Just left Plusnet after many years

I joined Plusnet before they were bought by BT. This was in the days when 512 kbps was the MOST you could get and only if the signal loss to the exchange was less than -60 dBM - we were on -58dBm. It would work well unless there was a thunderstorm in the neighbourhood!. I stuck with Plusnet through 2 house moves. I also had my telephone services from them and later my mobile phone.On my most recent house move I switched to FTTC as the estimated copper service was less than 3 Mbps. I was getting 34 Mbps on FTTC which was adequate.

Recent changes however started to concern me. Plusnet appear to be shedding services to other BT companies. The first step was wanting me to switch by mobile to EE at the "preferential discounted rate" of about £8 per month, slightly more than I was paying. Using a comparison site I found Lebara could provide me with what I need, and no contract, for under £4 per month.

For broadband I have my own domain for email and website - email was mapped to to Plusnet email addresses and the same domain mapping for my website. This worked well but I then heard that Plusnet were intending to drop web hosting and later email. I switched both my domain email and website to another host before this happened just in case. That is when I discovered it was no longer possible to raise a support ticket other than through Twitter. I did manage to get my email and website removed from Plusnet but only by going through their member's support forum where a friendly Plusnet Admin assisted me!

Over the years I had recommended many people to Plusnet and was benefitting from a very large discount as a consequence;

We were then in the situation where my 2 year contract was due to end and I got the distinct impression that impression that Plusnet were offloading all of their Internet services to EE. With the impending ceasing of copper connections to the premises (I was already on FTTC for broadband) I looked into what alternatives were available for both voice and data. I narrowed this down to two alternatives (Swish FTTP and Vodafone FTTC). BOTH were slightly cheaper than my discounted rate from Plusnet.

I eventually went to a full FTTP from Swish (who had some technical problems installing it but that is another story) and it works well so far. The final step - telephone number porting was completed today. The monthly costs are actually slightly cheaper than the heavily discounted rate from Plusnet.

My contract with Plusnet ran until 9 February so the timing was well planned

The biggest surprise however was a demand fo £4.15 for early termination of the contract. I received this at the same time as the number porting request was received by Plusnet! Up until that point I did not inform Plusnet about the change - this was not yet necessary as my contract had over two weeks left before it needed to be renewed or cancelled. My voice port completed today.

I contacted Plusnet for an explanation for this £4.15 and am still waiting! I did cancel my Direct Debit and they seem to have taken this as confirmation that I am leaving. £4.15 is not a large amount, and will not be paid, but it was annoying and perhaps an indication that Plusnet are no longer the company they once were!

I am now getting 160 Mbps for internet and telephone and my monthly cost is LOWER than Plusnet even after applying their referral discount of about £10 per month. I have changed my phone tariff basis to pay per call from a fixed price as this lowers the cost. Allowing for tis I am paying abot £5 per month LESS than I was paying to Plusnet.

I think you will find that porting your phone number triggers a cease on the line, both phone and broadband. As that was done before the end of the contract they are charging you the early termination fee. I suspect it all fits with the Ts&Cs that you signed up for. Personally I would have left the DD and paid the early termination. If you don't pay that charge then you could ultimately end up with bailiffs at the door and a charge far greater than it currently is.

It will be somewhat more difficult now to pay it than it would have been with the DD. Cancelling the DD is not what triggered the cease, moving the phone number will have done that.

Edited by ian72 (Tue 04-Feb-25 09:05:40)

I have already paid the full amount due until the end of my contract. If I had left organising a switch until after my contract ended I would have been paying a MUCH higher charge for another month, How is one supposed to leave one provider and join another without a break in the service? Porting a number I was told can take 4 weeks. The number port was only two weeks before the end of my contract which I had no intention of renewing.

Furthermore I had an email stating that due to their error I had not been informed about cancellation fees and any cancellation fees would be waived because of that.

I have a "live" ticket open on this subject stating that they would review it and contact me on Monday this week. They have not yet bothered to do so..

Do you really want your credit rating to be impacted with a non payment default which will last for 6 years for the princely sum of £4.15?

We can argue about whether this should have happened, but to write up a lengthy post, open tickets with Plusnet, deal with Direct Debits etc for less than £5 strikes me as a very poor use of time.

In reply to a post by Nervous:

Do you really want your credit rating to be impacted with a non payment default which will last for 6 years for the princely sum of £4.15?

The guy says he has paid to the end of his contract. I don't think anyone here should be doing Credit Rating bullying on behalf of Plusnet.

My understanding is that early termination charges should not exceed the price of seeing the contract out until the end. Sounds like PN refunded the remaining days on migration day and then billed the ETC, but without seeing the final bill I can't say for sure.

This has now been settled. I had to phone them again and I have now received a confirmation email! that no cancellation charges are due!.

Plusnet have confirmed that no cancellation change was due as I was fully paid up until the end of my contract and in any case they had already waived the right to charge termination charges due to an earlier error on their part on the terms of the contract I had with them.

I know £4.15 is a small sum but is a cumulative growing annoyance with PlusNet that made me dig my heels in! I knew that I did not legally owe them any money.

I now have my existing phone number ported with my new supplier and much faster broadband with FTTP for a slightly lower monthly cost than my Plusnet "heavily discounted rate"- discount due to a large number of historic referrals amounting to about £10 per month.

In reply to a post by steelej02:

The biggest surprise however was a demand fo £4.15 for early termination of the contract.

I got a small charge like that when I left Plusnet by porting my number away too, even though I was out of contract.

The reason was there's a notice period for terminations - I think 14 days. The notice was considered as served when they got the notification that the number port had been ordered, and this completed a few days later, so I ended up paying for the remaining period of the 14 day notice period which ran into the next month that I hadn't already paid for.

I suspect these incidents originate from PN's crazy accounts system. I have just renewed for two years without problems, this is the first time in many years I have renewed without having to ring to have discounts etc renewed as part of the renewal deal agreed by phone. The staff are great, the system isn't!

I did shop around for a basic BB package but PN's price was £1 less than my original rate and on a par with other budget providers. Besides, did I really want to move to TalkTalk? All will go up next month courtesy Ofcom of course.

Nothing to do with who's right or wrong and certainly not bullying. I've seen people refused mortgages because they owed their last mobile provider pennies and that being recorded as a default.

In reply to a post by Nervous:

Nothing to do with who's right or wrong and certainly not bullying. I've seen people refused mortgages because they owed their last mobile provider pennies and that being recorded as a default.

Oh yes, it happens and it is wrong. What I really take issue with is another punter, such as yourself, relaying a threat to someone's credit record from a supplier, when they have already paid.

If you are going to point it out, then at least say it is wrong. We should not be bullied into paying money we don't owe and as punters we should stick together on this.

The reason was there's a notice period for terminations - I think 14 days.

This could be the reason - I never received the document that contained that clause due to an error on their part they made several years ago. I did receive an unsolicited email short time before I requested the number port saying that they would NOT be imposing a cancellation change, if I moved supplier, due to their error. The timing was coincidental as I had only just arranged for the fibre installation for broadband and the fibre had not been connected. I had not at the time notified Plusnet that I was considering moving by broadband as I still had some weeks to go n my Plusnet contract.

My 2 year contact was also due to end.and was fully paid for to the end of that period but was more than 14 days away. If the charge had been stated as being for number porting I might even have pad it although I thought from the OFCOM rules that porting had to be free.

It is all completed now and everything is working and it has been confirmed by Plusnet that all payments due to Plusnet have been made. A direct debit has been set up to pay my new supplier - slightly less cost per month, faster data transfer, and before the annual increase that Plusnet makes. I have in fact paid both companies for 2 weeks of supply of voice and data due to the overlap of the service provision.

I did look around for alternative BB/phone packages.. I need at least FTTC where I live now. The standard ADSL speed was estimated at 3 Mbs when I moved house. It had been 19Mbps an ADSL where I lived previously over 8 years ago.

With my current 2 year contract coming to and end in February this year and the imminent arrival of fibre and digital voice I looked into the cost of both FTTC from another vendor and a ful fibre FTTP from the one supplier that had laid fibre down the road. The cost of these alternative suppliers, much to my surprise was lower cost than my Plusnet contract even though I was getting about £10 a month discount from referrals I had made over the years.

I knew that digital voice was coming eventually although no timescale has yet been published for our exchange yet. I narrowed the alternatives to two. Swish had laid a duct to supply FTTP and Vodafone offered a FTTC solution. Both did digital voice and both were lower cost than my discounted Plusnet contract prior to the Plusnet annual increase.

I decided on the FTTP solution which has been working well for over a week and has digital voice with my number having just been ported yesterday. Plusnet appears to be shedding services to other BT companies (e.g. mobile phone was being switched to EE at a special discounted rate - I moved to Lebara at half the price) and while the customer forum does work well it is not so easy to make contact with the people who deal with technical issues, I think you now have t use Twitter/X rather than being able to raise a ticket.

I had already ditched PlusNet email and website hosting for my personal domain.

Having been with Plusnet since about 2005 I have seen them change for the worse in recent years and decided now was an appropriate time to change.

I was with Plusnet from August 2015 until recently. Remember paying for annual line rental saver?

I coudn't deal with annual price increases every March (£2+ last March and £3+ March before that), and the FTTP offer from an altnet was too good to ignore, so gave them notice not to renew.

For some inexplicable reason I was charged £4.85 extra for the final month. I called to query as soon as payment was taken in early December; and received a cheque for the refund yesterday but for £14.68!

In reply to a post by steelej02:

I knew that digital voice was coming eventually although no timescale has yet been published for our exchange yet.

It's not being done on an exchange-by-exchange basis: it's national.

There has been a national PSTN "stop sell" in place since 5 Sep 2023. That is, you can't buy a new analogue PSTN voice service today.

The final PSTN switch-off date has been put back from December 2025 to January 2027.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

The final PSTN switch-off date has been put back from December 2025 to January 2027.

And I would not be surprised if it is pushed back again. Come mid '26 there will be some factions that come out with the various "we are not ready", "alarms will not work", "penalising the elderly" and more argument. OFCOM will then mandate a further delay.

In reply to a post by MHC:

And I would not be surprised if it is pushed back again. Come mid '26 there will be some factions that come out with the various "we are not ready", "alarms will not work", "penalising the elderly" and more argument. OFCOM will then mandate a further delay.

As long as they're happy to pay the costs associated with keeping the PSTN alive then I am fine with this - the last hundred PSTN users on an exchange can between them pay a line rental fee set at a value to keep the exchange building rented, powered, equipment maintained etc. What they actually want is for everybody else to subsidise their inability to plan a migration given nine years to do it.

The road where I live may be unusual - our mains power is delivered overhead and the BT lines shares the same pole although the pole is actually owed by the power company. All the phones in our road come from a BT duct, up pole in our garden, and are distributed overhead to shared poles along the lane along with the mains power.

Around the rest of the village Trooli has been installing fibre at the top of the BT poles which are NOT shared with power but NOT down our lane - I suspect that is because the poles are owned by the power company. When there is a problem Openreach can never find their junction point just outside my property and i always have to show them where it is. This happens typically 2-3 time a year.

Swish installed a fibre in the road duct some time ago and they offered a full fibre service at virtually the same price as Vodafone FTTC fully digital solution. The fibre could very easily run through a duct that was already there from the road to my property - installed by the previous owner, I think intended for a planned CCTV camera.

I can find no date for the switch off of the Great Missenden exchange. It was NOT on the stop sell list last time I checked I just decided that I would switch to fully digital now asmy contract was due to end and I wanted to change supplier and it does save me a small amount of money each month.

I did not ask Plusnet for a digital voice solution as I was unhappy with their service and my contract was due to end in early February. They did not explain what the unexpected fee was for and have now decided that this was a mistake on their part.

Totally agree in 99.9% of cases.

I wanted to migrate my father-in-law from PSTN & FTTC to FTTP with digital voice. He had a personal alarm which dialled out on the PSTN and would not work reliably (confirmed by manufacturers) on a DV service with terminal apapters/interfaces. They had a fully digital system available BUT the local authority was dragging their heels about upgrading and in 2022 were suggesting "a long time". May be harsh but the LA needed to get their act together and not complain when it is turned off.

On the other side, What of a location where 6, 7,8 or 9 km copper lines are in place so chance of a DSL service - minimal. They may get full fibre eventually, but who pays the bill?

In reply to a post by MHC:

On the other side, What of a location where 6, 7,8 or 9 km copper lines are in place so chance of a DSL service - minimal. They may get full fibre eventually, but who pays the bill?

Openreach will pay and it is financially justifiable. The network is being converted totally to fibre as copper + FTTC is too expensive across the network. So it is totally justified on grounds of savings for the network as a whole.

Of course, Openreach could pocket the savings of not fibring the 6, 7, 8 or 9km lines. But then, in the extreme, they would have the additional costs of maintaining and sourcing spares for a tiny estate of Strowger exchanges, where they had never ever faced up to upgrading. Ultimately the costs of supporting outdated equipment for which there is not a large enough spares market will be enough to fibre the lines in question

The last Strowger exchange, AFAIR was closed around 1990, so the legacy switches being retired now are digital System X and System Y exchanges .

Edited by Iniltous (Wed 05-Feb-25 12:59:38)

In our case we are actually quite close to the telephone exchange. less than 0.75 mile to the exchange with the nearest BT termination cabinet about 300m away. The speed estimate however was only 3Mbps over copper cabling. That is why I went FTTC 8 years ago. FTTC was available fortunately. I don't know how the fibres are run from the BT cabinet to wherever they terminate. I believe that about 80 Mbps was available. No digital voice at the time of course.

In our village Trooli have been installing what look like routers at the top of the BT poles everywhere apart from down our road. They are advertising full fibre service availability. They stopped doing this work about 1 year ago so whether our road will ever be done is an interesting question.

Swish installed a new duct in the road over two years ago giving me the only option of a full digital voice/data service now, or for the foreseeable future.

I know there is a BT duct running down part of our road but talking to the BT engineers when they (frequently) need to access the pole in my garden I understand their duct is blocked between "my" pole and the green box on the main road. There are about 15 properties fed overhead from the shared pole in my garden.

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

The last Strowger exchange, AFAIR was closed around 1990, so the legacy switches being retired now are digital System X and System Y exchanges .

I was of course, being facetious, but the very fact that Strowger has been replaced over 30 years ago across the whole network rather makes my point, that after a new technology has been adopted beyond a certain point, it is financially beneficial to replace the old completely

Great Missenden Telephone Exchange became PTSN or SOGEA only in september 2023 so I am not sure where you are checking for this information.

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

The last Strowger exchange, AFAIR was closed around 1990, so the legacy switches being retired now are digital System X and System Y exchanges .

I am surprised there were any strowger switches would still be in use in the 1990s most were replaced by crossbar 1XB and 5XB type switches in the 1950s

You say your new service is about the same price as your heavily discounted original price all while forgetting the old service cost twice as much to run was bought off a third party who wanted their price for the service needed 2 sets of equipment to work and was actually 2 different services going down one cable.

your new service is on new equipment and have just one service the INTERNET.
of course plusnet cannot compete on price they have to pay for DOUBLE the service you now get with swish.

I moved to the Great Missenden exchange in 2016 and the estimated speed for ADSL at the time was around 3 Mbps so I went FTTC having previously had 18 Mbps in Beaconsfield so I went to FTTC for my data straightaway. I was getting 33 Mbps for data when I lived in Beaconsfield,

I renewed the contract several times and last December I looked into alternative as I getting disenchanted with Plusnet. I was NOT dissatisfied with the data rates and my contract renewal was early February 2025. I was getting a SUBSTANTIAL discount from historic referrals so was surprised when the alternative quotations came in slightly lower than the DISCOUNTED price. Perhaps I could have haggled with Plusnet but I decided to move away as they had already stopped mobile phone contracts and offered a discount rate with EE. I halved my mobile bill compared with EE by moving to an alternative supplier. I guessed that they would do the same for phone and broadband. The were already dropping email and website hosting and I had already moved both of these to an alternative host. I had my own domain email and website with them for many years. It is the accumulation of what PlusNet is doing that has been making me increasing less happy with them. The spurious, and incorrect demand, for £4.10 was resisted as a matter of principle!

I am not too familiar with the current terminology to express exactly what I was using. Years ago I designed modem interfaces and knew all of the details to get BT and later BABT approval.

I used searches on the Internet using comparison sites to select two alternative vendors that are actually available at my address. Swish was the ONLY one that could offer FTTP now as they had already laid ducting. Vodafone could offer FTTC. Trooli offer FTTP service in most of our village but currently not in our road. Both were roughly the same price with Vodafone being more expensive for telephone calls. I flipped a coin and picked Swish. It was also marginally easier to modify my home telephone cabling for Swish, Both were lower cost than my "discounted" rate from Plusnet even before the annual Plusnet rise due shorty. I chose not to ask Plusnet for their offering.

In reply to a post by pyarwood:

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

The last Strowger exchange, AFAIR was closed around 1990, so the legacy switches being retired now are digital System X and System Y exchanges .

I am surprised there were any strowger switches would still be in use in the 1990s most were replaced by crossbar 1XB and 5XB type switches in the 1950s

Last Strowger went in 1995!

In reply to a post by steelej02:

I can find no date for the switch off of the Great Missenden exchange. It was NOT on the stop sell list last time I checked

You are confusing two different things.

PSTN stop sell applies to *all* exchanges, and has since 5 Sep 2023. This means that *everyone* is being migrated to digital voice. You should, however, note that digital voice does not require fibre; you can have digital voice over a copper broadband line. The digital-only copper lines which are now being sold are known as SOGEA in the case of FTTC, or SOTAP in the case of ADSL. These are pure broadband, with no analogue baseband signal. That is, if you plugged a handset into the copper master socket, you'd hear nothing. Instead, if you want a voice service, you plug the handset into your router, which generates the dial tone locally and provides voice-over-IP across the digital broadband.

Copper stop sell is the thing you're thinking of. That is indeed announced by exchange area. It is triggered when an exchange area reaches 75% FTTP coverage, but only applies to those properties where FTTP is available to order: i.e. for as long as FTTP is not available to you, you can continue to use your copper and order new copper-based broadband services.

Just to muddy things slightly, most FTTP is *not* served from the local exchange, but from about 1000 larger "head end exchanges" or "OHPs". I don't know whether Great Missenden is an OHP; if it is not, then when you do eventually get FTTP it will be from a different exchange. This will result in the closure of a large proportion of the local exchanges.

However, none of this affects the switch-off of analogue voice (PSTN), which will happen for everyone, copper or fibre. There will be people on copper broadband for many years to come, just with no analogue dial-tone on the copper.

More info:
https://www.openreach.com/news/the-final-call-for-th...

In reply to a post by MHC:

In reply to a post by pyarwood:

I am surprised there were any strowger switches would still be in use in the 1990s most were replaced by crossbar 1XB and 5XB type switches in the 1950s

Last Strowger went in 1995!

For all the talk about Crossbar replacing Strowger its funny that the demise of Crossbar coincided with the demise of Strowger in the very same year you quoted

In reply to a post by MHC:

Last Strowger went in 1995!

I remember waiting by our exchange, to meet people or just sitting down there as it was by the cathedral at the time, which is why we had some many problems with ADSL up here. Anyway, i remember standing or sitting by it and hearing the sound when people dial and the equipment moving. Crazy thinking back on it that we relied on that stuff to make a call. Moving parts need more maintenance, but i do wonder if they were easier to sort out if there was a problem than the digital stuff we have now.
I

Hear hear!

In reply to a post by ChrisAO:

Hear hear!

The OP was given good advice (in good faith) by Nervous not to destroy their credit rating for £4.15, its better to pay and argue the toss afterwards for those sums of money. It was never bullying and anyone who thinks it was needs to go and get a life.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by ChrisAO:

Hear hear!

The OP was given good advice (in good faith) by Nervous not to destroy their credit rating for £4.15, its better to pay and argue the toss afterwards for those sums of money. It was never bullying and anyone who thinks it was needs to go and get a life.

It wasn't the best of advice. If you disagree with a claim for payment, best NOT to pay it, but to ask for an explanation and if the explanation does not stack up, then to dispute it. Nothing should be added to a credit record while it is under dispute. And if you pay it under protest, is anyone going to listen when you demand your money back?

I do maintain that to put people in fear of their credit rating when there is a genuine dispute is credit rating bullying. Ignore the feeble hearts who would make you pay up money you don't owe.

In reply to a post by DFScale:

I do maintain that to put people in fear of their credit rating when there is a genuine dispute is credit rating bullying.

You can maintain anything you like when its not your credit rating you're risking. Send them out to battle while you're seating at home with your feet up, just great!!!

Edited by PCJM40 (Wed 12-Feb-25 15:40:31)

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by DFScale:

I do maintain that to put people in fear of their credit rating when there is a genuine dispute is credit rating bullying.

You can maintain anything you like when its not your credit rating you're risking. Send them out to battle while you're seating at home with your feet up, just great!!!

As opposed to bullying them to pay debts that they don't owe while you are sat at home with your feet up. Your moral highground is on a flat plain with lots of different views.

In reply to a post by DFScale:

Your moral highground is on a flat plain with lots of different views.

Thats rich from you but as I have said to you before nothing you say surprises me as you're full of it.

So it's a bit rich to say that your views are not superior to anyone else's?

Is this sudden rash of futile arguments and "must have the last word" really necessary? Is it just the [censored] weather that's making people so damn miserable? How about, if you can't contribute to the theme of the thread, then just STFU.

In reply to a post by cjn:

Is this sudden rash of futile arguments and "must have the last word" really necessary? Is it just the [censored] weather that's making people so damn miserable? How about, if you can't contribute to the theme of the thread, then just STFU.

Are you upset about the Strowger comments? Because. looking at the OP, the £4.15 charge is very much part of the theme. But you are welcome to take your own advice. Perhaps you should get out in the sun.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by DFScale:

Your moral highground is on a flat plain with lots of different views.

Thats rich from you but as I have said to you before nothing you say surprises me as you're full of it.

So he's full of it is he? It seems to me as I recall the way the "advice" was given it was BAD advise. No financial organisation worth their salt would take any notice of such because If any company added anything to a credit record whilst a dispute was in progress then the person affected would have every right to get such a record deleted or have their own statement added in refute.

OK so you think the 'advice' given by Nervous was bullying, if thats the case then its not the millennials but the geriatrics who are the snowflakes. Lets agree to disagree and you can go and have your nap.

How peculiar. Standing up against credit card bullying is being a snowflake?

Clearly a keyboard warrior geriatric who thinks advice on a forum is bullying (god help you if you was ever really bullied), time for you to take your daily donepezil before your memory of this thread completely goes.

On second thoughts don't take the donepezil as it may help us all.

Edited by PCJM40 (Thu 13-Feb-25 14:37:16)

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Clearly a keyboard warrior geriatric who thinks advice on a forum is bullying (god help you if you was ever really bullied), time for you to take your daily donepezil before your memory of this thread completely goes.

On second thoughts don't take the donepezil as it may help us all.

Quite combative for someone who plainly believes themselves to be a keyboard non-combatant..

In reply to a post by Nervous:

Do you really want your credit rating to be impacted with a non payment default which will last for 6 years for the princely sum of £4.15?

I don't know if you were notified of replies or saw my reply earlier (as it seems the moderators have been busy) so I've copied what I said for you -
"It seems to me as I recall the way the "advice" was given it was BAD advise. No financial organisation worth their salt would take any notice of such because If any company added anything to a credit record whilst a dispute was in progress then the person affected would have every right to get such a record deleted or have their own statement added in refute."

Post deleted by seb

In reply to a post by ChrisAO:

I don't know if you were notified of replies or saw my reply earlier (as it seems the moderators have been busy) so I've copied what I said for you -

It is still there https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/plusnet/t/4772487-...

I am closing this thread due to the fact it's going off course. Apologies to steelej02 - feel free to open a new one if you need to follow up on any points however this should focus on the broadband bits.