burden.

But at least I'm one stage more aware of what's coming down the line than I was ten minutes ago.

BUFF

However said:

Just come across this. I still have two working waitrose email domains created in dial-up days from a CD acquired from Dixons, as you did. I still use one of them (e.g. for car insurance) - if it an't broke, no need to to fix it. This is the first I've heard of JLB's total closure. My first broadband contract in 2009 was with PlusNet, then JLB which finished in June 2022, now back with PlusNet. I always kept the 2009 email domain (for free) and it's still my main one. I know PlusNet can see all my email domains - because they said so in June and the Waitrose ones still work - I know PlusNet have closed my JLB account (I never used their email so no issues there) and as far as I know I don't have a Waitrose account although I last received an Email Alert from Customer Support in Mar 2021.

So I guess I'll have to migrate away from my Waitrose email domains. Ah well! I knew I was living on borrowed time.

Get an ISP-agnostic account e.g.  gmail/hotmail/outlook etc. account. Then you can jump around from ISP to ISP if need be.

Tonycv51

Surprised there isn't more noise on this. My elderly Mum has JL broadband and phone. Having spoken to JL/Plusnet the line will be cutoff at the end of this month unless we switch to Plusnet or another supplier.  We have to switch to Plusnet with a new 24 month contract  Plusnet don't do a phone to her premises, only fibre broadband, so will need to switch to another supplier to keep her phone, so again a new contract forced on her, which we don't want due to her health and circumstances