PlusNet seems quite reasonable

We've been with BT for over 30 years and have Fibre1 (connected at 54/9.5 - although I've limited my sync speed to 40 to provide stability in another post). FTTP not available. Virgin available. Our current contract is ending. After a nice chat with BT loyalty / retentions I can recontract (phone + bb) for £25.99 over 24 months however, with inflation going up, I'd be in scope for two annual price increases of guessing 14% + 3.9% = 17.9%.

PlusNet seem a reasonable alternative - £22.99 for 18 months with unlimited Fibre (40 down), and a £65 reward card. I'd still be subject to an annual price rise but the increase £££ would be lower, and the overall price would be lower for about the same speed.

My wife works from home, VPNs etc.

The street WhatsApp group is always complaining about Virgin.

My Dad was with PN 3 years ago without issue - although he had that pre-historic 582n router. We've had trouble closing the m-in-law mobile account.

I've seen posts about billing errors etc but on the whole, I think they are a reasonable provider.

Is there anything I need to consider?

Thanks

I was with them for a considerable time (as RobertoS). Never any problem with the FTTC, though their IPv6 trial was a total farce.

This was before the billing chaos started, that probably caused by trying to rationalise all the legacy accounting systems and products from the companies they had taken over.

My reason for leaving (to AAISP) was the chaos in support and the increasing withdrawal from the conventional phone and ticket systems for tech support. I became increasingly worried about "What if ...?

Accounts was OK as you could easily get through to them. I don't know about now.

You might find it cheaper, if it is still possible, to take your phone line elsewhere and just have the broadband with them. I never had the line with them. When I joined from O2 it was with BT. When the BT line price went stupidly high I moved it to Pulse8broadband at £13pm. When I moved the broadband to AA the line stayed with P8.

If that is feasible and worthwhile, I suggest you migrate just the broadband and once across move the line rental to wherever you have decided.

(In December 2017 or 2018 I got an unlimited everything SIM for my phone and ditched the AAISP as that was free to leave and rejoin, After using tethering through the Christmas/New Year period, (peak times for people using existing and new mobiles), all was well so I got rid of the line as well. Now also have a mobile broadband router for cloud-based security cameras. See my sig).

Thanks pluralist,

PN no longer offer bb only. My dad had bb only with them when I moved him from aol dialup to FTTC. The cost increased and so I moved his bb to BT some years ago to lower costs.

I am tempted by mobile bb but don’t want any agro from the Mrs if the performance isn’t as expected. I suppose I could experiment with a 1 month sim and suitable mobile router.

My Plusnet FTTC service has been fine for the last few years. I am paying a little less than your quote for a 40/10 service. I don't use the router they sent as I have some Zyxel ones. I did pay just £5 for a fixed IP address.

Been with Plusnet for around 7 years, good grief, where has that time gone?
anyway, apart from a problem i had a while ago, they have been fine and the problem was not a plusnet problem, but an open reach problem, so it may have happened with who ever I was with. But plus net did get openmreach out a few times to get it sorted.

They do the job for me.

Hi Bob, I wondered where you had gone to! You helped us out when Plusnet screwed up our changeover date would you believe eight years ago?

Since then PN has been faultless, not a fault since we joined, and we get steady 37MB on FTTC which is ample for our needs. However I'm afraid Accounts are no longer OK as you remember, they have messed up every renewal though the willing staff sort it out eventually. Pnet clunky email is useless but it's free so we can't complain. I would still recommend PN as excellent value for money.

Best wishes, Mike

I've been with Plusnet FTTC for many years and there have been very few problems, the only one really is the annoyance of having to haggle over your renewal price when your contract comes to an end but, so far I have managed to do that successfully, if not at my first attempt. There have been very few outages and they have always been resolved quickly. There is also a referral scheme and I am still getting a discount for people I referred years ago.

Thanks for all the feedback.

I tihnk PlusNet looks like an option. The 40/10 won't be an issue for me - given higher download speeds that are attainable on my BT Fibre1 (connected 54/9.5) tend to result in resyncs during the day (it's just happened in the last 5 mins). Once I've signed up, I'll set my router to limit to 40 as per other posts to keep the Mrs happy with her MS Teams calls.

Thanks again

Plusnet will offer their own hub, basically a rebadged BT one, possibly an older model. But my reason for this post is that even if you continue to use your existing one you won't need to limit the speed then. 40/10 will be set by the DSLAM in the cabinet.

We went ahead and placed the order with PN. However, BT called with a very good “please don’t’ leave us offer”, which we accepted.

We called PN on 22 Aug to cancel the transfer. Many days of chasing and the order is still not cancelled. It looks like a problem with Openreach. It is now 2 Sep

Am I correct in thinking that in a transfer BB and phone would be transferred at different times?

Any suggestions on how I could get this resolved? I am getting direct messages from PN staff on the PN forums but it seems to be me doing all the chasing.

Agree about their reliability.CS is good, they answer the phone straight away. Had an internet outage during very bad weather recently and was sorted in 12 hours. Landline phone was hit by something (lightning?) and that too was sorted in 24 hours. Very satisfied at the moment.