'Should I Stay or Should I Go?'

Can't remember who sort of sang that! Anyroadup . . .

When I renewed with PlusNet last time they gave me a really good rate. That was largely because I was genuinely toying with VirginMedia, who were much cheaper than PN's first bog-standard offering. As I wasn't comfortable with VM's pushy sales approach, and happy overall with PN service, I took the coward's way out. No regrets.

So here I am 18mths later in the same situation! VM have somehow picked up that renewal is due and I am being hassled. Their one year offer looks good, so today I enquired about PN's bestest. Sadly, it's not so attractive. Two year contract? I think not, but shorter is dearer. As mentioned, I've generally been content with PN, but am concerned about some of the recent posts here.

OK, you guys can't decide for me. Hmmm . . . decisions . . . decisions . . .

The Clash https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqH21LEmfbQ

Probably a minor point but if you 'migrate' off the BT network to VM cable you'll be liable for a £30 'Cease fee'.

What type of package do you have already with PN, fibre broadband and line rental?

As well as BTr can you get Sky and Talktalk broadband (LLU) from your exchange, if so PN might/have been known to price match broadband from any other ISP to keep you as a customer, not sure about the line rental side of things, you'll need to get in touch with the Customer Options Team (not CS) for a chance of that to happen.

In reply to a post by Al1264:

Probably a minor point but if you 'migrate' off the BT network to VM cable you'll be liable for a £30 'Cease fee'.

£30 not minor in my book, and how much to get back if you don't stay?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMaE6toi4mk

Had virginmedia, slowdowns everyday. Paid for 200Mbps, got 15Mbps max at peak hours, down to 0.5Mbps some evenings.

Online gaming was always a struggle.

Superhub AC has an issue where every 4 to 5 days it drops the connection for as long as 15 minutes as NETGEAR coded the firmware poorly:

You see the message in the logs:

"DHCP RENEW sent - No response for IPv4" however in router mode it only sends the request 4 or 5 times (can't remember off the top of my head), it needs to be more times, effectively it does not try for long enough to renew, so whenever it goes to renew the public IP address the connection drops out.

So you will then see "No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out" error, and a drop out...

It will then drop for a while, then come back online. I found it did this at critical times such as during a webex work meeting.

Overall much happier with other ISPs, just my two cents.

Have you any issued with Plusnet's performance or services (support or billing)??

If not then I would probably stay put, however if Plusnet are not willing to renew your contract without the 24 months tie down, I would look elsewhere for two reasons...

1. better offer elsewhere and maybe something extra tha may be useful

2. Good weapon to use against Plusnet to get them to tailor a deal.

Also what do you typically use Broadband for, Virgin's headline speeds may be tempting but their upstream speeds can suck... however Plusnet lower fibre package 'these' days has a measly 2mbps upload... this may not be a concern for you though...

Also Virgin isn't that great for online gaming due to the amount of jitter on its network due to the shared cables instead of the dedicated cable to the network...

Do you use a phone line, do you want TV (TiVo).... Virgin is a good alternative if you want Broadband only... however this isn't going to be made too attractive when it comes to an offer.

Also note Broadband equipment requirement's ... do you use your own, some providers aren't too happy for you to use your own.

Currently I'm pretty happy with BT, BT may have some offers on that might interest you, however its worth looking at the other providers too... you could always get Virgin to test too...

Virgin allow you 14-30 days from activation to test there services and cancel it free of charge if you don't want it anymore, during this time you can test the living daylights out of it to make sure its sufficient... and you can keep your Plusnet line ticking along besides it if it don't work out.

Can't remember who sort of sang that! Anyroadup . . .

The Clash innit !

Go with VirginMedia if you want fast broadband.

Go with VirginMedia if you want fast broadband.

And hope it doesn't get the high levels of contention at peak times that some people report.