Get £35 cashback for signing up to PlusNet

http://www.quidco.com/plus-net/

Might help with anyone wanting to sign up with them over a 12/18 month contract.

New people only obviously

I got £28 when I signed up recently, but no long contract. The £7 loss was worth the monthly contract.

My £56 cashback was validated recently.

Who pays this cash back?.

Plusnet.

So at £56 per head, equivalent to a new router, it's understandable why the new products are 12 month lockins.

Perhaps current customer focus should change and confront PN about such payments. Let's be honest it's the current customers money that's financing these deals.

Are you suggesting that PlusNet should be run like a Co-operative?

PlusNet is a business and can do what its Board decides to do with its capital, cash and profits. This Cashback is part of their cost of marketing, They could have chosen to take quarter page adverts in the Daily papers, TV adverts or whatever. Their current marketing strategy appears to be by referral, web banners and cashback sites like Quidco.

It's not our money. it ceases to be ours when we pay our bills.

Are you suggesting that PlusNet should be run like a Co-operative?

That is exactly what you and other customers are doing when you all started whinging about the 12/18 month contracts

PlusNet is a business and can do what its Board decides to do with its capital, cash and profits.

Can it do exactly what it likes with it's products too?.

Their current marketing strategy appears to be by referral, web banners and cashback sites like Quidco.

And to invite customers to sign up for a 12 month contract. Tell me, which bit of this stratergy don't you agree with again?.

What I'm suggesting is simple. We sign up to a service because we accept the specification, terms & conditions and price at which it is offered. If we don't accept any element, we don't sign.

If the service does not live up to the spec or the supplier changes terms & conditions or price, we are free to leave the service (and seek redress) under the terms & conditions of our contract.

We don't have to change products and if we do, we have to accept the new spec etc.

That's the business relationship in a nutshell.

Now, It is PlusNet that invites our opinions on its products and services by setting up Fora, UG's and even PM correspondence. That is totally outside of the contract we have and we can all participate in a full and frank discussion unless this is libellous. Neither side has to accept the view of the other.

To come back to your suggestion that "Perhaps current customer focus should change and confront PN about such payments." , I repeat that we have no rights to CONFRONT PlusNet and again repeat that we have no right to question what they do with their revenue.

This reminds me of the mobile phone contract market a few years ago. I was with Orange and after a couple of years I needed a new phone so I asked them for a free one like new customers would get. They refused, I moved to Vodaphone with my number and got a new phone on a 12 month contract. 12 months later I moved back to Orange with another new phone, same number.

I moved to 3 12 months after that with a new phone, but now at the end of every contract period, they call me and ask me to stay for another 12 months and offer me a free (good) phone, or I pay a bit towards an even better phone.

Long and short, I would say the ISP industry will go the same way, sort of. The margins are not there for ISP's, there isnt subsidised hardware (yet), but it can't be long before people wise up and realise they can register a domain for £2 a year with email facilities, and move ISP's every 12 to 18 months and take advantage of the offers at the time (new routers and cashback for example).

A lot of people dont want the hassle of moving over, or may not be technically savvy enough to do so, but it was the same with mobiles a few years ago. In a few years time when the more technical youngsters start getting their own broadband, they WILL be knowledable and want better deals.

It may be easier to get new customers with the promise of cash back and new hardware, but after a while the toll of losing customers because you didnt try to keep them must start hitting the profits. If you pay out £60 (router + cash back) over 12 months, that's £5 a month which may well be enough to erode most, if not all of the profit.

Anyway, just my take on it