Ultrafast Broadband recommendations? Plusnet?

spo2

Hi
We're looking at getting Ultrafast broadband, but unsure who to go with. I'm tempted by Plusnet because of their low prices, but concerned about reviews and customer service. Their website talks about their award winning, UK based customer service, but Trustpilot gives them a 2.2 (poor) rating which is putting me off.

For what we need BT is a lot more expensive, and because of our extension, Sky routers are not suitable and they can only offer to charge us extra monthly for a booster. Openreach have installed all the cables and we have tested with a new Sky router.

Can anyone who has Plusnet tell me what they think please? Would I be better paying the extra and going to BT? Or has anyone any other recommendations?

oldernonethewiser

I was with Plusnet for a couple of years and had no problems.  About 63Mb/s

One year there was an offer to renew at a reduced price and I missed the cut-off date.  They weren't interested in any negotiation and so I moved to NowTV broadband.

The last 6 months I started to have occasional short drop outs.

Wasnt the line it was the router, which is worse than Plusnet's and that's saying something.

With both the above I used a MESH system to provided full coverage in the home.

As full fibre arrived in my street I left Now at the end of the contract and moved to ZEN.

As an aside TrustPilot? - Nope I don't.

housebuyer143

I just joined Plusnet and have no problems with them at all. My sister is with them and no problems. I bought 500mbps FTTP and I get 480. 
It's faultless and their service is very good. I do have my own router and mesh system though, as I don't rate these routers that come from the ISP. Plusnet is BT btw, they are owned by them.

If you buy through top cashback you can get £35 cashback or better still, call them up to buy it and tell them you were going to buy it online but would prefer to do it over the phone but you wanted the cashback. They would proceed to offer you a £30 giftcard to match it. 

iniltous

The underlying technology is the same regardless of the provider , the main differences between ISP on the same Openreach network will potentially be the backhaul network, the quality of the router and customer service…PN are good company but  if you need telephony included with broadband , PN no longer  offer it .

beckyuk

spo2 said:

Hi
We're looking at getting Ultrafast broadband, but unsure who to go with. I'm tempted by Plusnet because of their low prices, but concerned about reviews and customer service. Their website talks about their award winning, UK based customer service, but Trustpilot gives them a 2.2 (poor) rating which is putting me off.

For what we need BT is a lot more expensive, and because of our extension, Sky routers are not suitable and they can only offer to charge us extra monthly for a booster. Openreach have installed all the cables and we have tested with a new Sky router.

Can anyone who has Plusnet tell me what they think please? Would I be better paying the extra and going to BT? Or has anyone any other recommendations?

29th august they should have connected me, I have taken 3 days off work on three occasions, my wife is losing money as we have had no internet. And they still have not connected us 15th september, and they offer £6 a day for inconvenience! Several people been here from openreach, promised to be back today....nothing. Just a load of cowboys.

beckyuk

29th august they should have connected me, I have taken 3 days off work on three occasions, my wife is losing money as we have had no internet. And they still have not connected us 15th september, and they offer £6 a day for inconvenience! Several people been here from openreach, promised to be back today....nothing. Just a load of cowboys.

QrizB

beckyuk said:

29th august they should have connected me, I have taken 3 days off work on three occasions, my wife is losing money as we have had no internet. And they still have not connected us 15th september, and they offer £6 a day for inconvenience! Several people been here from openreach, promised to be back today....nothing. Just a load of cowboys.

You're referring to Plusnet? It's not clear from your reply to a year-old thread which mentions Plusnet, BT and Sky.

If your wife needed internet for work (and I'm assuming that's why she's losing money) perhaps a business broadband contract would have been a better idea.

In the meantime, do you have enough mobile signal to use a hotspot or tethering?

HaroldWhistler

spo2 said:

Hi
We're looking at getting Ultrafast broadband, but unsure who to go with. I'm tempted by Plusnet because of their low prices, but concerned about reviews and customer service. Their website talks about their award winning, UK based customer service, but Trustpilot gives them a 2.2 (poor) rating which is putting me off.

For what we need BT is a lot more expensive, and because of our extension, Sky routers are not suitable and they can only offer to charge us extra monthly for a booster. Openreach have installed all the cables and we have tested with a new Sky router.

Can anyone who has Plusnet tell me what they think please? Would I be better paying the extra and going to BT? Or has anyone any other recommendations?

In terms of price for Ultrafast Broadband via Openreach, it will hinge on the Product speed you are going for. The higher the speed, sometimes the more competitive the price is across lots of providers. And there are some providers where you might pay a higher cost, but it's a shorter contract along with a fixed price throughout the contract AND after the contract ends. I.e. you don't get a price increase during the contract, nor after the contract either. So you know exactly what you will be paying.

In terms of customer service, there is a website called ISPreview which has a list of Broadband providers ranked by Customer Service which includes the likes of iDNET, Aquiss, Zen and others.

As an example, Aquiss are a family run broadband provider with excellent customer service. If I understand correctly, there is an introductory half price for the first 6 months of a 12 months contract and then the price stays the same for the remaining 6 months and after the contract ends. iDNET also offer rolling 30 day contracts.

Regarding getting Wifi around the house, you need not necessarily go for any additional service from any broadband provider. You can purchase your own equipment like a Mesh system from places like John Lewis, Amazon, Currys etc (or from the manufacturer directly). Be that a higher spec Router and add on as many little hubs as you need, or else a pre-built Mesh system. Although you have to pay the initial cost to buy them, they are yours, work with any provider, you can often customise parts of your network hardware better, sometimes they are superior technology and usually they provide better value for money over the long term. I.e. spending £150-200 for a long term system rather than paying £10 a month for Boosters from a Broadband provider which have to be returned if you switch provider! Depending on your needs, you might find a Powerline system, or Wifi 6 Router and/or Mesh system from the likes of Asus, Amplifi, Netgear, TP-Link, etc provides a better signal across the home.

teddysmum

Our son, whose wife works part weeks at home, uses internet for some of his work and there are three children who play online games etc. He has LILA Connect and Virgin, so there is backup, should there be an outage. Both were excellent on 1Gigabit and when he traded them off each other, a few weeks ago, he was promoted to 2.5 to stay with each.

This week it was my turn, as our two year Virgin contract would have ended in a few weeks.

I left Sky for Plusnet, several years ago after the former refused any offer. Plusnet had very good customer service and was very good at beating any other company's (usually NOW) offers. However, after declining customer service, Plusnet emailed me an offer which they refused to honour, blaming someone who 'should not have posted it' and would only offer a no free calls service on copper connections, but at the fibre price, so I had to go to LILA or Virgin.

LILA have a lower price , which is fixed for the 2 year term, but at the time (they now have VOIP  with an expensive phone at £9.99/month, including UK calls) only Virgin could provide  could provide a line retaining our number, so we could also keep our phone setup as intercom. I got a very good deal around £22 , for 250 broadband (doubled up from 150), the phone line and inclusive UK calls.

I had heard or read about people complaining about Virgin, so now I was due to haggle, didn't expect much. However, I got an email, mid August, offering to extend my offer for another year. I needed to ask a few questions about exactly what the offer included, so decided to see if I could get my offer improved.

The first call centre person cut me off after asking my name and next I got what seemed like a nice lady, who said she would need to check with her boss, who had gone off duty, but would call me next day, to make her offer, but, as usual, no call. I then became quite angry, as the phone system insisted on a password which I didn't know, with hash just sending me back to the first security question.

Online chat was slightly better, as I got to speak with a human, but he was very slow  and was more concerned, until checked, that I had an offer to extend, then a lady took over and suggested I use 150 during daytime, as that is when 'proper' retentions staff are working.

I got this time a real 'nice lady', in Portugal, who asked about LILA and I told her about their lower fixed price, ability to provide a phone line, three free months and 2 year contract, saying I wasn't being greedy, wanting all, so a 2 year fix on the content, would be fine. She had a look in the book of rules and offered 93p off the price, so £27, a 2 year contract, as requested, but the cherry on the cake was increasing my broadband to 500....to which I agreed.

The faster speed came on about 10 minutes later, after a few seconds offline and I was astonished at the few seconds it took to download a game on my Steam list, yet the 250 on a gaming Asus, seemed fast.