PlusNet Full Fibre Upgrade - Not Happy

So far it has taken about 6 months to from ordering Full Fibre to getting it installed. When I ordered, I was promised I would keep my 5 static IP addresses which I have had for over 15 years with PlusNet. From the start PlusNet gave out one free IP address, and at the time I was able to request more, even though I was on a home account.

Most of the delay was due to Openreach taking ages to sort the building works in the street and getting the fibre to my house.

I got full service on the day of installation but then overnight I lost it, with the router saying there was no service. After spending over 1 hour on the phone to PlusNet, then found out that they have not moved my account over to full fibre and my account was still on their other fibre service. It look them the whole day to sort this out.

Now they have removed the 5 static IP addresses they promised I would not loose but the initial sales person. I am still arguing with PlusNet to get them back, but at the moment they are saying that this is not possible because the Sales team say this is not possible even when it was working when I first moved over to full fibre, even though this was the only first 12 hours,
At the moment they will not change their stance on this.

They have so far offered £25 for their miss information, so they just want to pay you off for their incompetence, which I think £25 is an insult.

So far I would not trust their sales team or even upgrade with them. I was told by them, then have been getting rid of their business customer and pushing businesses to BT, also if you wanted to keep your telephone number and move it to SIP, then you have to migrate to BT. It seems to me that BT are destroying PlusNet and are using them to get their customer base.

I think you have been an extremely lucky Plusnet customer for those 15 years, all good things come to an end.

Whilst Plusnet has been a BT subsidiary since 2007, it remained a reasonably distinct operation from the rest of BT until recent years.

As I understand it, the legacy platform that underpinned the Plusnet service has recently been replaced by a new BT Wholesale platform. Additionally, I understand many of the dedicated Plusnet staff have now been subsumed into the wider BT/EE operation.

All in all, Plusnet has moved to become more of simply being a (budget) brand of BT, from what had originally been a discrete entity.

However I think there still are s few committed and helpful staff who frequent Plusnet's own Community Forums so I suggest the OP posts there... also, I'd suggest a concise and polite post might solicit a more favourable response, as my impression is the staff on those forums are nowadays perhaps going above and beyond what their formal roles require.

Maybe it was a good thing I moved then, PCJM40, about customer service in the 9 years i was with Plusnet, customer service was good. Better than the customer service of the company I am with now, hopefully, that will improve. I think a lot of companies are getting rid of customer service to cut costs.
shame really, don;lt seem to be important these days.


As for static IPs, I did not think it was possible to move them from one network to another. Maybe best to use dynamic DNS, but it does mean going through a third party.

I used to use NoIP years ago, but do not need it now, my Nas has its own system if I need to access it outside the home, not that I have much need for that these days either.

Edited by zyborg47 (Fri 09-Feb-24 08:26:42)

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

As for static IPs, I did not think it was possible to move them from one network to another.

Not from one ISP to another, but in principle you can between services at the same provider.

But it sounds like what Plusnet have done essentially is to deprovision the FTTC service, provision the new FTTP service, and their new FTTP platform doesn't support multiple static IPs.

My recommendation is: run all your services on one IP address using a reverse proxy (tools like sniproxy and dnsdist are great for this). This gives you much more flexibility in the future for moving to other ISPs who only give you one IPv4 address, which is most of them (and those who do offer more will charge a monthly fee)

Even better will be when you have IPv6: the AAAA record can point directly at the server, and the A record can point at the reverse proxy. That's what I'm doing today. Sadly, Plusnet don't do IPv6 yet, and even though they're toying with it (again) only the "low touch" network will get it first, which means people without static IP.

EDIT: it's not surprising that their salespeople don't know about "legacy" services, and salespeople at any company will tell you what you want to hear to close a sale. I don't think Plusnet are any worse than any other company in this regard.

Edited by candlerb (Fri 09-Feb-24 09:47:31)

In reply to a post by binary:

However I think there still are s few committed and helpful staff who frequent Plusnet's own Community Forums so I suggest the OP posts there... also, I'd suggest a concise and polite post might solicit a more favourable response, as my impression is the staff on those forums are nowadays perhaps going above and beyond what their formal roles require.

Wholeheartedly agree. In fact one of the patient and helpful staff still answers questions in his own time as he has been transferred to another division within PN. Now eight years with PN from ADSL to FTTP and no downtime apart from the DNS disaster last year.

+1 to that, since the Force9 days (late 1990s) in my case. There have certainly been changes but in all my interactions with them over the years, there has only been one occasion when I felt that the support agent had been less than helpful - I just rang back an hour later .

Given that you were promised that you could retain the IP addresses and given that Plusnet are not offering to restore them, I think you would be well within your rights to cancel the contract without penalty - if you go to a supplier which will provide the IP addresses you require.