PlusNet contract renewal / retentions

Just been engaged in my annual / biennial DSL renewal discussion with PlusNet, which has in the past been a fairly painless process.

This time, however, it's all change.

I'd envisaged haggling them down from their own website-advertised £18pm inc line rental with £50 cashback towards Sky's £15pm with £75 cashback.

But no - the offer was £22pm, no cashback incentive, but with the usual reduction if I chose to take out line rental saver. So over the year (with the line rental saver) that's £234 with PlusNet vs £105 with Sky (who also offer caller display for free). So it's about £8 a month more than my previous PlusNet contract started out, and more than twice what Sky are asking.

Just wanted to make sure everyone is in the same boat on this, and I hadn't simply got some customer retentions guy who'd already done his numbers for the month.

Is this the standard now?

I don't think there is a standard. I got a fantastic deal at my last renewal but it was on the second attempt. Try again another day.

Cheers Kevin - I'll definitely give them another go.

The guy I spoke to told me that company policy had changed, and they no longer matched new customer offers, not even their own.

But even if they won't budge on the ADSL, I'll see if they'll give me a new customer deal on fibre, which would avoid the rather dolorous switch to Rupert Murdoch...

Out of interest, whenabouts was your last renewal?

In reply to a post by gordon_k:

Out of interest, whenabouts was your last renewal?

June 2016.

No harm in telling them how much you would have to pay Vodafone for FTTC if you were to migrate. Well that is what I plan to do next August.

I didn't get such a good retention deal this October compared to last year's retention deal of free BB +LR with PN which was a price match which they no longer do

My 20CN exchange is market A so as far as PN are concerned I live outside a low cost area so don't get their headline grabbing cheap broadband deals, the retention deal offered was BB at £9.99 a month + LR with PN on a 24 month contract, after some haggling etc etc I could only manage to get the contract term reduced to 12 months for the same monthly cost, I phoned on 3 occasions and that was the only deal I could get from 3 different members of the COT.

Thank you for the info. At the moment I have free BB for 18 months at a Market 1 20CN exchange. Forewarned is forearmed!

An annoying issue was that I purchased LRS too far in advance, a mistake not to be made again, I couldn't cancel LRS as the number of days to do so had passed but the new LRS start date was around a month away.

I did eventually phone them again, and did get offered a slightly better deal.

£20pm inc line rental (with the option of £30 discount for 12 months LRS)
18 month contract

The retentions guy confirmed what the previous guy had said, they weren't able to match the new customer offer (which factoring in the £50 PN cashback is an £86 difference).

However the deal they were willing to offer me on a switch to 38 Mb fibre was £23pm ilr, which is the same as their new customer fibre deal.

Edited by deleted (Mon 28-Nov-16 13:40:55)

So then in 12 months you either at full whack on the phone or get hooked in for six months at the end of the broadband contract.

All standard trickery .