Plusnet: I give up!!

I'm a long standing customer of Plusnet's but I have now come to the end of my tether with them. As an IT consultant too who not only relies on Plusnets services to deliver my business but I have personally reccommended Plusnet as an ISP of worth and yet I am now embarrased by the association and completely let down as a customer.

My problema like a lot of others started with the upgrade back in May that I didn't ask for, my up & down speeds increased significantly and what was a stable service became an intermittent service.

After no mean feat of getting on a a 'ticket' or 'question' (or whatever they were calling them then I finally got them to drop the service speed and give me a usable service, however this usable speed has been complete with 15-20 outages a day.

I have since tried to open more tickets/questions to resolve this and due to their new improved processes all i achieve is kicking off a Broadband checker and having them close the ticket. On four seperate occasions they have done this.

Can I call them? No
Can I email them? No
Can I raise another ticket? Yes but only to repeat a loop that has failed me several times already.

So now I want to leave and reading some of the threads on this site it seems I wouldn't be able to do that either.

All I get from Plusnet is warm words from Directors and Service Managers in newsletters from people who are anonymous to me as I wouldn't be able to contact them if I tried.

Now I don't know where the problem lies but I know Plusnet are at the root of it for no other reason than despite this mess they have without fail managed to collect a fee from me for my 'service'.

I know this is a rant but if anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them....

Many thanks.

Unfortunately you don't give too many details about the stats for your line, or whether you are IPStream Max or LLU. Since you got higher speeds in May, I assume you are on IPStrean Max?

I think some options are:
- If you are in fast mode, request that interleaving is enabled
- Try resyncing or rebooting at the time of day with the worst SNR margin
- If your equipment allows you to set the maximum down sync rate (e.g. SAR 110/130), then set a lower rate to push up the SNR margin
- Request to be put back on the original 2Mb/s scheme, as some others have done

It may be worth sending a PM to one of the comms staff through the PN portal, just to bring their attention to the matter...

Do you know if you are on MaxDSL or LLU? (your upstream may give us a hint) LLU currently has problems with disconnections which Tiscali and NTL are in the process of nailing down - though it is taking them ages.
If you are on MaxDSL and want to leave, you might end up with the same conection - migrations are normally a computer exercise not a physical cabling one.

If you want to leave, the best thing to do is raise a question/ticket asking for your MAC code. As you say you are a long standing customer I assume you paid your activation when you joined. Unless you moved recently and have a deferred move fee then you shouldn't owe anymore than the subs as they become due. Your 30 days notice period will start from when you ask for your MAC as well, so if it takes 2-3 days to get to you, you are still 2-3 days into your notice period (unlike most ISPs who appear to start the notice period from when they can be bothered to issue the MAC).

Thanks dusty_bin:

I'll accept details are sketchy and its no wonder as I don't really have answers to your questions!

These speeds are from my router:

DownStream Connection Speed 1732 kbps
UpStream Connection Speed 297 kbps

I didn't requestt any upgrade, they upgraded me, prior to this I was on a 1 meg down and .5 meg up though technically this was a 2 meg service but the line limits prevented more.

If you have any pointers to how I answer the rest of your questions I'm all ears (until the next outage anyway!).

That sounds like it could be MaxDSL to me, but I thought all the old fixed rate products had 256K upload not 512K.

As Dusty_bin suggested it might be worth asking one of the reps in the Plusnet forum (or on the usergroup forum) to intervene. It looks like your line could be long and not really suitable for MaxDSL.
If you migrate you need to make sure the ISP you migrate to will put you on a fixed speed product and not MaxDSL though otherwise you would be back where you started, but with a different ISP.

You could be right on the original upload speed it is a long distant memory, blurred by frustration.

I'll wait and see if a Plusnet representative comes along that I can hitch a ride with. I remember some while ago getting helped out by Ian Wild through here, no idea whether he is still knocking around these parts but he was a proper chap who got me sorted with little hassles.

Thanks again.

The reps have officially left here now - I won't go into the whys etc as this has been done to death recently.
I will see if I can find a rep on some of the other forums and point him in your direction though. If you could reply with a question/ticket number from your account or your username it will help them (assuming I find someone online)

What equipment are you using to connect?
If you look here, it explains how to get the other information. Kitz explains some of the key information here.
I suppose the useful information is to know what sort of SNR is achieved at the sync rates you are connecting at, whether either or both vary during the day, how much they vary and whether the problems typically occur at random or at similar times of the day.

One thing I forgot, was to make sure you had actually checked your system while directly connected to the test connector at the master socket, just to get a reference without anything else connected. There are some basic fault finding guides on Kitz's site and on the PN (or maybe usertools) site, but I don't recall them off the top of my head...
If you have trouble finding them, I could probably track them down...

Thanks again,

take your pick from these:

ID: 20264964 Closed Your comment 9:40pm, Monday 11th September 2006
ID: 20181940 Closed Your comment 9:17am, Thursday 31st August 2006
ID: 20181939 Closed Your comment 9:17am, Thursday 31st August 2006
ID: 19407519 Closed Your comment 9:51am, Thursday 18th May 2006
ID: 19407472 Closed Your comment 9:42am, Thursday 18th May 2006
ID: 19407470 Closed Your comment 9:42am, Thursday 18th May 2006

Username: hobdell

And don't forget that if you had downtime, you can ask for compensation.

Thanks my router is configured to bring up a lost connection - however if I added up all the 10 minute outages it would be a pretty penny for sure.

and unusable service, there are some threads on here which have detailed the issues and how to claim.

I'm sure this means something to intelligent people...

And look my ADSL connection has been up for over an hour, looks like I'll be losing you soon then, cheerio until I come around the moon again!!

System Up Time 91:50:13
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 11852 10797 0 286 2048 01:06:05
LAN 10M/100M 401549 381360 0 430 135 91:50:09
WLAN 11M/54M 576648 428330 0 1553 166 91:49:59

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1732 kbps 297 kbps
Line Attenuation 52 db 16.5 db
Noise Margin 18 db 25 db

I've definitely had that - building sites in Dremweaver and using online collaborative tools is a bit tricky right now.

Anything for being brow beaten by the family who think I should have all the answers??!!!

Those stats look very Netgearish to me.

Your downstream SNR (Noise Margin) is already quite high. It is definitely worth trying with nothing else plugged into the phoneline if possible.

I recently helped a friend diagnose a speed problem since being upgraded to MaxDSL by BT. His connection was fine on 1Mb but Max caused all sorts of problems - drops and slow speeds. In the end it turned out he had his Sky+ box plugged into the ADSL side of the filter. Once this was unplugged his connection speed doubled to nearly 3Mb and his drops stopped. Was very odd that at 1Mb the Sky+ box didn't cause problems though.

The frequent disconnects sound like Tiscali LLU to me - I've been experiencing them too. Log on to the Plusnet portal and PM James Baliey from the discussion board pages. he may be able to sort you out with compensation. It is not without precedence.

Good spot I have a Netgear 834G v2 running the latest firmware.

I have from way back when a BT engineer installed ADSL master socket which means all that ADSL filter malarkey isn't necessary, however for the purposes of this experiment I have removed any other devices connected to the BT line (fax and DECT base station), no Sky or anything else in use.

New stats:

System Up Time 92:08:01
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 13528 12241 0 263 1798 01:23:53
LAN 10M/100M 403125 383176 0 431 135 92:07:57
WLAN 11M/54M 576651 428330 0 1548 166 92:07:47

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1732 kbps 297 kbps
Line Attenuation 52 db 16.5 db
Noise Margin 13 db 25 db

Thanks Rick,

Followed your advice to use Plusnet's own forum and have discovered I am one of the chosen lucky ones who have been put on the Tiscali LLU system and my problem is known.

Kind of makes sense now why my ADSL service light never goes out on the router too as I don't actually lose the connection, it's the authentication that throws me out.

Thanks to Mandy at Plusnet for the call I am at least aware of why I have this problem so at least I can find 'my crowd' and cry about it together.

Thanks everyone for their help with this - a most excellent resource!!

Regards,

Andy

Since your upload is very low for LLU (It is usually nearer 600K) it suggests your line is struggling to support LLU fully. Have you asked Mand if it is possible to get your line regraded back to a fixed speed IPStream basis? That is unless you are willing to wait for Tiscali/NTL to work out what is the cause of the problems and fix it - they have already said its fixed a couple of times already.

BTW from your stats when nothing is connected, it appears you are getting a wide range of SNR values (sounds like mine as well). If you can resync when your SNR is at its lowest you should be able to get as stable a connection as possible.

Well I'm definitley on the LLU programme even though I never asked for it?

Prior to that I was a 2MB customer whose download never got above 1MB but it was rock solid. Since being upgraded where I went initially to a whopping (but totally unusable) 5MB download and was wound down to what I have now.

I was always on the outer reaches of the exchage and it was only when the ADSL went 'extended reach' that I was suitable for any service.

So there we have it I want a stable service and if that's at 1MB fine if its 5-8MB then great.

Mand seemed to suggest if I was to migrate back to a fixed service it would take a month and by then Tiscali/NTL or even Plusnet should hopefully have it cracked.

Still I'm not on my own I can now hook up with all my fellow plusnet buddies also blighted and if nothing seems to improve in the near future I can have a moan and a rant without having to go through the worst support processes I've ever had to deal with!!.

While we're on managed to grab some stats while it was 'down' earlier don't know what they tell me....


System Up Time 98:31:19
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 0 0 0 0 0 00:00:00
LAN 10M/100M 449420 429483 0 439 140 98:31:15
WLAN 11M/54M 581796 432061 0 1461 156 98:31:05

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1732 kbps 297 kbps
Line Attenuation 52 db 16.5 db
Noise Margin 16 db 25 db

Suggest you read this thread
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=plusnet&Number=2649559&page=2&view=expanded&sb=5&o=0&fpart=