PLUSNET DEAD?

Has PlusNet ceased? My broadband is off, their online chat is off, their technical support lines dead tone, their customer service sales line diverting to a mailbox. Doesn't look good.

Edited by deleted (Thu 10-Sep-15 09:14:39)

Yep, I'm down too. Just restarting the router in case it makes any difference. No service status email received.

Edit: yes, restarting the router fixed it.
Further edit: http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,1436...

Edited by kasg (Thu 10-Sep-15 09:04:13)

https://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,143...

Hopefully some useful updates will be posted here

Yes, that's the same thread I posted. Seems to be back now. To be fair, this is the first outage I have had for many, many months.

Edit: well OK, the Plusnet website isn't up yet, but I'm less concerned with that than my ability to connect.

Edited by kasg (Thu 10-Sep-15 09:26:31)

In reply to a post by kasg:

To be fair, this is the first outage I have had for many, many months.

To be fair the broadband outage is new, but the customer service lines and communication channels seem to keep going down periodically over last few months with it getting worse recently...

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

To be fair the broadband outage is new, but the customer service lines and communication channels seem to keep going down periodically over last few months with it getting worse recently...

But as the service has been so reliable, I haven't needed them!

Well with the amount of money they lose week in week out with their free customer deals with cashback it's not surprising they keep going down. How they are still going baffles me even with BT behind them.

And then the people who take these deals are not happy with the service they get (I am not referring to you in that comment - just in general)

I am glad I am not with nor would ever be with this outfit.

Comments like this never help..

http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?topic=1436...

I bet he is on residential as well.

Edited by deleted (Thu 10-Sep-15 09:38:48)

We had trouble earlier (downloading papers for breakfast), but it is all up and connected again now. Modem remained connected the whole time, (system up time 13 days 15 hours 18 minutes). Member Centre still down.

In reply to a post by kasg:

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

To be fair the broadband outage is new, but the customer service lines and communication channels seem to keep going down periodically over last few months with it getting worse recently...

But as the service has been so reliable, I haven't needed them!

Well you did now!

An ISP should be judged on how it does when you need them, not when you don't - so score for PN would be a 0/10 right now by the sounds of it.

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

Well you did now!

Actually I didn't. I checked here on my mobile phone and saw the post in the Community forum, which was still up.

Wow. Jumped in the nick of time.

In reply to a post by kasg:

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

Well you did now!

Actually I didn't. I checked here on my mobile phone and saw the post in the Community forum, which was still up.

Well then I am pleased for you. But they are still [censored] sorry

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Wow. Jumped in the nick of time.

It would appear so - how is your new ISP?

And, of course, no other ISP ever has any outages whatsoever, it's only Plusnet, as we all know.

Or is it dying?
I have been a loyal supporter of force9 for more years than I care to remember. Service has been 'grand' as they say in Yorkshire.
But it appears that since a large conglomerate took over there has been a slide .
It has been over 12 months since I was promise fibre access.
I have had numerous strange breaks in service.
Been told assistance was only available if I used their rubbish modem.
When this had problems was told it is out of warranty and I either pay for a replacement or sign a new contract and pay for postage.
Eventually replaced it with my own (TP Link) and voila 26 days uninterrupted service at bandwidth 20% higher then before . Even if 3.1MB is pedestrian by standards today.
And then today!!
OK rant over but is it just me?

In reply to a post by kasg:

And, of course, no other ISP ever has any outages whatsoever, it's only Plusnet, as we all know.

The ones I have been on don't do silly offers they charge everyone 1 set price and it's usually at the higher scale (BTB,AAISP,Zen) and yes Zen had an outage about 3 months ago however their backup systems come up so fast there were 13 seconds of downtime. very few noticed.

In reply to a post by redtiger58:

Or is it dying?
I have been a loyal supporter of force9 for more years than I care to remember. Service has been 'grand' as they say in Yorkshire.
But it appears that since a large conglomerate took over there has been a slide .
It has been over 12 months since I was promise fibre access.
I have had numerous strange breaks in service.
Been told assistance was only available if I used their rubbish modem.
When this had problems was told it is out of warranty and I either pay for a replacement or sign a new contract and pay for postage.
Eventually replaced it with my own (TP Link) and voila 26 days uninterrupted service at bandwidth 20% higher then before . Even if 3.1MB is pedestrian by standards today.
And then today!!
OK rant over but is it just me?

The only read GiffGaff exists is because it's being bankrolled by Telefonica (62M in the red at last accounts) and I am sure PN is now the same - Being bank rolled by BT. No way would they still be around if they didn't have that.

Mind you if they didn't have BT I would never have expected them to go down this silly route anyway

No problem with the basic ADSL1 connection today ....... so far.

Can't connect to the member centre (PN portal) or PN website, OK for Community forum.

In reply to a post by kasg:

And, of course, no other ISP ever has any outages whatsoever, it's only Plusnet, as we all know.

no other ISP seems to have outages of some sort weekly.... or twice within a week and then the performance between outages sucks too...

You can "try" and defend them all you like but the fact is they have admitted issues, they even admitted that they are in breach of users contracts when they ended mine early and then even compensated be couple hundred pounds for the inconvenience and consistent lies and broken terms and conditions.

So if you unaffected (as you claim) why are you here..... you don't work for Plusnet and "apparently" have no idea of the issues others have been through, so do us all a favour and contribute something useful or ......

In reply to a post by Apprentice:

No problem with the basic ADSL1 connection today ....... so far.

Can't connect to the member centre (PN portal) or PN website, OK for Community forum.

ADSL1 as in Market 1 connection yes... I've found them to avoid nearly all issues with Plusnet to be fair.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

no other ISP seems to have outages of some sort weekly.... or twice within a week and then the performance between outages sucks too...

Personally, I have not encountered that at all. I am not saying that others have not, I can only speak from my own experience.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

You can "try" and defend them all you like but the fact is they have admitted issues, they even admitted that they are in breach of users contracts when they ended mine early and then even compensated be couple hundred pounds for the inconvenience and consistent lies and broken terms and conditions.

I am not "defending" Plusnet at all, I am simply stating my own experience. I am not happy with the recent changes and have said so, but they have not affected me personally.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

So if you unaffected (as you claim) why are you here..... you don't work for Plusnet and "apparently" have no idea of the issues others have been through, so do us all a favour and contribute something useful or ......

That is just downright offensive.

The fact is that this post is regarding "another" issue at Plusnet, but you seem to have changed the topic into discussing other providers and there reliability (of which I have given you an opinion)

You also commented first saying you was down and restarted your equipment but then you say your weren't down and didn't do anything to your connection and now you say this is the first outage in months that you've suffered??

So which one is it???

OK, I might of jumped to the conclusion of "defending Plusnet" for that I apologies.

I do not apologise for my final comments regarding your posts and there usefulness to the community on here, but back to my first point regarding the changing of topic, it isn't helpful for those who are trying to get information or even work out the potential issue...

I noticed this this morning, but didn't have time to investigate fully.

Changing DNS entry didn't resolve the issue and it still seemed to be an issue with a PlusNet DNS system (which was interesting as it shouldn't have been using that).

My initial thought was that perhaps something related to their inspection or monitoring (of what we are browsing to etc) that was at fault given that DNS lookups were working correctly when DNS server entry was changed and used. It seemed even when we were using alternative DNS servers there was still a lookup performed by PlusNet DNS, the question is why?

I suspect they look up the site you are visiting against a database they have to determine it's traffic prioritisation level etc or other monitoring of what sites users visit. This is what is failing, hence halting browsing. - This is pure guesswork on my part, I have no evidence to back this up.

Using an encrypted tunnel resolved all the issues immediately (again using Google DNS). Take from that what you will...

One thing for certain, PlusNet do need to be more open and prompt with their status updates.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

You also commented first saying you was down and restarted your equipment but then you say your weren't down and didn't do anything to your connection and now you say this is the first outage in months that you've suffered??

So which one is it???

I have no idea what you are talking about, there is no contradiction at all in my posts.

In reply to a post by kasg:

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

You also commented first saying you was down and restarted your equipment but then you say your weren't down and didn't do anything to your connection and now you say this is the first outage in months that you've suffered??

So which one is it???

I have no idea what you are talking about, there is no contradiction at all in my posts.

OK Well I'll list them then...

In reply to a post by kasg:

Yep, I'm down too. Just restarting the router in case it makes any difference. No service status email received.

Edit: yes, restarting the router fixed it.
Further edit: http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,1436...

In reply to a post by kasg:

Yes, that's the same thread I posted. Seems to be back now. To be fair, this is the first outage I have had for many, many months.

Edit: well OK, the Plusnet website isn't up yet, but I'm less concerned with that than my ability to connect.

In reply to a post by kasg:

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

Well you did now!

Actually I didn't. I checked here on my mobile phone and saw the post in the Community forum, which was still up.

.....

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

no other ISP seems to have outages of some sort weekly.... or twice within a week and then the performance between outages sucks too...

Plusnet have weekly outages? News to me and probably most on here...

How is he contradicting himself?

His service was down, he rebooted his router and this fixed it. The Plusnet website is still inaccessible, as it is for those on non-Plusnet connections.

Looks very plain and clear what kasg said - no contradiction at all.

Of some sort yes... wether its the customer services lines going down, the chat not working... the service going down for blocks of users at a time...

It would be news to you though, it don't seem you ever have problems with your FTTP!

I wonder if your using Plusnet's DNS at all... I don't suppose you have the standard Plusnet customers setup...

Still no idea what you're on about. Has anyone else?

Edited by kasg (Thu 10-Sep-15 10:53:48)

OK fine, I have just noticed that you was referring to customer service and not the service itself...

Apologies!

Just another example of topics crossing and confusion amongst posts.

Edited by mlmclaren (Thu 10-Sep-15 10:56:29)

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Apologies!

Thank you.

I've not seen any news about what you're claiming.

Well there wasn't exactly a f..... press event now was there!

Its in the complaints from the customers... but I don't think their opinion counts to you.

AND ONCE AGAIN THE THREADS GONE OFF TOPIC!

Edited by mlmclaren (Thu 10-Sep-15 11:06:30)

In reply to a post by marcusjclifford:

My initial thought was that perhaps something related to their inspection or monitoring (of what we are browsing to etc)

Plusnet don't do that and if they are ever found to be doing so you could sue them in the Euro courts and win easily.

But like I said - they don't do that.

Outages happen with any ISP, the immediate effects are usually unpleasant but stuff gets fixed in a reasonable time.

Where PlusNet fall down is their poor crisis control procedures part of which should be a process whereby their clients are given useful information on the nature of the failure and when they can expect service to be resumed. That takes good management available 24 hours a day to protect the backs of the engineers who are trying to fix the problems.

Their recent ceasing of 24/7 support for residential clients was a loaded 12 gauge shotgun, with a hair trigger, aimed at their corporate foot.

In reply to a post by oaksys:

Outages happen with any ISP, the immediate effects are usually unpleasant but stuff gets fixed in a reasonable time.

Where PlusNet fall down is their poor crisis control procedures part of which should be a process whereby their clients are given useful information on the nature of the failure and when they can expect service to be resumed. That takes good management available 24 hours a day to protect the backs of the engineers who are trying to fix the problems.

Their recent ceasing of 24/7 support for residential clients was a loaded 12 gauge shotgun, with a hair trigger, aimed at their corporate foot.

Plusnet have been falling down for a long time. I don't think it's all about the CS. Zen does not have 24/7 and they charge much more than PN so they should have it- but it works without

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

I've not seen any news about what you're claiming.

Maybe this?

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/08/uk-isp-...

My three recommend friends start to BLAME me now for poor PN service they say I only after their referral money! And now lose my friends. Thanks PN.

Edited by adslmax (Thu 10-Sep-15 12:15:22)

It sounds like there was a lot who lost the connection, there was a major outage according to the phone call. But they got it back up pretty quickly and in over 2 years with them I have only had 3 problems with them with were resolved quickly. My contract has ended and I am on a rolling one until I renew or change to a different one.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

My three recommend friends start to BLAME me now for poor PN service they say I only after their referral money! And now lose my friends. Thanks PN.

Get some new friends. They sound like douchebags anyway!

In reply to a post by alext05:

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

I've not seen any news about what you're claiming.

Maybe this?

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/08/uk-isp-...

and 2 weeks later..

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/09/website...

Is that a weekly outage?

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

Get some new friends. They sound like douchebags anyway!

I ain't worry as they cannot cancel PN anyway (they just start new contract 18 months) so my referral are safe for 18 months for now unless if they can afford to move away from PN with early termination fee!

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

Is that a weekly outage?

probably will happen one day if PN get worse and worse!

In reply to a post by adslmax:

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

Get some new friends. They sound like douchebags anyway!

I ain't worry as they cannot cancel PN anyway (they just start new contract 18 months) so my referral are safe for 18 months for now unless if they can afford to move away from PN with early termination fee!

So your "friends" were right then really!!

Edited by mlmclaren (Thu 10-Sep-15 12:39:24)

They forgive me now as I told them it only once in the last 4 years with PN are DNS server down. Very rare! Everything is now fixed. They trusted me.

So again you lied to them then....

No, it all true! I say the DNS server was down only once in the last 4 years to my record history with Plusnet. Other one is just a different matter. I pray hope my friends PN have no more issues in the next 18 months or they will coming round to me to start blaming me.

Edited by adslmax (Thu 10-Sep-15 12:46:15)

lmao!

Yeah I know. I am the pain the butt! Got few more friends joining PN. So, I will get free FTTC pretty soon with no cost!

Edited by adslmax (Thu 10-Sep-15 12:48:49)

I dare air my opinions on subsidising others broadband costs... I think an ISP that is already selling a value service offering discounts and worse even paying some to advertise is bad business.... I wonder why the performance seems to be dropping and there "seems" to be a staff shortage and the removal of services that affectively saves them money...

Hmmm... I wonder why ... *$£@....

Nice one PN. http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4652053239

Have you messed with that page as it appears to be showing incorrectly on my devices... almost like someone messed with the code or something?

As for the speed you must of magically been put on g.fast

NOT!

Between the bickering could we get back to the original post please? I've had no BB all morning and it seems Plusnet's outage is across the United Kingdom. We look forward to an explanation when the staff find time -- understandably they must be snowed under by the volume of complaints.

Apologies..

Apologies too

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Apologies too

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

Between the bickering could we get back to the original post please? I've had no BB all morning and it seems Plusnet's outage is across the United Kingdom. We look forward to an explanation when the staff find time -- understandably they must be snowed under by the volume of complaints.

The latest from Plusnet is they're working on fixing the issues and that thye have got most affected connections back online,

Are you ADSL or Fibre?

I would recommend renewing the PPP session regularly if you are fibre... or restart your ADSL router a few times but without upsetting the line!

Same here.

There is something badly wrong in the company, almost certainly triggered by CEO policy that cannot sensibly be implemented in the set timescales and budgets.

Result - things start falling over, in a domino fashion.

My ADSL2 connection came back late morning I think, I had to go to my neighbour's reliable TalkTalk BB to pay my online bills! PN's service status page says service was restored by mid-pm but no explanation of what happened beyond that it was an 'outage'.

The Government is pushing us to use the internet for everything from car tax to filing our tax returns, never mind everyday business. I can understand a local fault, but tens of thousands of PN customers were cut off without a word of explanation. Am I being unreasonable in considering this is unacceptable, as BB has become a public utility like gas or electricity?

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

Am I being unreasonable in considering this is unacceptable, as BB has become a public utility like gas or electricity?

I had a power cut this week! Happens about as often as Plusnet broadband outages (although obviously it clobbers the broadband in itself).

Edited by kasg (Thu 10-Sep-15 19:24:14)

In reply to a post by adslmax:

They forgive me now as I told them it only once in the last 4 years with PN are DNS server down. Very rare! Everything is now fixed. They trusted me.

Very rare? Erm ok.. I can recall many this year so far!

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Have you messed with that page as it appears to be showing incorrectly on my devices... almost like someone messed with the code or something?

As for the speed you must of magically been put on g.fast

NOT!

I suspect he secretly still has VM and therefore he is bonding with Connectify like he used to do when I had it.

Or bonding with another connection.

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

I suspect he secretly still has VM and therefore he is bonding with Connectify like he used to do when I had it.

Or bonding with another connection.

Chinese whisper!

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Have you messed with that page as it appears to be showing incorrectly on my devices... almost like someone messed with the code or something?

As for the speed you must of magically been put on g.fast

NOT!

I suspect he secretly still has VM and therefore he is bonding with Connectify like he used to do when I had it.

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/t/4355649-re-...

In reply to a post by knicol46:

Has PlusNet ceased? My broadband is off, their online chat is off, their technical support lines dead tone, their customer service sales line diverting to a mailbox. Doesn't look good.

Wow. The panic is strong in this one.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Have you messed with that page as it appears to be showing incorrectly on my devices... almost like someone messed with the code or something?

As for the speed you must of magically been put on g.fast

NOT!

I suspect he secretly still has VM and therefore he is bonding with Connectify like he used to do when I had it.

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/t/4355649-re-...

I am sure they sold it more than twice.. Your paranoia really is quite severe and you should see a head shrink about it me thinks. it was he who told me about it after all)

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

I am sure they sold it more than twice.. Your paranoia really is quite severe and you should see a head shrink about it me thinks. it was he who told me about it after all)

You've lost me there... I linked to the discussion about Connectify which I remembered quite well. I wanted to enhance the conversation by adding some context.

I don't see what it's got to do with your head shrinking?

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by knicol46:

Has PlusNet ceased? My broadband is off, their online chat is off, their technical support lines dead tone, their customer service sales line diverting to a mailbox. Doesn't look good.

Wow. The panic is strong in this one.

Not everyone is panicking ........................ yet.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

Wow. The panic is strong in this one.

Another highlight for me was the guy complaining that he'd been without broadband for, I think, 4.5 hours, certainly no more than that, and it had apparently cost him a small fortunate.

He was paying one of the cheapest well known suppliers in the UK for their standard residential service and a 300 minute outage costs a small fortune.

The mind boggles. Are people this absurdly tight-fisted over everything or does it just seem to be broadband where people have an allergy of paying more than a moderately size round of drinks per month for service, even if it's used for mission critical business usage.

I work from home. The price I pay per month, without the line rental included, would make people's eyes bleed unless with A&A.

I soak up brief outages through tethering to 4G. It delivers perhaps 10Mb, more than enough for me to do most standard work operations with and actually audio conferencing.

Routing issues I have 2 VPN concentrators, one running SSL the other PPTP to my work network so can use that to access the rest of the world too.

I have a static IP address as I'm going to shortly be joining my home network to a Software Defined WAN solution wiithin our HQ which will build a network overlay for connecting me to HQ and to any other staff running the software. This ink will be dual path and protected - failover wiill be done via 4G.

I had a power cut at the start of the week.
Static computer kit unaffected as it is on a UPS (8-)
An initially expensive purchase, as were replacement batteries after 9 years, but it has saved me from a lot of frustration.

I'm on Sky fibre so am not suffering these problems.
What I find strange is everytime I compare SKY with Plusnet on this site Plusnet comes out on top for all categories including customer service.
Having been with Sky for a long time I have had one outage that lasted a few hours and Sky CS immediately offered to send an engineer which turned out not to be necessary as the problem was resolved by someone else somewhere else.
The reall strange thing to the comparison results is how "active" the PN forum is "usually complaints" and how "active" Sky forum is. In general the higher the activity the worse the ISP.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by Andrue:

Wow. The panic is strong in this one.

Another highlight for me was the guy complaining that he'd been without broadband for, I think, 4.5 hours, certainly no more than that, and it had apparently cost him a small fortunate.

He was paying one of the cheapest well known suppliers in the UK for their standard residential service and a 300 minute outage costs a small fortune.

I admit that made me laugh too although I couldn't be bothered to start a war by pulling him up on it. If he had a business grade account with an SLA finance backed THEN he could whinge about it and possibly get something back.

Mind you I also agree on your other points. If he had any business sense he would have some sort of backup. I have 3 lines 1 I never use. one I use for pleasure (zen) and my business line which is nothing special but is all of the above and costs a few hundred quid a month. I am certainly (and including line rentals - 2 of which are just copper pair) hit the £300 a month mark. Obvs it's all for tax purposes

Edited by deleted (Fri 11-Sep-15 09:53:44)

In reply to a post by knicol46:

Has PlusNet ceased? My broadband is off, their online chat is off, their technical support lines dead tone, their customer service sales line diverting to a mailbox. Doesn't look good.

Plusnet did send out an e-mail a few months ago saying they were cutting off VoIP but it was worded as if they were ceasing to provide a phone service. it did send some customers into a panic!

In reply to a post by awontroba:

I had a power cut at the start of the week.
Static computer kit unaffected as it is on a UPS (8-)
An initially expensive purchase, as were replacement batteries after 9 years, but it has saved me from a lot of frustration.

I know what you mean. I have one which I think runs for 15-20 minutes. It's the size of 9 house bricks stacked together and is black and grey. But I've never had to use it yet.

In reply to a post by Nervous:

I'm on Sky fibre so am not suffering these problems.
What I find strange is everytime I compare SKY with Plusnet on this site Plusnet comes out on top for all categories including customer service.

Yeah I have always wondered why that was.. it's certainly not true from what I can see of their vocal customers.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

I am sure they sold it more than twice.. Your paranoia really is quite severe and you should see a head shrink about it me thinks. it was he who told me about it after all)

You've lost me there... I linked to the discussion about Connectify which I remembered quite well. I wanted to enhance the conversation by adding some context.

I don't see what it's got to do with your head shrinking?

I apologise I thought you were implying that I was the person who started the thread. I got confused and that came out in my post.

I've found it to be okay and it uses the wifi and the ethernet card in my PC quite well. But it does have it's flaws.

In reply to a post by Nervous:

I'm on Sky fibre so am not suffering these problems.
What I find strange is everytime I compare SKY with Plusnet on this site Plusnet comes out on top for all categories including customer service.
Having been with Sky for a long time I have had one outage that lasted a few hours and Sky CS immediately offered to send an engineer which turned out not to be necessary as the problem was resolved by someone else somewhere else.
The reall strange thing to the comparison results is how "active" the PN forum is "usually complaints" and how "active" Sky forum is. In general the higher the activity the worse the ISP.

Apart from Sky's representatives being (SELL MAD) I've always found there service to be very good and stable, and since they launched their Pro services I've considered them many times as a service provider... my only hag up on Sky's BB is the thrown upon using 3rd party equipment...

But then the Sky Hubs seam very reasonable for the service that is intended and many forget that Sky isn't exactly designed with advanced usage in mind.

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

The Government is pushing us to use the internet for everything from car tax to filing our tax returns, never mind everyday business. I can understand a local fault, but tens of thousands of PN customers were cut off without a word of explanation. Am I being unreasonable in considering this is unacceptable, as BB has become a public utility like gas or electricity?

Yes I agree, Broadband is "more a less" a utility now but without any/many regulations in place for service up time guarantee's and the huge variables across the "Broadband Grid" if you will, it seems like something that will not be pushed for some time.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

In reply to a post by Nervous:

I'm on Sky fibre so am not suffering these problems.
What I find strange is everytime I compare SKY with Plusnet on this site Plusnet comes out on top for all categories including customer service.
Having been with Sky for a long time I have had one outage that lasted a few hours and Sky CS immediately offered to send an engineer which turned out not to be necessary as the problem was resolved by someone else somewhere else.
The reall strange thing to the comparison results is how "active" the PN forum is "usually complaints" and how "active" Sky forum is. In general the higher the activity the worse the ISP.

Apart from Sky's representatives being (SELL MAD) I've always found there service to be very good and stable, and since they launched their Pro services I've considered them many times as a service provider... my only hag up on Sky's BB is the thrown upon using 3rd party equipment...

But then the Sky Hubs seam very reasonable for the service that is intended and many forget that Sky isn't exactly designed with advanced usage in mind.

You can use third party routers with SKY Fibre but because they use MER authentification there are few that will work out of the box. Netgear D70000 is one that will and is an excellent router. For more information

I know that mate, but as I mentioned, "It's frowned upon" by Sky...

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

I know that mate, but as I mentioned, "It's frowned upon" by Sky...

Well, I know it's in their T&C's but I have never heard of anyones service being discontinued for using another router, there are lots of people doing so and quite honestly it's a stupid rule anyway plus one to ignore. You just need to reconnect their router if you are having problems and want them to help.

I know its a stupid rule, but as you said it's part of the Term's and Condition's.... I'm a strong believer in the provider holding up there side of the agreement so I must hold up mine too...

Also if I have an issue I don't want to be switching between hardware which will more than likely solve any issue anyway, the point that has been missed here is Sky is not designed for those with any sort of professional requirement's from a service...

That's why I'm not just moving provider but have also paid the extra premiums for a higher priority of care and had the service regraded to Business use.

I appreciate what your saying, but at the end of the day I've highlighted the issue with using "workarounds"

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Sky is not designed for those with any sort of professional requirement's from a service...

I think this is one of those "agree to disagree" moments. I respect your views.

I had a power cut this week!

Understood, the occasional line fault due to digging, road accidents, storms etc affects power and phone lines alike. Being in a rural area, some farmer's prize bull charged a pole carrying a 6600V transformer a few years back, blacking out some 50 square miles and rendering himself into well done steak

My point was that this week's was a national outage, not local grid or exchange. I read that it was a DNS server fault, whatever that is. We seem to agree that BB is now an essential service and should be maintained/regulated accordingly. Granted that complainers will predominate on most forums, I wonder how long PN will flaunt its 'customer service' awards?

Would TBB consider running a BB Clanger category based on its survey results?

If BB was maintained/regulated as an "essential service" then I can guarantee it would be quite a bit more expensive than it currently is. The reason it is so cheap is because it is a consumer service that doesn't carry much in the way of SLAs/guarantees. Start adding those on and the costs increase significantly and given the choice the majority of people will pay cheap rather than pay for SLAs.

If you want a better service you can buy business broadband solutions. The fact you don't suggests it isn't quite as important to you as you suggest. If it is essential then either get multiple service for backup or get a lease line. Again, most won't because it costs more.

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

Granted that complainers will predominate on most forums, I wonder how long PN will flaunt its 'customer service' awards?

Would TBB consider running a BB Clanger category based on its survey results?

Just filled out a survey from Plusnet on recent events. I imagine the general opinion will be less than wonderful.

If you want a better service you can buy business broadband solutions. The fact you don't suggests it isn't quite as important to you as you suggest.

Fair point, Ian. I'm long retired but I still consider it important to check my bank statements, receive my household bills, arrange my cruises etc, not to mention those Government services which that same Government is so keen to service online.

What concerns me is that this is not the first time Plusnet has failed us this year, nor the second ...During each breakdown I can rely on my neighbour's TalkTalk connection or drive 11 miles for banking transactions etc on my brother's Virgin cable. There isn't much between them on cost, so how can these ISPs work reliably when PN doesn't?

My point was that this week's was a national outage, not local grid or exchange.

National it may well have been but not an outage that effected all Plusnet users. Here in central London on an ADSL line I had connectivity throughout the entire outage.

PlusNet do seem to be going through a bad time again at the moment. They are an ISP with peaks and troughs - at their peak they have been an excellent ISP but when they hit a trough they become dreadful. I almost went back to PlusNet at the start of the year but they were seeing some issues and have, from what I've seen, continued to go down hill throughout this year.

I suspect in a year or 2's time they will be back on form again but they are too inconsistent for me to want to use them at present.

In reply to a post by ian72:

PlusNet do seem to be going through a bad time again at the moment. They are an ISP with peaks and troughs - at their peak they have been an excellent ISP but when they hit a trough they become dreadful.

Their customer service is in a right state at the moment but the network is mostly fine. There's the on-going single/multi threading download issue but I'm not convinced that's affecting vast numbers of customers and my experience of it is that it's easily cured and only hits me every couple of months.

I remain a bit annoyed that they haven't yet fixed it but that's more of a professional annoyance than anything else. In practical terms the service they offer is fine.

to be fair many business aimed solutions can be bad as well, e.g. the business customers on plusnet did not escape this outage.

Of course you are right tho, if broadband was changed to a utility service and as such have higher reliability requirements prices would go up. I dont think speeds would be regulated but just packet loss, so policing would allow an isp to still contend highly, and run their pipes hot but without the packet loss and latency increases. Thats what entanet used to do, policing, remember their system where speeds would drop in steps down to 2mbit/sec when their centrals were hot? To be fair that system was pretty good, entanet's downfall however was they started relying on it as normal practice and the amount of time it needed to kick in started getting very silly e.g. all day on a sunday. But it is the best traffic management system I have ever seen on an isp, it controlled latency and packet loss and didnt discriminate based on types of traffic.

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

I apologise I thought you were implying that I was the person who started the thread. I got confused and that came out in my post.

I've found it to be okay and it uses the wifi and the ethernet card in my PC quite well. But it does have it's flaws.

I'm fairly sure no-one thinks you're adslmax!

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by ian72:

PlusNet do seem to be going through a bad time again at the moment. They are an ISP with peaks and troughs - at their peak they have been an excellent ISP but when they hit a trough they become dreadful.

Their customer service is in a right state at the moment but the network is mostly fine. There's the on-going single/multi threading download issue but I'm not convinced that's affecting vast numbers of customers and my experience of it is that it's easily cured and only hits me every couple of months.

That issue seems to be affecting a little bit more than just download speeds, I seem to find issue with certain services, these issue's I can only put down to some issue with Plusnet's links to outside networks (or with BT even!) or Plusnet QOS "type" system seems to be having a freak out!

I had full speed the other night (60Mbps both Single and Multithread) however streaming Now TV and various national radio stations on the Sonos system was impossible, this was also along side terrible variable browsing... funny enough hopping gateway then left me with slower speeds (20-30Mb/s) but I could stream both Now TV and Radio fine.... browsing was still slow but didn't vary by a few seconds and few minutes so much and was more 4-15 seconds.

Either way poor service all round, never have I suffered such "strange" issues and it also looks like the opinion from its customers I got a few months back when we first heard about support hour changes which was "Happy with Plusnet, but worry they won't be able to support us when something goes wrong" ....

Amazing how the futre was told by many customers huh!

Could well be

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

I apologise I thought you were implying that I was the person who started the thread. I got confused and that came out in my post.

I've found it to be okay and it uses the wifi and the ethernet card in my PC quite well. But it does have it's flaws.

I'm fairly sure no-one thinks you're adslmax!

Phew!

adslmax is adslmax after all!

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

Phew!

adslmax is adslmax after all!

And pcoventry76 is pcoventry76 as well

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by ZenUserJP:

Phew!

adslmax is adslmax after all!

And pcoventry76 is pcoventry76 as well

But is professor973 professor973 and why isn't he here slagging off Plusnet?

I'm out of contract with them at the moment and my BT contract ends in December. I'll give PN until then to fix the network issues. I don't really want the hassle of changing my WAN address. But once I'm a free agent it seems a good time to look around for someone new. I might even go to AAISP although the pricing there still seems a bit high even including line rental.

fair enough...

Sure you decide something thats suitable...

I sure noticed a lot of upset with connections this week, not sure about anyone else, but IMO it isn't getting any better... Not Yet Anyway!