Nothing to do with who's right or wrong and certainly not bullying. I've seen people refused mortgages because they owed their last mobile provider pennies and that being recorded as a default.

In reply to a post by Nervous:

Nothing to do with who's right or wrong and certainly not bullying. I've seen people refused mortgages because they owed their last mobile provider pennies and that being recorded as a default.

Oh yes, it happens and it is wrong. What I really take issue with is another punter, such as yourself, relaying a threat to someone's credit record from a supplier, when they have already paid.

If you are going to point it out, then at least say it is wrong. We should not be bullied into paying money we don't owe and as punters we should stick together on this.

The reason was there's a notice period for terminations - I think 14 days.

This could be the reason - I never received the document that contained that clause due to an error on their part they made several years ago. I did receive an unsolicited email short time before I requested the number port saying that they would NOT be imposing a cancellation change, if I moved supplier, due to their error. The timing was coincidental as I had only just arranged for the fibre installation for broadband and the fibre had not been connected. I had not at the time notified Plusnet that I was considering moving by broadband as I still had some weeks to go n my Plusnet contract.

My 2 year contact was also due to end.and was fully paid for to the end of that period but was more than 14 days away. If the charge had been stated as being for number porting I might even have pad it although I thought from the OFCOM rules that porting had to be free.

It is all completed now and everything is working and it has been confirmed by Plusnet that all payments due to Plusnet have been made. A direct debit has been set up to pay my new supplier - slightly less cost per month, faster data transfer, and before the annual increase that Plusnet makes. I have in fact paid both companies for 2 weeks of supply of voice and data due to the overlap of the service provision.

I did look around for alternative BB/phone packages.. I need at least FTTC where I live now. The standard ADSL speed was estimated at 3 Mbs when I moved house. It had been 19Mbps an ADSL where I lived previously over 8 years ago.

With my current 2 year contract coming to and end in February this year and the imminent arrival of fibre and digital voice I looked into the cost of both FTTC from another vendor and a ful fibre FTTP from the one supplier that had laid fibre down the road. The cost of these alternative suppliers, much to my surprise was lower cost than my Plusnet contract even though I was getting about £10 a month discount from referrals I had made over the years.

I knew that digital voice was coming eventually although no timescale has yet been published for our exchange yet. I narrowed the alternatives to two. Swish had laid a duct to supply FTTP and Vodafone offered a FTTC solution. Both did digital voice and both were lower cost than my discounted Plusnet contract prior to the Plusnet annual increase.

I decided on the FTTP solution which has been working well for over a week and has digital voice with my number having just been ported yesterday. Plusnet appears to be shedding services to other BT companies (e.g. mobile phone was being switched to EE at a special discounted rate - I moved to Lebara at half the price) and while the customer forum does work well it is not so easy to make contact with the people who deal with technical issues, I think you now have t use Twitter/X rather than being able to raise a ticket.

I had already ditched PlusNet email and website hosting for my personal domain.

Having been with Plusnet since about 2005 I have seen them change for the worse in recent years and decided now was an appropriate time to change.

I was with Plusnet from August 2015 until recently. Remember paying for annual line rental saver?

I coudn't deal with annual price increases every March (£2+ last March and £3+ March before that), and the FTTP offer from an altnet was too good to ignore, so gave them notice not to renew.

For some inexplicable reason I was charged £4.85 extra for the final month. I called to query as soon as payment was taken in early December; and received a cheque for the refund yesterday but for £14.68!

In reply to a post by steelej02:

I knew that digital voice was coming eventually although no timescale has yet been published for our exchange yet.

It's not being done on an exchange-by-exchange basis: it's national.

There has been a national PSTN "stop sell" in place since 5 Sep 2023. That is, you can't buy a new analogue PSTN voice service today.

The final PSTN switch-off date has been put back from December 2025 to January 2027.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

The final PSTN switch-off date has been put back from December 2025 to January 2027.

And I would not be surprised if it is pushed back again. Come mid '26 there will be some factions that come out with the various "we are not ready", "alarms will not work", "penalising the elderly" and more argument. OFCOM will then mandate a further delay.

In reply to a post by MHC:

And I would not be surprised if it is pushed back again. Come mid '26 there will be some factions that come out with the various "we are not ready", "alarms will not work", "penalising the elderly" and more argument. OFCOM will then mandate a further delay.

As long as they're happy to pay the costs associated with keeping the PSTN alive then I am fine with this - the last hundred PSTN users on an exchange can between them pay a line rental fee set at a value to keep the exchange building rented, powered, equipment maintained etc. What they actually want is for everybody else to subsidise their inability to plan a migration given nine years to do it.

The road where I live may be unusual - our mains power is delivered overhead and the BT lines shares the same pole although the pole is actually owed by the power company. All the phones in our road come from a BT duct, up pole in our garden, and are distributed overhead to shared poles along the lane along with the mains power.

Around the rest of the village Trooli has been installing fibre at the top of the BT poles which are NOT shared with power but NOT down our lane - I suspect that is because the poles are owned by the power company. When there is a problem Openreach can never find their junction point just outside my property and i always have to show them where it is. This happens typically 2-3 time a year.

Swish installed a fibre in the road duct some time ago and they offered a full fibre service at virtually the same price as Vodafone FTTC fully digital solution. The fibre could very easily run through a duct that was already there from the road to my property - installed by the previous owner, I think intended for a planned CCTV camera.

I can find no date for the switch off of the Great Missenden exchange. It was NOT on the stop sell list last time I checked I just decided that I would switch to fully digital now asmy contract was due to end and I wanted to change supplier and it does save me a small amount of money each month.

I did not ask Plusnet for a digital voice solution as I was unhappy with their service and my contract was due to end in early February. They did not explain what the unexpected fee was for and have now decided that this was a mistake on their part.

Totally agree in 99.9% of cases.

I wanted to migrate my father-in-law from PSTN & FTTC to FTTP with digital voice. He had a personal alarm which dialled out on the PSTN and would not work reliably (confirmed by manufacturers) on a DV service with terminal apapters/interfaces. They had a fully digital system available BUT the local authority was dragging their heels about upgrading and in 2022 were suggesting "a long time". May be harsh but the LA needed to get their act together and not complain when it is turned off.

On the other side, What of a location where 6, 7,8 or 9 km copper lines are in place so chance of a DSL service - minimal. They may get full fibre eventually, but who pays the bill?