Talktalk Plusnet or Vodafone

Anyone got any reccomendations for one of these 3?

Looking for a budget provider (price is key here) .

I have ruled out Nowtv as all their support is online..

Quite like idea of Talktalk but put off as will have a youview box and worried they still do the stealth £4 charge.

Grateful for thoughts.

I have used my own router with Plusnet and Vodafone. The VDSL service I got was OK with both. There is a certain amount of luck in this. At the moment I am with Plusnet. What I do when the contract expires in September will largely depend on the price.

I would be planning to use the ISP supplied routers -unless on plusnet where I was planning to use a BT HomeHub 6 instead of the [censored] plusnet hub.

Which is a re-badged BT HomeHub 5?

AIUI HomeHubs are no longer issued. SmartHubs are the latest series.

Plusnet past six years, PN routers until last year when changed to BT HH6 bought for £10 on Gumtree. Very happy with performance and price; will stay with PN when contract comes up this autumn PROVIDED the price is right.

My experience is in flip-flopping friends and family between PlusNet and TalkTalk, taking the new customer deals and cashback along the way.

We haven’t been caught by the £4 TV charge after signing up with TalkTalk for line rental and broadband with our own YouView box. Just be careful what you sign-up for, check the confirmation email and you should be OK on that front.

TalkTalk’s latest router seems better for WiFi coverage than PlusNet’s latest offering. PlusNet offer advanced line rental, TalkTalk don’t. TalkTalk like to hike the price on “extras” such as inclusive calls but if you’re just going for simple line rental and broadband that shouldn’t be an issue. Parental controls are better on PlusNet. BT Sport is £10 a month on PlusNet which could be a good deal if you want BT Sport.

Both are “value” ISPs so support is where they save costs. If you can resolve simple issues yourself with luck you can avoid their support in all but the cases of major failures.

Good luck!

All I can say is that I have been with Plusnet for as few years now and apart from an Open reach problem I have been happy, which makes me wonder who on earth I have been looking to move? Maybe price since there are others that are cheaper.

Customer service are ok, not as good as it used to be, but ok.
I presume if you go for Talk Talk and tell them that the box is yours then they will not charge for it, but then you will not be able to use their services.

Post deleted by maxhoyt

Been with Plusnet for 11 years, ADSL then VDSL FTTC.
Until approx. 18 months ago was quite a fan, no administration issues and tech. support, lately via their forum, was always there when infrequently required.

Then they changed their billing system late 2018, well documented issues, I was caught up in the "stuck billing" issue and in my case incorrect contract dates issue which ran over 2 contracts from Dec 2018 to last month, however, final resolution of this produced another anomaly, now being monthly billed for line rental which I always pay a year in advance and is currently valid until this December.
I currently have 2 open tickets one of which dates back to December 2018.

To be fair, I have never actually lost money, but it's hard work, corresponding every month and appearing to just go around in circles to achieve anything.

I've remained with PN to date despite the admin. issues on the grounds that their tech. support was good, that's now changed in my opinion.
Had a tech. issue last month which higher level support basically refused to action on the grounds of "lock down" restrictions, OK, we are in a very peculiar situation at present and allowances must be made, luckily for me, the issue turned out to be "crosstalk" related generated from a fault on a close neighbours line who was with BT, in his case OR had absolutely no issues with repairing this which included a number of house visits by them.

So basically PN service is very much a lottery at present, I personally have had enough, life's too short, I'am off at the end of this contract, pay a few quid more and increase your chances of an easier life and assistance if & when required.

So who would you choose over Plusnet? I looked at a load of options including three's 4G service, but after seeing how bad 4G went with this pandemic, maybe it is not a good idea. I have Smarty on my mobile and it uses the 3 network, before this started I was getting 40 Mb/s, which was faster than my FTTC network from Plusnet, now 4g on my phone have gone down to under 20Mb/s sure I understand that things may be slightly different using a 4G base station than my phone, but I do not think it will make much difference.

I have over the last few months looked at different providers to see what I would get from changing providers, while I may save a bit of money with some compared to what I am paying now, I could knock a few quid off my plusnet bill by going back into a long contract. That is one thing I have been trying to avoid, but I do not think I will be able to get out of going into a long contract.

While plusnet do have some issues, I have seen worse providers and some of them I have not even been with, but had to contact them on behalf of other people and sometimes I felt like I may as well have talked to the wall that is in front of me now, I would get more sense out of it. At least Plusnet does listen and don't seem, to run away with a script, well not the few times I have contacted them.

i will have another look in the next week or so and see what is around again, I did pick a couple, but the prices are higher than if I re-contracted with Plusnet.