So long Plusnet, where next

[James]

Having wasted over an hour not getting through to Plusnet to have my price hike reviewed, it's time to move on. Technically, it has been fine, but any company that takes over 40 minutes to deal with a customer enquiry is not doing its job properly.
So... who next? Talk Talk is out of the question, but Post Office and Vodafone seem to be doing okay pricing.
Just looking for 35-40 Mb broadband, no other services. Plusnet was £23 per month, just hiked to £32. Voda etc seem to be around £22.
Any recs welcomed.
J

[Itsallaguess]

Having wasted over an hour not getting through to Plusnet to have my price hike reviewed, it's time to move on. Technically, it has been fine, but any company that takes over 40 minutes to deal with a customer enquiry is not doing its job properly.

So... who next? Talk Talk is out of the question, but Post Office and Vodafone seem to be doing okay pricing.

Just looking for 35-40 Mb broadband, no other services. Plusnet was £23 per month, just hiked to £32. Voda etc seem to be around £22.

Any recs welcomed.

Honestly?

I'd recommend calling PlusNet back, perhaps during a period that's likely to be a quieter time for them, and giving them another go at re-applying your discount. Early morning always seems to be the best time in my experience, although I've only ever had to call them to renew my own contract, so not too many times....

You've said that you're happy with the technical broadband service, which goes a long way nowadays, so I'd take a deep breath and give them another ring personally....

I've no connection here, other than to say that I moved to Plusnet from TalkTalk after many years of minor technical difficulties with my broadband, and my issues disappeared overnight....

If you're dead-set on moving, then Zen get consistently good reviews, here and elsewhere, both for technical competence and also very good customer-service, although you should expect prices to be at the upper range...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[Watis]

Another vote for Zen from me . . .

Enquiries and issues are answered and dealt with promptly.

Watis

[niord]

Having wasted over an hour not getting through to Plusnet to have my price hike reviewed, it's time to move on. Technically, it has been fine, but any company that takes over 40 minutes to deal with a customer enquiry is not doing its job properly.
So... who next? Talk Talk is out of the question, but Post Office and Vodafone seem to be doing okay pricing.
Just looking for 35-40 Mb broadband, no other services. Plusnet was £23 per month, just hiked to £32. Voda etc seem to be around £22.
Any recs welcomed.
J

Well you could try John Lewis Broadband which is Plusnet based but fronted by John Lewis £20 a month £30 John Lewis Voucher free weekend and evening phone calls. 12 month contract after which look again

I have been with them for 10 months 7 of which they didn't charge me for as they had a billing issue

[supremetwo]

Having wasted over an hour not getting through to Plusnet to have my price hike reviewed, it's time to move on. Technically, it has been fine, but any company that takes over 40 minutes to deal with a customer enquiry is not doing its job properly.
So... who next? Talk Talk is out of the question, but Post Office and Vodafone seem to be doing okay pricing.
Just looking for 35-40 Mb broadband, no other services. Plusnet was £23 per month, just hiked to £32. Voda etc seem to be around £22.
Any recs welcomed.J

NowTV fab fibre broadband.

viewtopic.php?p=222117#p222117

£25 per month for Fab Fibre average 36 Mbps download speed, unlimited downloads and including line rental anytime phone calls (and to mobiles) with no set up costs at all.

Cashback available via Topcashback (£85).

[Infrasonic]

Plusnet Twitter help here...
https://twitter.com/plusnethelp

I rarely ring helplines anymore for any provider, especially during office hours.
I find Twitter far better for getting a quick response and resolution, companies don't like the potentially negative PR floating around the web for everyone to see.

[richfool]

Yes, I would suggest trying again with Plusnet.

Last year I rang them moaning about how my broadband package had increased to c £30, and they immediately offered me a reduction back to £23. It is annoying with most of these things these days that they keep increasing the fees at renewal and one then has to keep re-negotiating.

[scrumpyjack]

I left Plusnet a few years ago, moved to BT then left them when their pricing got too high. Now with Sky who are fine - support pretty good - and very cost effective if you also have Sky TV. Also v good for mobile phone - only £12 a month for unlimited calls and text, pls 4gb data a month where the unused amount rolls forward.

[Bminusrob]

I was with Plusnet for few years, but they then hiked the price a lot (*). I did the due diligence on alternatives, and called Plusnet. I may as well not have bothered. They really weren't interested in moving closer to my alternatives, so I moved to Vodafone. I already had a SIM-only contract with Vodafone (£11 per month for unlimited texts, 500 minutes of call time and 5Gb of data). I moved my landline and Internet to Vodafone, and I now pay about £34(**) a month for landline, Internet and mobile phone (which is less that Plusnet wanted for landline and Internet). So far, Vodafone have been very good.

(*) The real killer for Plusnet was that while alternative suppliers no longer charged a line rental charge, Plusnet would not consider not making this charge. This amounted to nearly £200 per year, which was slightly less than the amount I saved by changing to Vodafone.

(**) I say about £34 because the cost of landline calls need to be added to the basic cost of about £33. Usually, we end up paying between £34 and £35 per month all in. We had oneexpensive month (£51) when my wife and I were both without mobiles for most of the month, so the lesson to all (and I am trying to get through to my wife) is always to make calls from your mobile if you have "free" minutes available.

[vrdiver]

Just looking for 35-40 Mb broadband, no other services. Plusnet was £23 per month, just hiked to £32. Voda etc seem to be around £22.

Just been onto the Plus.net site. Are you sure you are getting a broadband-only service?

36Mb/s download is advertised at £17.49/m, whilst 66Mb/s is £22.49. https://www.plus.net/home-broadband/broadband-only/

I'd give them another call, or email them / twitter (whichever you prefer). I've found them to be pretty good, both service wise and from a customer support perspective, so wouldn't walk away myself without giving them another chance.

Nb, as you are an existing customer, I'd suggest to them they didn't need to apply any "activation" fee, so ignore that cost from their package deal! I would quote their own deal at them, and that VOD have something similar. Whenever I renew with them (yes, I am a satisfied customer, no other connection) I get the details of the lowest price alternative and they always price-match, so I'd be surprised if they didn't do the same for you...

VRD

[scrumpyjack]

of course Plusnet are owned by BT so they are not going to given too good a deal!

[Infrasonic]

BT own Plusnet and EE, Vodafone BB is a rebadge of BT, so it's quite interesting how different all their price offerings are when essentially they all use the same infrastructure. It makes a good negotiating point when they won't budge...

Likewise with some of the MVNO's.

[didds]

Having wasted over an hour not getting through to Plusnet to have my price hike reviewed, it's time to move on. Technically, it has been fine, but any company that takes over 40 minutes to deal with a customer enquiry is not doing its job properly.

exactly my experiences before we moved away from them a couple of years or more ago. useless routers that continually died that they blamed our house wiring on - the same wiring that had supported a belkin router with Zen for the previous decade with no issues as I pointed out to them, allied to the much vaunted yurkshurrr call centres taking over 45 minutes typically to connect to.

In terms of where next - cheapest deal with somebody you feel you can trust. We went to BT fast broadband thing which wasn't the cheapest but it meant an engineer came out and recabled the connection which future proofed us against any future accusations of phone/BB wiring etc.

Subsequently we are now with VF as they were half the price that BT eventually wanted to charge.

didds

[Infrasonic]

...useless routers that continually died...

I had a BT ADSL router that died pretty quick and I noticed it used to run really hot, so my suspicion is that these free ISP things are so cheaply made that cooling and power supply integrity are not really top of the agenda.

Like you I've had brand name modem/routers that went on for years without issue on the same mains wiring ( although I do get the odd brownout due to all the new flat developments in my area and Electricity North West fiddling with the supply).

You can get *passive heat sinks for pennies with double sided sticky pads for cooling the router CPU, and/or stick an external mini fan on the case.


*(Just watch out for the copper coloured ones that are actually aluminium...).

[taylor20]

Having wasted over an hour not getting through to Plusnet to have my price hike reviewed, it's time to move on. Technically, it has been fine, but any company that takes over 40 minutes to deal with a customer enquiry is not doing its job properly.

I had an insane amount of trouble sorting out my woes with Plusnet when I moved house, bottom line was:
* raising support 'questions' online was a complete dead end, they would never get updated
* phoning them was soul destroying as it would take 10s of minutes to get though, only to get fobbed off, put on hold and then cut off or told to ring another time or a different number
* Using the live chat, brilliant - instant resolution to any and all problems.

Unfortunately the chat is blocked by my employer's internet, so had to use the phone for most of the problems.

I still think internet/phone provision is massively over priced utility, or maybe I'm just getting old! However my internet at £30 a month is 3 times my water bill , or about half my electricity bill, doesn't seem good value at all.

[kiloran]

I'm with BT and I think I'll be moving.

My previous deal for line, BB, anytime calls and international calls was £29 per month. Just pushed them as hard as I could and the best offer was £38 per month (from their standard rate of £54 per month). BB is unlimited ADSL, don't have fibre in my street, but I'm just 400m from the exchange and consistently get 12Gb/s download which is fine for me.

With Plusnet, the offer is £27 per month, but I am concerned about persistent talk of poor customer service and poor router.
Talk Talk is out of the question..... too many bad reports.

Sky looks the best bet, at £25 per month (up to £30 after the first year). Customer service seems to be very good, and their router seems OK from what I've seen.

Any reason why I should not move to Sky? (Don't have or want Sky TV)

--kiloran

[dionaeamuscipula]

I'm with BT and I think I'll be moving.

My previous deal for line, BB, anytime calls and international calls was £29 per month. Just pushed them as hard as I could and the best offer was £38 per month (from their standard rate of £54 per month). BB is unlimited ADSL, don't have fibre in my street, but I'm just 400m from the exchange and consistently get 12Gb/s download which is fine for me.

With Plusnet, the offer is £27 per month, but I am concerned about persistent talk of poor customer service and poor router.
Talk Talk is out of the question..... too many bad reports.

Sky looks the best bet, at £25 per month (up to £30 after the first year). Customer service seems to be very good, and their router seems OK from what I've seen.

Any reason why I should not move to Sky? (Don't have or want Sky TV)

--kiloran

Its a few years since I have been on Sky so it may have changed. Their router had the password etc for accessing Sky's servers hard coded into the firmware, so it was impossible, or at least too difficult for me, to use any other router. For reasons that now escape me I wanted to use a BT Home Hub 5 which I had hanging around, and I couldn't. The Sky supplied router was OK though.

I was an O2 customer and got sold on to Sky. Eventually Sky hiked the price significantly and I moved on.

DM

[88V8]

Zen.
Bband and phone.

Quality, bband reliablity, and on the few occasions I've needed help they have helped, no bs. They've even helped when it's become apparent that it's my problem, not theirs.

Unless something dire happens to their service, I shall never move.

V8

[UncleEbenezer]

Zen.
V8

Indeed, Zen has one of the best reputations in the business (along with Andrews&Arnold when I last looked in any detail).

But for an OP whose reason for wanting to drop Plusnet was price?

[stewamax]

A few years ago I moved from PlusNet after having been a PN customer from dial-up days. My main reason for moving was that technical support and responsiveness had deteriorated hugely.
Like UncleEbenezer I homed in on Zen and Andrews & Arnold. I am not price sensitive but was service sensitive as I had businesses to run.
A&A had the best technical support but had data caps on their fibre broadband packages. Zen were next - but without a data cap - so I went with them. Prices were similar.
And my experience of Zen to date has been fine.