Unfair cancellation fees

ebaydoubter

Hi

I live in a remote area, with no fibre phone line available to provide broadband services.

Our line speed has always been slow, we realise this and put up with it, but always paid for a slow line speed tarriff at £16/month or thereby and this was fine.

Last year Plusnet put this up to £25/month.  No improvement to service, and the same price as their fibre offering

As most of the content on the internet assumes fibre is available then websites are designed with this higher usage in mind.  So if you don't get fibre your service becomes almost unusable due to waiting as pages load.

Regrettably I renewed my Plusnet contract in the spring as the alternatives looked to be costing more than twice what we were paying

I periodically check my line speed and it usually falls within the range of 0.9mb to 1.4mb which is below the minimum guaranteed speed of 1.5mb

I regularly complain and have always been told that that was the max they could achieve on the line

Last week I got fed up with it.  I rang Plusnet and they said let us see if we can make it faster.

I don't know what they did, but the speed went up to 2mb.  A speed that they had not achieved before I said that I wanted to leave.

When I said that the speed had regularly not met their minimum speed guarantee and that I should be able to leave without penalty they said look its at 2mb and if you want to leave it will cost you £130.

I regret that I did not make a note of the regularity of slow speed until the week before I decided to leave.  During that week I have a screen grab of the line speed test ookla showing it at 1.2mb every day for the week.

Plusnet does not accept emails so I can't send them a note, and when I call they just say nop thats not right, look you are getting 2mb which is super fast for you

Do the forumites have any advice or sage words that would help to reduce the cancellation fee.

I know I am liable for something, but £130 seems a bit high given the poor service I received

Thanks

ebaydoubter

Hi.  I have jsut spotted a minute change thet I would like to make to the above.

Where I said that I had had enough and rang Plusnet, I should have said that I had had enough and that I rang Plusnet with the intention of cancelling my contract....

Thank you for reading on....

Keep_pedalling

If you are going to switch to another provider using the same copper wires then you are going to get the same poor service. It is unlikely that you are going to have a good enough 4G mobile service to switch to mobile broadband so that leave StarLink, but that is £75 a month and more money to Elon.  

PS. Top right on each of your posts there is circle with 3 dots inside. If you click on that you can edit your post. 

p00hsticks

Keep_pedalling said:

PS. Top right on each of your posts there is circle with 3 dots inside. If you click on that you can edit your post. 

OP has only made three posts so far and so probably doesn't yet have the ability to edit .....

kipsterno1

Does Ookla speed test not store your previous results?

iniltous

kipsterno1 said:

Does Ookla speed test not store your previous results?

It wouldn’t matter if they do or don’t , that’s not the way speed guarantees work , if the improvement to 2Mb was after they renewed then presumably the guarantee speed was was less than 2Mb  the line was delivering when they renewed, the guarantee is based on real world statistics, which was less than 2Mb  when they recontracted , so it’s irrelevant that they now have a better speed the guarantee was based on the speed they had , it’s also tinkering at the edges , 1.5 to 2Mb is not going to be much different in terms of what you can do with it .

As stated , if there is no alternative then switching to a different provider on the same cable pair will achieve nothing…if an alternative is now available then renewing the contract was a bad idea , but the OP has no valid reason be excused early termination charges if they move to a different provider…..some offer to contribute towards ETC , that’s probably the best option if the OP is determined to leave a newly taken ‘contract’

mjm3346

You renewed in the spring,, if that was for a 2 year contract the £130 seems cheap at well under £10 a month

ebaydoubter

HI

Many thanks for your replies

We have indeed decided to abandon the copper lines altogether, as you quite rightly remark no provider will be able to do any better

We have bought a cheap mifi router from amazon (£35) and a 20gb sim card from giffgaff (£10/month)

The first time I tried the new router we got a download speed of just over 50mb on 4G.

More than we had dared hope.

Could you please tell me more about ookla storing the test data, and how I could access it for my skirmish with Plusnet

Thanks again

iniltous

I’m afraid you are not going to be successful here , TBH , it’s pretty clear it’s not the performance as such , but a better alternative is available (mobile 4/5G) and it now makes your decision to recontract look a bad choice ,however that’s not Plusnets problem, you freely entered into a deal and now want to quit but without the proscribed penalty.
I suggest you need to examine the terms of the Plusnet speed guarantee and the release from contract it can offer in some circumstances.
Typically you need to report the below guarantee speed problem , that is obviously a recorded event on your account, Plusnet are then entitled to try and restore your service to above the guarantee speed , if they fail and it’s Openreach that repair the network so has zero cost to PN , therefore no disincentive for PN to report it on your behalf , then if  an unspecified time Openreach can’t fix the problem, PN can offer a penalty free exit , basically they say ,  ‘we tried , sorry it’s still bad , do you want to leave ‘ , this has nothing to do with historic third party speed tests  ….your PN account presumably will have no valid ‘paper trail’ , like reported on a particular date ( as speed below guarantee ) PN respond after accepting your claim of below guarantee speed ( PN need to accept the problem) they attempt a fix with Openreach , abd if no improvement, they then offer you a penalty free exit, unless that path has been followed (we don’t even know what your speed is and what the guarantee is )the chances of you being offered a ‘free’ exit are very slim because you didn’t follow the appropriate procedure

….you can’t do this ‘my speed was bad’ claim retrospectively using ‘dodgy’ ( as Plusnet  would regard it )  third party data …..for one thing , how do you prove , that while you were doing an Ookla speed test you were not also doing something else on line that was also using bandwidth , like someone on You Tube at the same time  ……PN will regard these tests as not proof of anything as they didn’t control the environment at the time of the test  , when PN do a speed test , it’s the connection speed to the router , not individual devices.

JSmithy45AD

ebaydoubter said:

HI

Many thanks for your replies

We have indeed decided to abandon the copper lines altogether, as you quite rightly remark no provider will be able to do any better

We have bought a cheap mifi router from amazon (£35) and a 20gb sim card from giffgaff (£10/month)

The first time I tried the new router we got a download speed of just over 50mb on 4G.

More than we had dared hope.

Could you please tell me more about ookla storing the test data, and how I could access it for my skirmish with Plusnet

Thanks again

The only way to see your previous Speedtest results is if you'd created a free account and were logged in each time you ran it. Of course as iniltous points out in better detail than myself, it would be useless as no one, let alone PN will take that as evidence of anything.

If the £130 is a lower amount than what you'd pay for the remainder of the contract, then I'd pay it and be done. Don't forget that the router has to go back, take photos and keep the postage receipt for at least 6 months.

Keep an eye on your Giffgaff usage to make sure you have enough data for your needs.

ebaydoubter

Hi, many thanks again for all your replies

I have a couple of thoughts on iniltous's contribution

I have my contract with PN.  My contract with PN is to supply broadband services to me using the BT network.

PN offered a particular speed.  For ease of comparions lets say its 10 oranges worth

I am expecting the right number of oranges, or more from PN

PN has provided me with 7 oranges.  I have reminded them on 17 occasions that they have promised a minimum of 10 oranges and each time they have either come up with the goods (achieved minimum speed or very slightly better)  or been unable to achieve it and made threatening noises about how they are perfectly prepared to cut me off and leave me without service.

Two weeks ago I decided enough was enough.  This was before I new about mobile wifi and 4G, I was thinking about the remote homeowners grant to get a dish put on the side of the house

So I rang PN to tell them that I no longer want their oranges.  They said lets have a fiddle with the line and hey presto 20 oranges.

Now at any time in the last 3 years they could have done this and chose only to do it as I had said that I wanted to leave.

That is what bugs me almost more than the sub minimum guarantee.  They could have done something at any of the times that I rang to complain and didn't.

Now as the provision of oranges has been substandard, and the number of complaints numerous I think that it would be beneficial to all if we both cut our losses and agreed to separate amicably.

The £130 termination fee seems unnecessary