What I can't understand is why, if Plusnet is struggling so much, it is so keen on special offers to gain more customers and, presumably, make matters even worse

Given that they have over 830,000 customers, if one in a thousand had problems worth complaining about on forums we would be seeing 830 different usernames doing so.

Have we got one hundred? Of the number we have, how many are posting several times a week. Twenty?

If I needed to post several times a week for months complaining about any ISP I was with, I would certainly adopt the obvious solution.

Plusnet currently has a few issues. That is clear. Are they "struggling so much"? The figures don't suggest it.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 05-May-15 11:22:19)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Given that they have over 830,000 customers, if one in a thousand had problems worth complaining about on forums we would be seeing 830 different usernames doing so.

They would more likely to complain on the Plusnet forum since that is more likely to achieve results.

There is a thread running there with over 1,800 posts: http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,1353...

It's hard to assess statistics though, since many people might complain once and then consider it not worth complaining again, and others may complain continuously. I have not analysed the statistics of that thread in question.

Without looking at the thread, (for the moment), I think we can assume an average of more than 3 posts per complainant. There are also no doubt a large number of people giving advice or simply commenting.

1800 / 3 = 600. So less than 0.073%, including the non-complainers.

Even 1800 individual complainants making one post each, with no contributions at all from non-complainants, would be less than 0.22%.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 05-May-15 12:10:20)

bear in mind there is also many other threads made by people who are unaware of that thread.

Also to consider lets say you got someone who just uses it for email or twitter or maybe internet banking, those types of users are unlikely to notice then there is also the issue people may be assuming the problem is elsewhere.

If we applied this logic e.g. to virgin media where I was often the only person in Leicester complaining, then one could assume virgin media in Leicester is top draw performance because I was the only one making noises about it online.

These type of issues dont just randomly only affect a small number of people, this is really an issue about people noticing and willing to complain about it online rather than some network wide issue by some miracle only affecting less than 1% of customers.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 05-May-15 13:08:21)

I stand by my original figure. The later ones were simply trying to illustrate further its validity.

It's a big jump from almost certainly less than a hundred long-term complainers to 830, and 830 is 0.1% of the customer base. (Not the 1% = 8,300 you just suggested). Plusnet is not "struggling" under a huge problem.

I expect your posts amount to well over 1% of the overall public complaint total. Yet you still consider it worth staying with Plusnet.

Don't forget that the vast majority of forum posters have individual problems that are generally solved within a few days. That's normal. The discussion is about "Plusnet, Struggling?" The figures clearly say they are not.

In reply to a post by StephenTodd:

The current Plusnet problems appear to be regional, with extra complications based on which gateway you happen to get connected to (as mentioned by Chrysalis). Many complaints come from Manchester or places close enough to have some association with it.

My connection (South Midlands) improved a lot after the Manchester upgrade. I lost the typical peak time latency increase on my graph and I went back to getting full speed 24/7. However it seems to have been a bit short lived because although the latency still hasn't come back I am now finding singlethreaded downloads dropping to 50% of my throughput at times.

I don't know how many endpoints I've been on because I never bother to try and change it. Presumably I stay on the same endpoint for months at a time.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 05-May-15 13:52:35)

I assume the struggling are mostly customers with FTTC connections?
My ADSL1 connection had higher than usual latency for around ten days a week or two ago but now everything is back to what it was before that issue occured.

It should also be considered that no all affected customer will complain on forums , they may complain directly with support via phone or e-mail, they also may have complained to CISAS ect
Using the number of people complaining on forums isn't reliable enough to gauge what is going on

Edited by tommy45 (Tue 05-May-15 14:18:26)

The Manchester bras issue was a convenience for Plusnet, But the peak time throughput issues where all too apparent long before that , and they still are evident now,
They may of recently added capacity but the amount they added isn't enough , or their host links aren't sufficient because some of their endpoints regardless of the which gateway,(endpoints & gateways are separate) are clearly becoming saturated at peak times

Edited by tommy45 (Tue 05-May-15 14:25:08)