Looks like Sky are also upping prices soon.

Just looked at a new order for Sky Fibre Max. After I had stopped laughing at the £50 connection fee I saw this..

Line Rental price increases on 1/3/17

Just thought I would mention that

Proof

The line rental increase happens every year but it's still cheaper than BT when they put theirs up. It's going up to £18.40, I believe. Nothing really new about the activation charge for Fibre Max, that came in when they dropped Fibre Pro which was always free activation although they don't charge if upgrading from Fibre Unlimited.

BT are also going to charge BT TV customers £3.50 for BT Sport from August, which I guess was going to be inevitable sooner or later.

Yes and I for one am sick of funding [censored] Football matches. Don't watch it - pointless waste of time to me.

I'm looking around but I can't find much which I would go for. I did look at plusnet and the prices are good but the horror stories put me off.

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

I'm looking around but I can't find much which I would go for. I did look at plusnet and the prices are good but the horror stories put me off.

I can understand your problem. From reading posts on this forum, it appears that even so called premium ISPs have their fair share of problems. For example ZEN's recent single thread performance issue.

I have used Sky for fibre bb and phone for 3 years now. Have also experienced line/speed issues which Sky dealt with (using BT OR) without any issues. I have also negotiated 'deals' at contract renewal time, so I cannot complain.

My other half has PlusNet fibre and phone, has also had problems with an open circuit line on 3 separate occasions in one year and her broadband speed being 'banded'.

In my dealings with Plusnet support, (regarding the banding issue), PlusNet support staff have been helpful and responsive. I wouldn't say first line support have been very knowledgeable, but with a little polite prompting have escalated the problem, resulting in a satisfactory outcome.

In conclusion my experience of Sky and PlusNet have been good (so far) as I consider my other half and I are getting reasonable value for money from both providers. If I needed a more reliable service, (maybe because my livelihood depended on it), and/or speedier support, then I would pay for premium ISP provision, but then expect excellent and timely support when things go wrong.

Just my thoughts here, and also trying to add a bit of balance regarding my experience of PlusNet support
Good luck with your quest!

ps I am not affiliated to either organisation.

That's okay mate. I used to work at the CSC as first line support, mainly night shifts. I agree some parts have gone down hill.

I seem to have single thread issues on my other ISP which is TalkTalk Business, but I fail to actually come up with any situation where it affects me. I stream, Game, Download via HTTP and FTP and never seems to be a problem.

£28,99 a month for Plusnet is good for 80/20 and phone line - as long as it does not keep messing with the gateways, I have a VPN I use anyway - but as none of my ISP's provide stats I can't even gauge what I do use. I do use the TBB meter and also dunmeter which uploads to the net, but neither of them are accurate but only because sometimes either program does not start so my usage is not even recorded. No fault of the websites.

I am actually rather impressed with AAISP and Adrian - I often watch what he films and would enjoy the fact they are as dead against snooping as I am.

At least with Plusnet I would have a gauge of how much I use. I guesstimated last month I used about 1.3TB but it could have been more. Too much for the likes of AAISP without spending over £90 a month for a 2TB allowance, and not enough to justify unlimited, which I know is an odd thing to say, but still.

Thanks for the feedback, truly noted.

Edited by deleted (Sun 22-Jan-17 18:31:50)

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Thanks for the feedback, truly noted.

No problem, and respect for the CSC first line support work! Not the easiest job in the world dealing with often angry general public.

I can never really understand why service organisations do not train and reward their first line support people better. It would be a much better experience for the customer, and more rewarding job wise for the CSC person if more problems could be handled and fixed maybe on the first fault logging phone call rather than first line having to escalate all but the simplest problem with often resultant delays or companies never getting back to you.

Points noted regarding AAISP. Guess you'll have to weigh up the pros and cons of over £90/month for data. I guess my take on it would be that I may get two cheaper (not necessarily cheap) lines from different ISPs if I required a more resilient service. That may be cheaper than one metered line from one of the premium providers. Of course a digger or the like might still take out both lines together, but at least two lines are probably more resilient than one.

I'll be interested to hear your conclusion.

In reply to a post by roadsnail:

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Thanks for the feedback, truly noted.

No problem, and respect for the CSC first line support work! Not the easiest job in the world dealing with often angry general public.

I can never really understand why service organisations do not train and reward their first line support people better. It would be a much better experience for the customer, and more rewarding job wise for the CSC person if more problems could be handled and fixed maybe on the first fault logging phone call rather than first line having to escalate all but the simplest problem with often resultant delays or companies never getting back to you.

Points noted regarding AAISP. Guess you'll have to weigh up the pros and cons of over £90/month for data. I guess my take on it would be that I may get two cheaper (not necessarily cheap) lines from different ISPs if I required a more resilient service. That may be cheaper than one metered line from one of the premium providers. Of course a digger or the like might still take out both lines together, but at least two lines are probably more resilient than one.

I'll be interested to hear your conclusion.

I enjoyed it. Got a better chance to chat to people at night for some reason. I often did 3 weeks back to back nights in a row.

I have 2 lines so I do get your view. I have BT Infinity and TalkTalk Business, both 80/20 lines and together they cost me around £115 a month. I can't afford to have majoy downtime, and I spent years taking calls from people who were trying to run a business on their £4,50 a month residential service. It annoyed the [censored] out of me then and still does to this day.

I feel that whilst it is about "you get what you pay for" I also don't see the point in paying for overkill. Many people on here know my usage has in the past been high, and yes I have stupidly mentioned it but those days appear to be going.

16TB in a month was to see if BT would kick me off, they never battered an eyelid even though they moved me from a congested to a less congested pipe half way through when i started to go slow, just goes to show.

So far tonight the TV is running fine on the throttled line. So I am thinking that ADSL 2+ is a better option and would give me more redundancy. My PCP is behind a steel wall, and the NGA is in front of it and to the left, right next to the road.

I forgot to add, We had a night target of 100 issues (calls or tickets) but I got a lot of time to talk to customers (which I enjoed more) because around 5am all the account changes would come in, and so we would close them all which gave us 1 issue, so I could hit my target in 5 mins flat (and often go way way over target)

On a busy day me and someone else (who were the highest call takes in the department) would often do 60-70 calls a day each, so never got much time to actually talk to people properly.

Still happy days - and then BT got hold of it.

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Still happy days - and then BT got hold of it.

I guess they (the BT accountants) had to start reducing support levels at PN, else how do you differentiate between BT pricing and so-called BT budget (ie PlusNet) provision?

I have never experienced the 'old' days with PN support, but I can honestly say that even PlusNet's more recent reduced support beats BT support hands down.

Just my 2 pennies worth!

I agree.

Edit - after reading this

http://www.broadband.co.uk/broadband/providers/plusn...

I've stopped myself hitting the order button.

Edited by deleted (Tue 24-Jan-17 13:27:18)