Plusnet

[greshoff]

I am thinking of moving my broadband to Plusnet. What are peoples opinions of Plusnet. Not looking at fribre at this stage but am looking at the unlimited broadband.
Thanks

[geezerone]

I have been with them for over a decade now which should give you an idea of my thoughts or just can't be bothered to change of course!

Had ADSL with them and now on Fibre - both of which have been very stable speed and connection-wise. Price is good too as well as their 'referral' scheme whereby anyone that uses your weblink to register or username gets a small discount per month off their BB while the referred person is a customer.

The only thing of late is the telephone queues of about 45mins while they get their second call centre up and running. You can use (as I have done) Twitter and get pretty good results that way too.

I did consider moving but looking around, didn't see much better with the only choices being sTalk sTalk or $ky. They do offer discounts for longer customers as I understand it but now you can get a year's unlimited BB for £2.50 so may be worth trying? Think you can leave in 28 days iirc if you don't like with no penalty.

Let me know if you want to try them and want to help out another Plusnetter ?

[scaryjim]

I had some issues with plusnet when moving in December, things went very slowly until I started kicking up a fuss, then they miraculously get sorted very quickly They dealt very reasonably with my complaint and handed me a decent compensation package though, so ultimately it all worked out OK.

And I've been with them for ... about 6 or 7 years now, iirc (this was my third or fourth house move with them!). As above, that should give you a reasonable indication of how I've found them in the past (which was part of what made the problems this time so frustrating). And yeah, I looked around when we started having problems but I can't see a reputable company out there that offers anywhere near as good a deal (one of the reason they've got such long Customer Service waiting times at the minute). Hopefully, once the Leeds service centre is up and running, they'll get back to offering the level of service that's kept me with them for so many years

[greshoff]

Thanks for the replies so far, any other opinions are welcome. I'll continue doing my research. Can one use ones own router? I have a Billion 7800DXL which I would be looking to use with my new broadband supplier. The waiting times to get through to support are a little worrying, is there a time scale when the new center will be up and running?

[Funkstar]

They don't force you to use a silly locked in router. I'm using a Draytek 2820 on my Plusnet connection.

[greshoff]

They don't force you to use a silly locked in router. I'm using a Draytek 2820 on my Plusnet connection.

Thanks for confirming this

[jackvdbuk]

moved to plusnet fibre 3 months ago and cannot fault the service in anyway, not had to use any customer service at all as all been perfect. BT came on arranged day, no service dropouts or slowness and i am getting 8.5 MB down and 2MB up.. perfect

[greshoff]

moved to plusnet fibre 3 months ago and cannot fault the service in anyway, not had to use any customer service at all as all been perfect. BT came on arranged day, no service dropouts or slowness and i am getting 8.5 MB down and 2MB up.. perfect

Thanks, Good to hear

[AndrewPoole]

When the line is working, it's fine. The price is probably the best around and the line seems fast enough.

In general, there aren't all that many faults but I have noticed a few 'blips' once or twice a month that knock the line out for 30 minutes to a couple of hours (usually day time hours) and then re-establishes again.

I, too, am using Draytek routers on my plusnet connections and they work fine.

The waiting time for support can be annoying but then again a lot of companies seem to have very long waiting times if you phone at peak hours. They do seem to repsond quickly once your support call has been logged, though.

[greshoff]

In general, there aren't all that many faults but I have noticed a few 'blips' once or twice a month that knock the line out for 30 minutes to a couple of hours (usually day time hours) and then re-establishes again.

That sounds a little worrying, My Be connection has been rock solid and if they weren't being taken over by Sky I wouldn'yt be looking for a new provider.

[Bagnaj97]

Another positive for plusnet from me, 73/18Mbps on their unlimited fibre package and rock solid reliability so far. That said I've only been with them since the start of October...

[greshoff]

Thanks, The more opinions the better, so far they are on the whole positive

[geezerone]

The only consistent downside is their 'ticket' system whereby you log a call online and then someone gets back to you usually via the electronic ticket system. Typically the wait time is around 40+ hrs but you are notified of this once the call is logged. On the odd occasion (for me) it can be a bit quicker but you could expedite this by going to the plusnet community where staff/users help out or on twitter to plusnet and they can chase up a ticket there.

Be aware of Fibre contract though which requires a new 18 month contract when the previous Fibre contract ends. You can possibly reduce the cost by phoning the retentions team and ask for a deal and may get lucky. Bit annoying that the line rental saver is for 12 months so need 2 years of Fibre and 3 years of LRS to end at the same time, but this isn't Plusnet's fault.

[AndrewPoole]

That sounds a little worrying, My Be connection has been rock solid and if they weren't being taken over by Sky I wouldn'yt be looking for a new provider.

I only really noticed over a long period of time, across multiple sites. I use it as a failover adsl connection for my wifi networks. It doesn't happen every month and it somestimes lasts for less than 5-10 minutes but it does occasionally happen.

[GeorgeStorm]

Went with plusnet for this year as fibre wasn't available.

Had loads of issues at the beginning with poor ping in games (downloads etc were always fine), contacted support and they did a lot to try and find out what was causing it, asking for wireshark reports etc, was really encouraging.

Not many issues now, ping is still a bit meh but usable, and downloads etc are normally about as fast as they can be with the line (18mbps or so)

I'd be happy to recommend them

[scaryjim]

I only really noticed over a long period of time, across multiple sites.

In the last house we occasionally lost connection on fibre, but I think that was more BT/Openzone working on the network than an issue with plusnet themselves. Can't remember it happening in the last year or so though.