Plusnet to Be*?!?

Hi All

I have a question that I'm hoping that somene can answer. I've been with Plusnet (and still am) for over 3 years now and have been pretty happy with the service provided. I know a lot of people have had bad experiences from what I have read on the board. Apart from the throttling of some downloads until late in the evening, I haven't been affected too much.

My local exchange, Nailsea (SSNAI) was unbundled end of last month by Be* and have been considering moving for the faster (and not so throttled) connection. However, after requesting my MAC I was called a couple of days later asking why I was leaving. I was completely honest with the lady on the phone and that I was after the faster speed. However, I was told that Be* being LLU would be a slower speed than I am experiencing at present which I find hard to believe - hence the post.

I've just run a speedtest (speedtest.net) and here is the link to my test stats:

[IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/121840259.png[/IMG]

Also, here are the stats from my router (Netgear DG834G):

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 6976 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 33 db 9 db
Noise Margin 5 db 24 db

So, am I being led up the garden path by the Plusnet rep, or will I expect a slower connection if I make the switch?

Any view/facts appreciated.

Cheers

Andi.

ps. I accepted a month's free Plusnet whilst I investigate

I have seen this posted
http://www.beforum.co.uk/forum/default.aspx?f=2&m=3875

With your LA at 33db looks about right on max (Connection Speed 6976 kbp) at 7 Megs

On ADSL2+ looks like you will get about 11 Megs on average.

Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

In reply to:

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However, I was told that Be* being LLU would be a slower speed than I am experiencing at present which I find hard to believe - hence the post.

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Was it PN staff that claimed this or someone else?

Edited by rsharma (Sat 05-May-07 08:34:21)

Hi

It was the representative from Plusnet. When requesting my MAC, one of the questions asked is which ISP I was requesting it for. When they called me to ask why I was leaving and I mentioned the speed aspect, the rep claimed that the stats on my line showed that LLU speed compared to what I have currently would be worse.

Can't see how it can be, but I wanted to get some facts before committing - so I agreed to have a free month whilst I did some digging.

If you were going to Sky or any other ISP, PN would probably have said the same.

Thats twice in less than a week, we have heard a similar story and tbh it was stated that this would be rectified, but obviously has not.

If you are going to get better value for money and are happy to give it a try, why not?

Good luck.

/shouts MKelly to reducate staff again.

Oh Dear,

Firstly and for a bit of balance moving from a BT wholesale supplier to an LLU supplier will allways carry a slight risk that you will end up with a worse line, you could end up with a better line, or as is most likely you end up with the same line characteristics. Every time a change is made to the exhisting setup there is a chance of things changing.

Having said that BE use ADSL2 which is more efficient than the ADSL1 that Plusnet provide, they don't throttle or shape the connection and they are not oversubscribed on bandwidth. With your stats I would be very surprised if you didn't see an improvement in sync speed, and you can download what you want when you want at full speed.

If somebody at Plusnet is claiming that LLU is slower then Mand's stick needs a serrious outing.

PlusNets LLU (from Tiscali) has a more conservative default min SNR of 12dB compared to BT Max's 6dB. As a result you will get a lower sync speed and thus throughput if you switched from Max to LLU on PlusNet, as I did.

If Be uses a similar SNR minimum then that will mean a lower sync rate if the connection was like for like so PN saying what they did is not completely wrong. As Be can use ADSL2+ this may then give you a better sync rate than Tiscali's connection would but how much better is impossible to say as line conditions can vary so much and it does depend on how well your router copes with ADSL 2+.

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-May-07 22:15:39)

I'm begining to wonder if they are basing their LLU vewpoint on their own experiences with Tiscali

Maybe Peter, but if it cannot be proven by Plusnet that the OP will get a slower rate, and it is quite obvious it cannot, then that alone should not be given to the OP as advice.

In my eyes, Plusnet have now planted doubt in the OP's mind and so therefore is morrally wrong. When PN can categorrically state thet they know the OP will be worse off, is the time they start giving those sort of facts, and not indeed fairy tales.

I know of no-one who has swapped from BT to any LLU supplier that has had worse speeds. Mine went up by approx 2mb.

It is another classic, lets lie to the customer to try and keep him to stay. If it was myself, I would take the free month, get my MAC and then leave. Show them to lie to me.

I think they have totally misunderstood any of their competitors deals or capabilities.

And I notice it was a female again, wonder if the same one?

No disrespect but stick to traffic shaping PN you have that down to a tee, but blatant lying, well I suppose thats to the tee as well.

Edited by soundsystem (Fri 04-May-07 22:20:46)

The default snr on Be is 6db. It is very unlikely that somebody moving from Plusnet to Be would get worse speeds not impossible but very unlikely.

Andi,

What date was you told this on, as something like this has been said, and it was announce it had been sorted.

Hi David

I requested the MAC on 27th April and was called on 29th April.

So it was arround the same time as the other one. Lets hope the message has now got through to their retentions team.

Andi, Be unlimited is only a 3 month contract so my advice would be give it a go and see what happens. If your going for Be lite then its 12 months.

Edited by adslp (Fri 04-May-07 23:07:20)

Thanks Andi,

Mark Kelly of PN posted on the 30th April that the team had been briefed on a different error.

Hopefully that briefing worked, as your call was before then.

But a member of the PN comm team will post a reply to you when they are about, as they will want this matter deal with.

Hi,

You can take their information with a large dose of salt. As has already been stated by a few others earlier, there have been a few instances of PN staff too eager to tell people moving elsewhere that their connection would suffer. Hopefully they have sorted out that problem.

I don't think you need to worry too much about Be because they do offer good speeds on any application you chose (no first hand experience). I have found the link in order that you can compare and see what you are likely to get with them:
http://www.beforum.co.uk/forum/default.aspx?f=2&m=3875

Hope that helps.

You must know that the CS agent/"analyst" was acting immorally if the conversation has been accurately reported.

This forum has been given an assurance by PN that their CS agents will be told not to use underhand tactics to scare customers into not using their MAC. So if any similar reports surface from now onwards we will know what a PN assurance is worth in this new era. And someone will undoubtedly report them to Ofcom who will definitely stamp down on anti-competitive behaviour. That could mean a heavy fine.

Simon

I don't think this issue is one for the regulator and will be down to the other companies should they chose to take any action (e.g. Virgin v. BA). I'm also not sure that a company rep bad mouthing another has that much effect if the customer has decided to leave in any case and probably reinforces the desire even more. If they are told such information they usually also investigate the validity of such claims, this thread is a perfect example of that fact.

Good morning. I would be inclined to put it to the test. Ofcom's new regs were very much driven by their remit to promote greater competition in ISP-land and easier movement between providers. If they now were to find that some ISPs are prepared to lie about their competitors in a bid to thwart the customer's freedom of choice, I think they would take action. Let's hope that it doesn't need to be put to the test.

I agree that a migrating customer who discovers that his current ISP is lying about the service he is planning to move to is only going to be more determined to move. But I don't know how many people would make that discovery. I suspect that there would be a significant number who would take the information at face value. Obviously, PlusNet do too, otherwise they wouldn't have done it in the first place.

Only a small proportion of punters ever visits this forum and they are not the ones I would be particularly worried about. However, if anyone can produce hard evidence (in the form of a PN written response or recorded telephone conversation) that PlusNet are still telling lies to frighten customers into not migrating, I would think that the national media would help to broadcast these underhand practices to a wider audience.

Simon

Does anyone know. or willing to say! if PN retention reps are on commission if they get someone to stay?

I can categorically say that they are not.

The retentions team are existing CSC agents, who have volunteered/been requested to work one of the retentions workflows.

Hi there,

As Mark said last week we have addressed the particular issue raised and this should not be happening going forwards.

If anyone has any examples since then of our agents giving out wrong information I'd like to ask them to forward myself or any one of the Comms team the details so that we can pick them up, however I'm confident that this issue has now been dealt with.

Cheers Mand for the quick reply.

As in my post to the OP this happened before the staff were "reminded" hopefully this has stopped now,
and there won't be anymore threads like this in the future

Agreed. I'm confident it was just a misunderstanding and should all now be sorted.

All this fuss over an unsubstantiated claim is unbelievable. Some of the claims by Sky's sales people when cold calling leaves what the PlusNet rep was supposed have said way down the list. Same can be said with power and insurance companies who claim to be able to save you hundreds of pounds.

You know this forum remninds me of the back of a butchers shop - As soon as a bit of meat is dropped the rats flock out to grab it.

In reply to:

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....if anyone can produce hard evidence (in the form of a PN written response or recorded telephone conversation) that PlusNet are still telling lies to frighten customers into not migrating, I would think that the national media would help to broadcast these underhand practices to a wider audience....

---

A fair bit OTT I feel Simon insomuch as it is speculative and I reckon would not be worth the possible fallout if it were a policy driven thing. No doubt if the given role of a retentions operative they will no doubt endeavour to paint a rosy a picture of themselves and not so good a one of the rival, it does not necessarily mean lying and I guess those doing the job would be upset by the implications of your post.

Not sure if you think that working for Plusnet makes you automatically lose any personal morality but of the two recent instances on this BBS one who made a similar allegation on a different BBS actually registered on here to apologise for I think the phrase was

That would be "still" as in the other similar problem they admitted to in this forum last week - and promised to eradicate.

Simon

Not "still" Simon!

As stated previously in this thread, this incident occurred around the same time as the previous incident. That incident, as I have already acknowledged, has been dealt with and the analysts expectations set accordingly.

Had this happened after I had spoken to the team, then you would be correct in your allegation or speculation. But you are incorrect.

As one who craves and demands accuracy from others, perhaps you could extend the same courtesy or would that not fit in with the objectives

If staff are found to deliberately give out inaccurate information during a retentions call, this forum has my assurance that it will be dealt with.

I would not expect that to continue now that the team have been educated.

You haven't read my post/s carefully enough. I have seen that the two incidents reported here pre-date your investigation and reported fix. I have made no allegations - but merely invited anyone who should still be getting a false steer from CS to post their evidence. *If* that should happen, ie if PN were *still* misleading departing customers about their new ISP, then plenty of media people, and possibly Ofcom, would be interested to hear about it.

This was a response to a post claiming that Ofcom would not be interested in such a matter -- it wasn't a reply to someone complaining about new PlusNet transgressions.

Now, what "objectives" are you referring to exactly?

Simon

Hi All

Thank you for the constructive comments.

It wasn't my intention when making the post yesterday to cause such a heated debate. Although it didn't make sense that an ADSL2 provider would make for a slower connection I thought I'd put it to the board to get other peoples views/experiences.

My reasons for changing provider are not due to dissatisfaction with Plusnet, as I have always had a good service from them. It is due to Be* unbundling my local exchange and offering an ADSL2 service, which doesn't have a peak/off-peak usage restriction that makes it attractive.

Cheers

Andi.

I hope you do sign up. You will enjoy a fast unristricted service at all times of the day and excellent customer service. An example is when some customers in london were suffering from slow download speeds due to congestion, BE added extra bandwidth within two weeks and until this was implemented a ploite request was made to schedule heavy downloads for quieter periods, not port throttling which is other ISP's answer to congestion.

Brian Coles recently said when asked about the FUP

"I have never enforced the FUP on any member at this time, I will only enforce it when a members downloading affects another member. "

I.E. against an individual, not tarring with the same brush.

>That would be "still" as in the other similar problem

"Similar problems" is not the same as stating without qualification as "telling lies", and you know it.

You are well aware that using such a phrase is inflammatory, not helpful to reasoned debate.

Hmm... what would you call it?

Seems that there were two reported cases at the end of last month, at least one of which has been admitted to, in which a PlusNet CS agent knowingly gave false information about the receiving ISP to a departing customer in a bid to stop him leaving.

Would you prefer this to be described as truthfulness? Is the act of lying by an ISP so unsavoury, so unsanitised that you would prefer it to be swept discreetly under the TBB carpet for the sake of harmony?

Simon

In reply to:

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a PlusNet CS agent knowingly gave false information

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Simon thats is a hell of an accusation and without being a party to or involved in the original conversation, is not one which you can make with any degree of accuracy.

A mistake was made and a lack of understanding was all that was in play here.

To imply that there was any degree of intent is simply wrong and mischievous.

I have explained the circumstances regarding the original incident, identified the actions which I have taken and the expectations which I have set. Is that not sufficient, or is my word now in question?

Are peolpe not permitted to be human and allowed to err in your eyes? Or is it just because it is someone in the employ of PlusNet?

To imply intent and that we are lying, deliberately, does nothing for reasoned and intelligent debate on this board.

I hope that you will be strong enough to retract your allegation and allow the explaination of what occured to rest there without further inflammatory comment.

Edited by mkelly (Sun 06-May-07 00:35:04)

once is a mistake. More than once suggests a motive. Did you get this retention agent from AOL by any chance?

In reply to:

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Would you prefer this to be described as truthfulness? Is the act of lying by an ISP so unsavoury, so unsanitised that you would prefer it to be swept discreetly under the TBB carpet for the sake of harmony?

---

You are not stating that an ISP lied, you are talking of an individual, an actual living person...not that you seem to give a jot about that it seems that, they work for an ISP that you have constantly used these boards to berate, using methods that are often legitimate, but on occasions I find very unsavoury.

I feel you continue to use these boards to your own ends and not as intended for the good of the general community. Your attack for that is what this is is destructive, you know good and well that calling someone a liar is hardly conducive to any reasoned debate on this BBS...it serves no end other than to be confrontational.

I would personally be very offended if someone accused me of knowingly lying, it is not a trivial accusation and this is why I take it so seriously, you have based the accusation on a couple of posts where errors have been admitted and addressed; that it was people knowingly lying is your interpretation only.

No Simon I do not want anything sanitised, but neither am I prepared to see your extreme views go unchallenged. Do you not find it ironic that two individuals who were involved have not made the accusations that you have?

I see you have been requested to withdraw these allegations

We have been told here of two migrating customers who were given false information about their two different gaining ISPs. That much I assume you have admitted. We don't know how many similar incidents occurred which were not reported here. You may care to confirm too that the agent/s in question were a) well trained; b) under supervision; and c) had their telephone calls monitored and/or recorded by supervisors. Their reported disinformative comments about the gaining ISP were not vague aspersions but specific accusations seemingly chosen for their relevance to the customers' reasons for migrating.

Your assertion that these were the misguided, impromptu and unilateral tactics of one over-zealous employee don't ring true with me. Having heard the lies live or recorded, did a supervisor call back the customers concerned and apologise for this accidental disinformation? Or was this instead an ill-judged policy - hopefully short-lived - to disinform so as to retain customers?

Please be circumspect as there are whistleblowers at PlusNet Towers.

In any event, once might have been a mistake. Twice sounds like a plan. And three times would get its just desserts. So I hope this ploy has indeed been stopped now. You call it a "misunderstanding" but one or more trained PlusNet employees have been telling lies to customers whilst under supervision. That is deception by PlusNet, however much you might want to pass it off as an individual's mistakes. PlusNet is responsible for what its CS agents say, whether the agent is acting under orders or not.

And let's not get too sanctimonious. You, your boss and your boss's boss have all lied about me in the forums in a bid to salvage their own reputations. Would you like me to quote you chapter and verse?

Simon

I moved from Plusnet to Be* in February. My line stats were similar to your and below is what I am getting on Be* now:

Uptime: 1 day, 2:11:23
Modulation: G.992.5 Annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,295 / 13,227
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [GB/GB]: 2.80 / 7.85
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 17.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 18.0 / 35.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 6.5 / 3.5

The Plusnet retentions lady was not being honest with you (and that's putting it kindly).

That is the most paranoid posting I have seen from you Simon

Definition of Paranoid
Paranoid personality disorder is characterized by a distrust of others and a constant suspicion that people around you have sinister motives.
People with this disorder tend to have excessive trust in their own knowledge and abilities and usually avoid close relationships with others.
They search for hidden meanings in everything and read hostile intentions into the actions of others.
They are quick to challenge the loyalties of friends and loved ones and often appear cold and distant to others.
They usually shift blame to others and tend to carry long grudges.

I can endorse kamelion's comments about Be*. Their service just works at full speed all of the time; I couldn't ask for anything more.

It will be interesting seeing the impact when more and more heavier downloaders migrate to BE having seen that they get full speed at any time. The problem you get then is the cost of providing a service which has a disproportionate number of heavier users compared to the rest of the industry. You can either charge more, limit peoples traffic or let the customers all fight for the same bandwidth. Various ISP's are strugglng with this problem at the moment.

Simon it seems you wish to continue to spin this and twist it into something it never was.

You continue to speculate and accuse despite having the situation explained not only by me but by the original poster last week.

You attempt to further your objectives by repeating the accusation that our employees have deliberately lied to these customers and that we have embarked on a path to deliberately deceive. This is intolerable.

You have clearly dismissed the explanation which I have given and chosen to disbelieve that.

Your weak accusation of whistle blowers in PlusNet might win you kudos with certain members of this community but they do not wash with me. The comments and suggestions contained in your post only go to prove that. The massive inaccuracies the post contains show simply that you are completely unaware of how we operate.

Simon you are wrong, totally and completely wrong and I will not engage further with you on this subject. Your inability or unwillingness to withdraw your false accusation speaks volumes to me.

I would ask simply that you move on. We have been hung out to dry for our sins of the past and not without just cause, but we are not intrinsically evil.

Judge us by what we do going forward. By that I mean our real actions, not those which you invent or dream up or spin.

And if Be should take a nosedive, their customers can move elsewhere. Your depiction of their impending fall from grace (and indeed the doom and gloom spread here by PlusNet about the future sustainability of other providers with whom they are compared) is exactly the kind of speculation that some other people get taken to task for. PlusNet's motives for doing so are obvious but what are yours? Perhaps you should put your sword back in its scabbard until Be actually do fulfil your/PlusNet's idea of their destiny? Until then, they appear to be one of the most recommended ISPs in the land and anyone who is lucky enough to have access to their service and is looking for a new provider will presumably look at the facts about Be rather than the self-interested scaremongering that PlusNet is peddling.

Simon

Which, specifically, are the "massive inaccuracies" in my post? What, precisely, did you step in and put a stop to last week? And why?

To explain specific falsehoods about one ISP's protocol throttling policy and another's speed being slower than PlusNet's as genuine mistakes is a mickey-take.

You were right to put a stop to it.

Simon

Simon,

Your quote (my bold):

And let's not get too sanctimonious. You, your boss and your boss's boss have all lied about me in the forums in a bid to salvage their own reputations. Would you like me to quote you chapter and verse?

That would be me. The only interaction that we have ever had was to discuss on this board the e-mail migration (which by the way is virtually complete with all Plusnet customers mail migrated so I'll look forward to posting that this has fully completed without the issues we had previously).

Therefore, please quote 'chapter and verse' where I have lied about you to salvage my own reputation?

Phil

In reply to:

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Your assertion that these were the misguided, impromptu and unilateral tactics of one over-zealous employee don't ring true with me. Having heard the lies live or recorded, did a supervisor call back the customers concerned and apologise for this accidental disinformation? Or was this instead an ill-judged policy - hopefully short-lived - to disinform so as to retain customers?

---

You have used the word "lies" again without any qualification, you continue with wild speculation on the basis of very little information. This goes far beyond people have a reasoned debate, when you accuse people of lying it can be nothing other than acrimonious, and is no help to this BBS.

You need time to reflect.

Hi Andi,

Out of curiosity what does the speed on the portal here show:

https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=data_transfer_speed

Your sync speed is showing as 6976kbps but the speedtest is showing around 4Mbps. I'm just wondering why this is. If the portal shows 4000kbps then that would explain things, maybe the line has resync'd around 4Mbps in the last few days (or does so quite a bit if it's always around 4000kbps). This page is quite a useful reference point for speed comparisons between ADSL and ADSL2+:

http://www.internode.on.net/adsl2/graph/

The speed needs to be above about 4Mbps for ADSL2+ to offer a faster speed (or in some cases lower than 1Mbps).

It looks from Sadoldman's post that PR100 will not be able to respond to you for some time.

In reply to:

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The speed needs to be above about 4Mbps for ADSL2+ to offer a faster speed

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Is that synch speed or throughput speed?

In reply to:

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This page is quite a useful reference point for speed comparisons between ADSL and ADSL2+:

http://www.internode.on.net/adsl2/graph/

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I don't agree. I would think that most people would find a graph that used the more readily available line attenuation rather than line lenth more useful.

I think the main culprit is BT Wholesale's pricing model which is based on pipes and segments. This forces ISPs to be overly worried about customer peak bandwidth usage.

It is apparent that many (all?) LLU ISPs are connected to the NTL backbone which works on an different pricing model that works out far cheaper than BT.

It's one of those difficult things to do a proper like for like comparison. When an ISP buys IPStream and a central pipe they aren't just being a fibre link that connects point A to point B but in effect a fibre link that connects 5,500 point As (every exchange) to point B (the ISP's datacentre).

To do the same yourself then yes the fibre link from each exchange is going to cost significantly less than a BT Central but you're going to need a lot more of them.

To LLU Sheffield and Rotherham for example an ISP may use another ISP's backbone like Telewest or BT to provide them with a dozen or so links to connect all the local exchanges together in one place and then a cross country link from there to Manchester or London maybe.

"To LLU Sheffield and Rotherham for example an ISP may use another ISP's backbone like Telewest or BT to provide them with a dozen or so links to connect all the local exchanges together in one place and then a cross country link from there to Manchester or London maybe."

Or the ISPs provider may have fibre/kit local to most exchanges and provide a Metro Ethernet/MPLS solution to drop the data off wherever the ISP likes.

TT

"I can categorically say that they are not."

I thought all agents had a performance related bonus scheme? Surely retention related work affects this?

TT

In the past there was a performance based bonus, but that was changed a long time ago.

True, and it probably makes things easier if the ISP themselves has multiple PoPs across the country. So for example if they had a PoP in Manchester they may need say four cross country links to take the traffic from say Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield/Rotherham and York with each of the local exchanges in each of these cities and Manchester as well connected to each other using the MPLS solution. While a PoP in Birmingham could do the same with Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Coventry, etc.

Even so, while you're cross country links are going to be a lot cheaper than BT centrals you're still going to need more of them.

Be* use BT circuits for backhaul.

big fat ones

Hi Dave

Thanks for your post. Apologies, but I have been on holiday for a few days (hence my lack of posts). The speed displayed from the portal link provided shows 6500Kbps. I have just run another speedtest:

[IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/125383877.png[/IMG]

It's showing circa 5Mbps, which I'm guessing will allow a faster ADSL2+ speed?

Cheers

Andi.