Switching from BT to plus.net - worth it?

Long explanation coming up, so bear with me

I am currently with BT ADSL (no fibre here). My ADSL contract expires in 2 weeks time.

I also have BT mobile, as I have both I get the BT mobile SIM only deal a bit cheaper as well. This contract is still in effect until november-ish.

I am paying at the moment:

1. Line Rental at £18.99/month (I use the line rental saver to make it a little cheaper).
2. ADSL Broadband at £10.25/month after discount.
3. BT Mobile SIM-only deal at £8/month (saving £5/month due to being an ADSL customer).

Having just rung BT they have been able to offer me:

12 month contract at £16/month for the ADSL
24 month contract at £10/month for the ADSL.

The price is fine on the 24 month option, but 24 months is a horribly long contract to be in, and I may wish to move in the next couple of years.

I'm considering switching to plus.net for a year instead. They currently have a new customer deal which is:

12 month contract at £20/month, which includes the line rental, and £50 cashback, but I pay £6.99 for P&P of equipment.

This should save me a good deal of cash each month, even if my BT mobile goes up by a fiver a month until I can get a new contract deal on that.

Has anyone switched to plus.net under similar circumstances? How did it go is so? I'd assume the service would be the same as I have now, as BT own plus.net as well.

My BT service has been fine tbh, so no complaints there from me.

hell no plusnet is shocking.

Hell yes, Plusnet was brilliant when I used them.
Andi

I've never had an issue with plusnet and UK call centres instead of India

Have a look at Sky's offers, using Top Cashback you can get £50 back.

Their offer is £17.40 a month for 12 months, £9.99 setup with a 12 month contract.

I went from BT to Plusnet, no issues, just cheaper!

If you move, doesn't matter if your in a 10 year contract with BT for Internet. You move and your contract terminates.

wellibob said:

If you move, doesn't matter if your in a 10 year contract with BT for Internet. You move and your contract terminates.

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Move house or move provider?

Either way, you'll have to pay up unless you're out of contract.

By the way BT own Plusnet and have done for about 10 years.

My father in law was with Plusnet for quite a few years. He's one that never switches. He was being charged £34 inc line rental plus weekend/eve phone and 14mb download. We rang up trying to get it cheaper as we were thinking of going to Sky's deal but they wouldnt budge even though he has had Plusnet for 8 years. In the end we got the same deal for £24 from Pop Telecom. A cheapo provider with questionable customer service but his download speed is now 18mb and holding. This is also not a deal but the actual price you pay and its on a 24 month contract.

I used to be with Plusnet to (twice). Problem with them is if they bring out a cheaper deal or change the product and reduce prices they never tell you. They dont tend to look after existing customers.

little bit of trivia Plusnet used to be the business arm of the ISP. The consumer ISP used to be called Force9. I was one of the first one hundred to sign up to the broadband when it started. I was account number 59. In them days you could pick whatever username you wanted no risk of someone having used it. I know someone who works there. Not sure whether they still have it but on their website you used to be able to see their webcams and watch what goes on in the offices.

varkanoid said:

The consumer ISP used to be called Force9

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I was with Force9 back in the ice age (56k). Never knew the connection!

varkanoid said:

I used to be with Plusnet to (twice). Problem with them is if they bring out a cheaper deal or change the product and reduce prices they never tell you. They dont tend to look after existing customers.

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I've recently had an OK experience - been with them for just under 2 years and realised I was out of contract, paying £38pm for 80Mb FTTC and line rental.

Rang them on a whim and asked if they can do it cheaper, and they offered it for £30 without any argument, another 18 month contract though.

My experience going to Plusnet from BT was terrible. I was without broadband for 21 days in the end...

Their customer service wait times were very poor as well during that time as well.. 40 mins to 1 hour..

However I have revived good broadband service and money back for the issues.

I can not recommend them because of the above. However I switched my in laws and that went without issue...

I changed to Plusnet after BeBroadband were taken over by Sky.

On Be I used to get around 1.8MB downloads but this dropped to 1.4-1.5 with plusnet.

I actually received my Plusnet bill today and I was charged just under £35 for broadband and anytime phone which I decided was too much and why I read this thread.

I phoned Plusnet up and it took ages to get through to someone. The cheapest they wanted to charge me was £32 if I changed to a new contract. I asked if I could get their advertised deal for new subscribers and it was basically "No".

I just recently got a problem with plusnet. the tech support is so useless. My line has suffered a CHAP authentication failure, i knew that was the case from day 0 as I have 2 routers and each aren't able to connect. and went i start to play around with VLAN setting on the wan connection the router will give me various different errors and the fact the DSL link is solid.

So it's taken then 7 days so far involving a 48 hour line speed test, repeated asking me to input user name and password and making sure it is inputted correctly, send a USELESS openreach engineer out (he did a line integrity test but didn't do CHAP authentication) then send me a new router at my cost and now they don't know what to do. I had to google their own support library to find tests to do on my line and then send the results to them.

so basically if it is working well, they are no troubles, and as the case with talktalk/sky/blah blah. but when things goes wrong you want them to be competent enough to fix it as soon as possible and not over a course of a week and still not done. Also they used to have 24 hour support 7 days a week. not anymore, they operate 7:30 to 10.

So I would go for either BT or Sky as they are the only people on the wholesale market that still offer 24 hour support. Unless you want to pay £60 for business solutions which promises you to fix your problem if it occurs within 3 days/2 days/3hours at varying price bracket.

so if everything goes well, everyone one of them is the same. but if the proverbial hit the fan then I would not recommend plusnet as they are full of muppets.

I probably wouldn't think Zen is a good choice in this sort of scenario either as they only offer 8:00am-8:00pm Mon-fri and 9-5 weekend. I would have to take a day off to report a fault! and more days off to get the line fixed. they may have more competent monkeys tho.

Chicken #16 said:

I changed to Plusnet after BeBroadband were taken over by Sky.

On Be I used to get around 1.8MB downloads but this dropped to 1.4-1.5 with plusnet.

I actually received my Plusnet bill today and I was charged just under £35 for broadband and anytime phone which I decided was too much and why I read this thread.

I phoned Plusnet up and it took ages to get through to someone. The cheapest they wanted to charge me was £32 if I changed to a new contract. I asked if I could get their advertised deal for new subscribers and it was basically "No".

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Thats what happened to my Father In Law and after we cancelled they rung him to see if they could change his mind and he told them he got same service for £24 and they wouldnt match it.

varkanoid said:

Thats what happened to my Father In Law and after we cancelled they rung him to see if they could change his mind and he told them he got same service for £24 and they wouldnt match it.

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I've actually gone and switched to POP. They have some horrific Trustpilot reviews but my gut feeling says that most of those are nutters. POP customer support really does try to respond to them but I get the impression the complainers just want a moan.

Anyway, the die is cast.

Chicken #16 said:

I've actually gone and switched to POP. They have some horrific Trustpilot reviews but my gut feeling says that most of those are nutters. POP customer support really does try to respond to them but I get the impression the complainers just want a moan.

Anyway, the die is cast.

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Yeah I thought that too but then his bill this month is £42 ! Okay he made £10 of calls but they have added on "Landline Assurance" and also some strange Service "CLI PR OR REST OR CALL-RTLRFD". Did a search but this came up with nothing other than finding someone else on moneysavingexpert posting its also happened to them in their 2nd billing month.

Fired off emails earlier to find out whats happening. Think I will have to ring them.

Renewing my Sky subscription I got misquoted on the phone. I'm not fused at £1/£2 here or there so figured it was the easiest thing to do in the first instance.

Anyway, after they screwed up I've also changed to PlusNet. While I never had much faith in Sky customer support I always ended up getting through to someone pretty quickly (5/10 minutes max). Tried calling PlusNet the other night (about 6pm, same time I'd called Sky in the past) and ended up on hold for 40 minutes.

Anyway, it's cheaper for the same thing. We'll see how it goes!

RoyMi6 said:

ended up on hold for 40 minutes.

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40min wait is very common on plusnet. currently on my line, the problem has been persisting for 9 days now, nearly everyday i try to speak to someone in the morning and in the evening when I get home to run some tests. (only 1 person out of 12 I have spoken to ever actively called me back, and many promised call back next day or within the hour and nothing happened) Each time it is at least 20-25min wait then a conversation that lasts 20-30min as they tend to go off read the long notes (for like 5min) then comes back and runs off do some more tests or speak to someone about something. So each day I spend about 2 hours on the phone with them.

The insult is their good will gesture is to refund my downtime in terms of broadband (so line rental is still duly charged at full rate) and give me 2 months of broadband for £2/month. I am tallying my time so I can send them a bill based on my charge out rate to my clients as well as the fact that I cannot work from home and the loss of income and incurred inconvenience (going to nearest coffee shop etc) as the result of it.

I would really avoid plusnet. I think my problem is somewhat too difficult for them to fix so I am looking forward to break my contract with them without having to pay a horrendous amount of termination charge so I can go to someone who knows what to do.

From my dealing with Plusnet, I have learnt a lot about how their customer services works. They have a lot of layers of support, the moronic telesale type people are the ones you get through first. They are basically PN's buck stopper which puts up so much bureaucracy that it prevents you going through to the more advanced support. and 99% of the first layer of support are completely unknowledgable. then you have the fault team which are the 2nd layer which suppose to have technical knowledge of the network but my experience with them tell me that their competency varied between USELESS to LYING CHEATS. these people's role is effectively to buck everything to BT Openreach and not actually solve anything. thus I am in the purgatory that I find myself in. I managed to speak to a line manager last night whom agreed that if my problem cannot be solved in 30 days then I have rights to cancel without incurring the termination charge (Thats 39 days without services). I will leave to you to make judgement on whether that is an acceptable level of services. I have all these in record and shall be building a nice little case against PN and take it up with OFCOM and Watchdog.

Caught up to date with this thread, some interesting reading, some good, some bad.

I decided to make the switch anyway, my ADSL is switching over on the 25th.

I am hoping it all just works smoothly and without issue. I have been with BT for around 3-4 years now and never really had a problem.

BT are hiking prices again soon, which is a complete and utter joke. They are ripping customers off so they can pay stupid money for football, whilst I know it's popular, a lot of people don't care for it.

They have frozen line rental increases, but are just increasing everything else instead.