FAO PN Staff

Possible new account. For a maximum usage of 14 hours a week, emails and web browsing. For a very small wedding car hire business located in a secure garage unit, do we really have to have a 24 month business contract? We are located in a market three exchange so qualify for the Option 1 package.

The website says

Prices vary for 12 month contracts

in "Stuff you need to know", and the FAQs and Legal stuff both say 12 and 24 month contracts.

Looks like a negotiation job, (perhaps re connection costs etc.), seeing as there don't appear to be any 12-month prices published.

This is what confused me. The premises are only occupied for around 12/14 hours a week. I don't see the point of paying more than £10 a month for the broadband bearing in mind the limited use. Plus the fact that a 24 month contract seems rather excessive. There would be an up front connection charge as the line doesn't have broadband activated.

Now if PN were to let us have the residential Plusnet Value at £6.49 a month for a Market 3 exchange, no router, that could change my whole perception of them as a company.

If you haven't already done so, you may get a faster response here

Not being a current Plusnet customer I can't post there, but thanks anyway.

Sorry I fogot that was an "exclusive" forum
I can post a reference to this post on there if you would like it brought to their attention.

Thank you kind sir.

As your predicted usage is less than some domestic users and if you are prepared to not get a repair service that the business service receives I would get a domestic service and then seek forgiveness if PN get stroppy.

Is the phone line classed as business or domestic? That could influence whether you get caught.

In reply to a post by wingco1:

Now if PN were to let us have the residential Plusnet Value at £6.49 a month for a Market 3 exchange, no router, that could change my whole perception of them as a company.

Businesses are expected to be able to make a profit, and be able to afford the extra fiver a month. I'm sure you'll find a better deal elsewhere though.

My gf's company have moved their BB and phone to PN lately and have saved a packet. They hardly use the Internet nor make hundreds of external calls (service company), so while they don't utilise the potential of the deal to the full, they have cut their costs down to next to nothing compared to previous contracts. The only sticking point was the contract length, but they didn't see a problem since they don't use the service as much as others might. The only problems they've had were the big outages which affected whole regions.

In reply to a post by wingco1:

Thank you kind sir.

Have done, see here

Hope it helps

Is the phone line classed as business or domestic? That could influence whether you get caught.

I understand it's classed as business. I don't mind paying the £10pm for the Business Option 1, I'm just naturally adverse to 24 month contracts for the privilege.

The 12/14 hours per week is of course irrelevant to the cost of providing the service. Broadband is not dialup.

What about a dongle?

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 15-May-11 21:26:42)

The 12/14 hours per week is of course irrelevant to the cost of providing the service.

I appreciate that. It was just an indication that basically providing it worked, we wouldn't be any trouble to the CSC. We would need to pay a connection charge as broadband has never been on the line. We wouldn't need a router, so why a 24 month contract for minimal usage?

We currently use a dongle but congestion seems to be a problem at our location.

Edited by wingco1 (Sun 15-May-11 21:38:52)

3G dongle?

Just amended my post as you posted. We use a dongle at the moment, but reception and congestion seems to be a problem at our location.

other providers do monthly contracts

They do indeed. But we were hoping not to have to pay over £10 a month.

Broadband is always on, and the hours of use bears no relevence to the cost of the service.

You might want to consider a residential package?

£10 a month is very low... Your going to struggle to find a specific business package for this price with no contract. This is due to the fact the gaining ISP will be charged for the activation of the broadband and have to make this money back someway.

In reply to a post by krazykizza:

Broadband is always on, and the hours of use bears no relevence to the cost of the service.

If that was true there would be no need to throttle and have allowances.

Edited by deleted (Mon 16-May-11 13:25:33)

You might want to consider a residential package?

The phone line is 'tagged' as a business line. I understand about the hours of use, it was more a tongue in cheek statement rather than a serious negotiating point.

I understand that providing broadband on the line will be charged, we have no problem with that and will pay 'up front'. We don't require the ISP to provide a router. Total cost to ISP so far, £0.00. Business Option 1 is available on a 24 month contract. We would be happy to have a 12 month contract at the Option 1 price of £10 pm.

In reply to a post by wingco1:

We would be happy to have a 12 month contract at the Option 1 price of £10 pm.

So have you asked officially, or PM'ed the rep of your choice? You are unlikely to get a specific non-standard contract agreed in a public talking-shop, as if you could then the whole structure of the packages offered is undermined.

I was thinking the same, however they could post something along the lines of "give us a call and we'll see what we can do".

As there's been no reply from any PN staff, perhaps they are writing a "special contract" for you

In reply to a post by wingco1:

I understand that providing broadband on the line will be charged, we have no problem with that and will pay 'up front'. We don't require the ISP to provide a router. Total cost to ISP so far, £0.00. Business Option 1 is available on a 24 month contract. We would be happy to have a 12 month contract at the Option 1 price of £10 pm.

You should be able to select a 12 month contract, although IIRC it'll bump the monthly subscription costs to £12. Also worth noting that the prices are exclusive of VAT.

Thanks for the reply.

Capacity on the central links is bought separately from the connections.

Broadband is always on. http://www.plus.net/support/service/network_performa... shows that the majority of users leave their routers on 24x7. The capacity on the central links is a fraction of the sum of the connection speeds of all the connected users - that's why you need throttling and allowances.

The business has signed up to PN's Option 1 business connection. The PN email address won't be used, but have we to monitor the postmaster@ mail address, for important info from PN?

I don't know about the business packages but on the residential ones you just specify an email address for communications and they all go to that.

Well according to the emails received from PN. Two email addresses have been created, one being a postmaster@ the other being created from the application information. The email informing us of the postmaster@ address, also states anything sent to postmaster@ will be forwarded to the other

Again, I don't know exactly how it looks for a business account, but for my account, on this page, you just enter whatever email address you like and that is what Plusnet will use. You can then forget about the Plusnet email address. When you say "the other being created from the application information", if that is the email address that was specified in the contact details when the account was applied for, it sounds like it's doing what you want anyway.

if that is the email address that was specified in the contact details when the account was applied for, it sounds like it's doing what you want anyway.

That's not the case. One mail address created by plusnet is [email protected], the second created by plusnet is [email protected].

We don't intend using any plusnet supplied email address, however as plusnet are using an address we supplied to update the progress of the connection I would assume that would be the default contact address. However I'd prefer not to assume.

Hi Wingco1,

Basically we'll send one copy of each notification to the email address that's on the account and one to the postmaster mailbox. If you don't want to monitor the postmaster one that's fine as the notifications will be sent to the address on the account as well.

Hope that helps,

I have it in the back of my mind that the monitoring postmaster requirement is from when people hosted websites.

Thanks Matt.