In reply to a post by mbeenham:

Looking on the positive side at least Plusnet do offer a broadband only service which many other ISPs do not. Its just annoying that they play silly games with respective charges - which I suppose is all the marketing types have to fill their working day.

If you exclude the "big players" (BT, Sky, TalkTalk etc) you will find a huge number of ISPs offer "no tie" based broadband.

I haven't mentioned them yet, but the biggest con ever is Virgin who (until recently at least) had the same price differential where there really is absolutely no requirement for the voice bit to deliver the broadband in any shape fashion or form whatsoever, yet they still had a £15.99 line rental you had to remember about). More recently they seem to have started offering no (genuinely pointless) voice options, but they really were pushing it before - at least in standard ADSL2+ setups the copper has a purpose in the setup!

In reply to a post by therioman:

You can indeed, in theory do without the copper from PCP to Exchange for FTTC broadband yes. There is no technical requirement for it to deliver the FTTC bit.

In the world as it is however :-

First, I expect a number does need to be allocated to the FTTC service.

Second, all the equipment exists for remotely checking copper faults, and I believe pretty well pinpointing where it is. Remove the exchange-PCP link and what happens then?

Third, it would be impracticable to remove much nationally, if any, until nearly everybody was on FTTx.

In reply to a post by therioman:

More recently they seem to have started offering no (genuinely pointless) voice options,

But at only £4.99 less than the total including the £15.99 line rental, so you are still effectively paying £11 a month "line rental".

Edited by kasg (Fri 25-Jul-14 20:39:44)

Silly question, Adam, and I'm sorry if it's already answered somewhere in the link you gave, but how do I find out when my LRS is paid up to?

I think it expires in December, but I'm not sure when in December, so don't know if I'll be able to do what I did last year too, and renew "up to" three months early, to retain the current price.

I can't find anywhere in my account information it says when it runs out. I can find proof I've paid, but that doesn't cast any light on it.

The home phone control panel only seems to deal with the monthly call charges. The line rental is showing as £0 - because I already paid it up-front, but no info on when that needs renewing, and can't find the section where you can opt to do it early.

T.

Look up in your email, it should be there of your LRS order with the date on it.

I agree that they don't make it easy to see when it is due and it is complicated by paying in advance as the messages you get don't actually tell you when it starts from. However, if you think it is due in December I am fairly sure it will be due on your normal billing date (mine is the 26th), therefore it runs out on the day before.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Look up in your email, it should be there of your LRS order with the date on it.

Unfortunately the emails omit the vital piece of information that TLM wants.

Quite. I can see when my LRS payment was accepted. However, I can't see when it ran from - which is different - and therefore when it expires.

I also can't find the part of the website (at least, I thought it was part of the website last time) where it allows you to pay early. Possibly, that part only becomes available once you are in the three-month window. Or can it be that I have only ever done it by phone, or by PMing one of the reps here?

I think I have paid early for the past two years, to avoid price hikes, but as the annual increases seem to be getting ever earlier, I think it is now borderline whether I can squeeze in a payment before they go up again.

T.

it tells you here https://portal.plus.net/apps/linerental/saver/portal and I am one day too late to get in before the price rise - I think I am being picked on

Edited by deleted (Sat 26-Jul-14 12:17:26)

Ah, thank you - I'm glad it was not my imagination that it's in there somewhere, but they certainly don't make it easy, do they?

I was right that it expires in December, and it is my billing date of the 13th, so I need to set a reminder to renew between the 13th and 23rd September. Sorry - I don't mean to rub salt in any wounds. It is indeed bad luck to miss it by a day!

If they continue this trend of inching the rises forward, year on year, I'll fall foul of it too, next year or the year after. I'm down to just a ten day window of opportunity already. Expecting to lose that in due course. Assuming LRS sign-ups are pretty evenly spread throughout the year, I guess, each year, only a quarter of customers can squeeze in before the cutoff, but three-quarters can't.

T.