Looks like Sky are also upping prices soon.

Just looked at a new order for Sky Fibre Max. After I had stopped laughing at the £50 connection fee I saw this..

Line Rental price increases on 1/3/17

Just thought I would mention that

Proof

The line rental increase happens every year but it's still cheaper than BT when they put theirs up. It's going up to £18.40, I believe. Nothing really new about the activation charge for Fibre Max, that came in when they dropped Fibre Pro which was always free activation although they don't charge if upgrading from Fibre Unlimited.

BT are also going to charge BT TV customers £3.50 for BT Sport from August, which I guess was going to be inevitable sooner or later.

Yes and I for one am sick of funding [censored] Football matches. Don't watch it - pointless waste of time to me.

I'm looking around but I can't find much which I would go for. I did look at plusnet and the prices are good but the horror stories put me off.

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

I'm looking around but I can't find much which I would go for. I did look at plusnet and the prices are good but the horror stories put me off.

I can understand your problem. From reading posts on this forum, it appears that even so called premium ISPs have their fair share of problems. For example ZEN's recent single thread performance issue.

I have used Sky for fibre bb and phone for 3 years now. Have also experienced line/speed issues which Sky dealt with (using BT OR) without any issues. I have also negotiated 'deals' at contract renewal time, so I cannot complain.

My other half has PlusNet fibre and phone, has also had problems with an open circuit line on 3 separate occasions in one year and her broadband speed being 'banded'.

In my dealings with Plusnet support, (regarding the banding issue), PlusNet support staff have been helpful and responsive. I wouldn't say first line support have been very knowledgeable, but with a little polite prompting have escalated the problem, resulting in a satisfactory outcome.

In conclusion my experience of Sky and PlusNet have been good (so far) as I consider my other half and I are getting reasonable value for money from both providers. If I needed a more reliable service, (maybe because my livelihood depended on it), and/or speedier support, then I would pay for premium ISP provision, but then expect excellent and timely support when things go wrong.

Just my thoughts here, and also trying to add a bit of balance regarding my experience of PlusNet support
Good luck with your quest!

ps I am not affiliated to either organisation.

That's okay mate. I used to work at the CSC as first line support, mainly night shifts. I agree some parts have gone down hill.

I seem to have single thread issues on my other ISP which is TalkTalk Business, but I fail to actually come up with any situation where it affects me. I stream, Game, Download via HTTP and FTP and never seems to be a problem.

£28,99 a month for Plusnet is good for 80/20 and phone line - as long as it does not keep messing with the gateways, I have a VPN I use anyway - but as none of my ISP's provide stats I can't even gauge what I do use. I do use the TBB meter and also dunmeter which uploads to the net, but neither of them are accurate but only because sometimes either program does not start so my usage is not even recorded. No fault of the websites.

I am actually rather impressed with AAISP and Adrian - I often watch what he films and would enjoy the fact they are as dead against snooping as I am.

At least with Plusnet I would have a gauge of how much I use. I guesstimated last month I used about 1.3TB but it could have been more. Too much for the likes of AAISP without spending over £90 a month for a 2TB allowance, and not enough to justify unlimited, which I know is an odd thing to say, but still.

Thanks for the feedback, truly noted.

Edited by deleted (Sun 22-Jan-17 18:31:50)

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Thanks for the feedback, truly noted.

No problem, and respect for the CSC first line support work! Not the easiest job in the world dealing with often angry general public.

I can never really understand why service organisations do not train and reward their first line support people better. It would be a much better experience for the customer, and more rewarding job wise for the CSC person if more problems could be handled and fixed maybe on the first fault logging phone call rather than first line having to escalate all but the simplest problem with often resultant delays or companies never getting back to you.

Points noted regarding AAISP. Guess you'll have to weigh up the pros and cons of over £90/month for data. I guess my take on it would be that I may get two cheaper (not necessarily cheap) lines from different ISPs if I required a more resilient service. That may be cheaper than one metered line from one of the premium providers. Of course a digger or the like might still take out both lines together, but at least two lines are probably more resilient than one.

I'll be interested to hear your conclusion.

In reply to a post by roadsnail:

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Thanks for the feedback, truly noted.

No problem, and respect for the CSC first line support work! Not the easiest job in the world dealing with often angry general public.

I can never really understand why service organisations do not train and reward their first line support people better. It would be a much better experience for the customer, and more rewarding job wise for the CSC person if more problems could be handled and fixed maybe on the first fault logging phone call rather than first line having to escalate all but the simplest problem with often resultant delays or companies never getting back to you.

Points noted regarding AAISP. Guess you'll have to weigh up the pros and cons of over £90/month for data. I guess my take on it would be that I may get two cheaper (not necessarily cheap) lines from different ISPs if I required a more resilient service. That may be cheaper than one metered line from one of the premium providers. Of course a digger or the like might still take out both lines together, but at least two lines are probably more resilient than one.

I'll be interested to hear your conclusion.

I enjoyed it. Got a better chance to chat to people at night for some reason. I often did 3 weeks back to back nights in a row.

I have 2 lines so I do get your view. I have BT Infinity and TalkTalk Business, both 80/20 lines and together they cost me around £115 a month. I can't afford to have majoy downtime, and I spent years taking calls from people who were trying to run a business on their £4,50 a month residential service. It annoyed the [censored] out of me then and still does to this day.

I feel that whilst it is about "you get what you pay for" I also don't see the point in paying for overkill. Many people on here know my usage has in the past been high, and yes I have stupidly mentioned it but those days appear to be going.

16TB in a month was to see if BT would kick me off, they never battered an eyelid even though they moved me from a congested to a less congested pipe half way through when i started to go slow, just goes to show.

So far tonight the TV is running fine on the throttled line. So I am thinking that ADSL 2+ is a better option and would give me more redundancy. My PCP is behind a steel wall, and the NGA is in front of it and to the left, right next to the road.

I forgot to add, We had a night target of 100 issues (calls or tickets) but I got a lot of time to talk to customers (which I enjoed more) because around 5am all the account changes would come in, and so we would close them all which gave us 1 issue, so I could hit my target in 5 mins flat (and often go way way over target)

On a busy day me and someone else (who were the highest call takes in the department) would often do 60-70 calls a day each, so never got much time to actually talk to people properly.

Still happy days - and then BT got hold of it.

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Still happy days - and then BT got hold of it.

I guess they (the BT accountants) had to start reducing support levels at PN, else how do you differentiate between BT pricing and so-called BT budget (ie PlusNet) provision?

I have never experienced the 'old' days with PN support, but I can honestly say that even PlusNet's more recent reduced support beats BT support hands down.

Just my 2 pennies worth!

I agree.

Edit - after reading this

http://www.broadband.co.uk/broadband/providers/plusn...

I've stopped myself hitting the order button.

Edited by deleted (Tue 24-Jan-17 13:27:18)

I've just looked at the upcoming subscription costs in My Sky and it's showing £18.99 for line rental from March. This means it is going up by £1.59 or 9%. I've just agreed to another 12 month contract in exchange for a £7.50 discount on my Fibre broadband so I'm not very impressed.

Are you not impressed that you've been given a discount of £7.50?

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Are you not impressed that you've been given a discount of £7.50?

I'm sure no-one is impressed when a contract is broken.

Interestingly just below the 10% threshold that allows those in contract to get out FOC. Also the first time in a long while Sky line rental isn't cheaper than BT.

Never really understood why line rental keeps increasing when Openreach have been reducing what they charge telcos for line rental over the past few years.

In reply to a post by simon194:

Interestingly just below the 10% threshold that allows those in contract to get out FOC. Also the first time in a long while Sky line rental isn't cheaper than BT.

Never really understood why line rental keeps increasing when Openreach have been reducing what they charge telcos for line rental over the past few years.

Thank god for people like Pulse8 then - you take their FTTC at £38 a month you get line rental for £6 from what I understand

In reply to a post by simon194:

Interestingly just below the 10% threshold that allows those in contract to get out FOC.

Any increase in line rental or broadband price entitles the customer to leave the contract FOC under Ofcom rules. The 10% rule just applies to Sky TV.

What contract has been broken?

The contract in which they agree to supply you with broadband for a consideration and you agree to pay that amount.

But the majority of those contracts have clauses that say they can increase the prices by a particular amount.

Of clauses saying if we change the price we will give you 30 days notice of any increase and contact us in that time if you want releasing from the contract etc...

So if a provider does this to in contract customers they know very well they run a risk of increasing churn, though on broadband pricing because the changes are so widespread when you look around there are not the brilliant deals like there used to be.

In reply to a post by ian72:

But the majority of those contracts have clauses that say they can increase the prices by a particular amount.

They may say that but they can't change the price without breaking the contract which is why you can choose to accept the new contract or leave - or dispute it and renegotiate.

Still not sure they are breaking it. They are required now to offer you a get out clause if they increase prices whilst in contract - and at that point you can choose to leave the contract but if you don't then they haven't broken the contract, it will carry on at the new price level.

I won't bother copy and pasting wikipedia here, just a link

In reference to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration_in_English_law:

Consideration in English law is one of the four main building blocks of a contract.

So what about this?

Why would ofcom set rules on broadband/mobile providers if it is a breach of contract to raise prices? This suggests that in normal circumstances it is ok for prices to rise in line with RPI without a breach of contract - if that is wrong then why did Ofcom do anything?

In reply to a post by ian72:

So what about this?

Why would ofcom set rules on broadband/mobile providers if it is a breach of contract to raise prices? This suggests that in normal circumstances it is ok for prices to rise in line with RPI without a breach of contract - if that is wrong then why did Ofcom do anything?

Why not? They have to be seen to be doing something.

I am fairly confident that the T&Cs of Sky's contracts allow them to increase prices.

It's wrong to assume a price change = a new contract

When they put the prices up I simply ring up and renegotiate. I believe the issue is that not everyone does that and are left feeling ripped-off.

In reply to a post by ian72:

So what about this?

Why would ofcom set rules on broadband/mobile providers if it is a breach of contract to raise prices? This suggests that in normal circumstances it is ok for prices to rise in line with RPI without a breach of contract - if that is wrong then why did Ofcom do anything?

I think 2 reasons - one the increasing length of contracts which made price rises mid contract more costly and secondly unequal bargaining power between the big ISPs and consumers. Arguably even if Ofcom had not intervened these contracts could have been seen as unfair and so unenforceable.

I stands corrected.

Had the odd hiccup with P8 but they do their best to get it sorted as quickly as possible.

Plus no increase in line rental etc and they have improved the care level received by all customers:

All home fibre packages are now business grade with a 48hr target fix time (Care Level 2).
All business fibre packages now have enhanced line care with a 24hr target fix time (Care Level 3).

Cheers. I have spoken to them and will ring them when I can

Is it "breaking the contract" or "changes to the contract" whereby you can end the contract?

I thought to be able to end a contract after a price increase that increase had to be greater than a certain percentage?

My original point was why does someone complain about getting a period of discount of £7.50 then complain about a small price increase? We all want to pay as little as possible but maybe that's the problem with broadband. The more you use, the more you pay. Discuss!

Hi
Are they supposed to send out notification of the upcoming line rental increase ?
I haven't had anything and would definitely jump ship if given the chance.
Or, is it up to the end user to call them before the increase or they class you as automatically accepting it?
Ta

Have a look at your upcoming charges on mysky to see if it's going up.

yep it is
I'll give them a call at the weekend to confirm i can leave without penalty.

In reply to a post by bofh5:

Are they supposed to send out notification of the upcoming line rental increase ?
I haven't had anything and would definitely jump ship if given the chance.

It depends on your billing date. Since my next billing date is mid March, they have until mid February to notify me.

Indeed.

My billing cycle is middle of the month too and I haven't had any notification yet, although the increase is showing in future/upcoming subscription costs.

hi, I have received my email and my mother has received hers. Basically "if you want to cancel, contact customer services". if you are in contract and want to cancel, then "contact ASAP".

So to me it looks like you can cancel & move on if you want to. I am going to stay put for now as I am just about paying the same now for Tel line + BB as I was in 2003, within a few £££ and I am getting 40M down/10M up rather than the 512k/256k I originally had.

£8.50 reduction for me, was notified of £1.50 increase and have since negotiated a £10 discount. This is on Fibre Pro Unlimited, they didnt shift me to the inferior max product.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 31-Jan-17 20:13:50)