Sorry, I think "throttled to death" is a very reasonable description. My line is hardly stellar at 3 meg, but to expect no more than 512Kbps during most of the waking day on binary usenet and external FTP fits the description for the so-called 'unlimited' product. For usenet this drops to 128kbps at the time most people could be expected to use the internet for personal use. "value" is even more of a joke, with some caps barely better than dial up.

I'm certainly not a heavy user (2-4Gb typically in a month), but when I have the need to FTP or use a download site, I don't realy feel like getting my diary out to make an appointment, I just want it to work at a reasonable rate, now. For this reason I've stuck with PAYG which suits me fine and has no capped speeds other than those of network use.

I've taken the 3 quid off in exchange for a 12 month contract, but would not even consider 18 months, from PN or anyone else. Were I looking for a provider now, the products offered wouldn't even be under consideration with such vicious caps, and I decided against a switch to BBYW previously for similar reasons.


I think this is a wildly optimistic assessment, and I think Plusnet must be hoodwinking themselves internally if they think otherwise. While more knowledgable users know about throttling and what they consider acceptable, the average user (at who the seem to be aimed) doesn't. All they know is "my connection is slow - why?", and I think this will be reflected in the problems raised  with support by those who want to download during the 'normal' part of the day. They will only see that the supposedly "unlimited"  service you provide is very, very slow, and will doubtless pass this on on to others. Part of the reason Tiscali ended up with their unenviable reputation was their inability to offer the speeds trumpeted in their ads.

Like many others I've been here a long time, 8 years in total, 4 on ADSL. For those who know PN, their are too many deal breakers for most of us to even consider the current offerings. For the mass market users, you may well get them to sign up, but your reputation will suffer badly when they realise how they've been had on speed.

As wheel nut says, wake up!

Well we were getting great performance for all our paid for use, so why chance that for some marketing nonsense?


Give it time. :-)

Most of us are just gutted that PN has sold out from their old philosophy.

The "Reasons We're Different" page had the extras removed recently, but also:


Is that because you aren't the same company anymore, that loves and tries to provide all things internet, and is just going to sell as many basic packages from South Africa which make the most money?

Most of us are hopefully alright on legacy packages, but looking as a whole as well as for newcomers, it is sad to see an ethos that has been appreciated and supported be abolished, so... PN can be sold on eventually?

BT would never sell an ISP which was capable of competing with it's own offerings.
There's a bit more destruction to do first.

I agree with you that it's important to set customers' expectations correctly.  That's why we've been so clear about what how the product works and what the expected max speeds will be in the product FAQs and the blog we published.

Peter, I have asked previously but no response has been forthcoming.  Could we have a fair comparison in the table at http://www.plus.net/switch/ which is making unfair comparisons. At the very least there should be another column showing the price of Plusnet Value outside of Market 3 areas.

Introductory price      £5.99
Ongoing price         £11.99

1st 12 months cost for       £125.88
subscription + connection
+ Wireless router

£18.01 more expensive than TalkTalk's offering and only a quarter of the included usage, 10GB opposed to 40GB from TalkTalk.

Also, the offering from Tiscali compares more fairly with PN Unlimited than PN Value.

This is the first time I have looked at http://www.plus.net/switch/ and to say I am disappointed is an understatement. I thought the 'dodgy' problems with marketing Value was limited to making the difference between Market 1 & 2 prices clearer, now I now I am wrong. Looking at the comparison's used, how can you base a cost saving between two products when one of those products allow 'unlimited' usage? The reason I say this is to get the equivalent amount of downloads you have to pay more on the Value product so reducing the advertised savings. What I would prefer to see is a per GB calculation based on the product that shows the maximum fixed allowance in the comparison table. Also as stated before I would also like to see a Monthly Equivalent Cost (MEC) for the minimum contract period. The MEC should be for the products included features and then once that includes additional features (ie larger download) to match a comparison products features.

While I am sure the expectations would be understood by the type of customer PN previously considered 'core', your new target market are notorious for not reading or understanding the details.

From the "Expected Speeds" page:

While the traffic capping details are indeed largely well laid out, I'd question how many 'ordinary' users would know is the app they were using was P2P - they grab a copy of the app their mates are using without caring how it works. Or what a "download server" was - that one mystified me for a while - and there is no link on the "Expected Speeds" page to which download sites are affected. You show the speeds, but many, many users still don't 'get' the difference between kilobytes and kilobits and the generally small numbers on your charts probably won't help. Remember the (very damaging fuss over BB+ and how hard that was to explain to irate customers?

From the 'more info' link for so-called "unlimited":

Not on P2P or from "download sites" at a normal time it isn't. If you are setting expectations so clearly, why no asterisked explanation of why multiple users will NOT be "downloading music tracks in a matter of seconds" at 7PM?

I'd agree with Jelv that "unlimited" should be renamed "unmetered", otherwise you'll suffer both ways; either people will be put off by what they know from the general discourse to be a marketing fib, or they will be angered when they discover that unlimited isn't.

Maybe users that do not read and fully understand the details do have only themselves to blame, although your asterisked prices and small print contract lengths don't help. But that won't change the fact that they will diss the speed they get to friends and colleagues at every opportunity - go and have a chat with the Tiscali customer services people to find how this works out.

I think jelv is right in saying you should think about changing the unlimited to unmetered.
i was on bby1 then bby3 to get line speed on p2p overnight and the only diffrence on UNMETERED product is p2p rates kick in at midday now and lower rate caps at peak time which is fine by me to beable to have unmetered usage.
12 hours of line speed is fine for me esp now i can wake up in the morning and set any downloads going to get done before midday.

back to what jelv is saying.
UNMETERED would indeed catch peoples eyes that are new customers as iam an existing pn customer as soon as seeing unlimited on the website i had gd i idea what the rate limits on certain protocls would be.
But a new customer they are indeed use to what other sneaky isps do with there FUP's in contract and will not know your service is traffic managed to be able to offer unmetered usage with no fup.

So iam with jelv a rename to UNMETERED  to make them think whats this then and read more about the diffrent product offered by other isps's

Another thing i have noticed is when people look at the expected speeds tables they dont understand that web browser ect traffic is not rate limited i think that they need a cloumun on the table to make this clear to those not in the know about PN traffic managment. EDIT: looking at the expected speed page i see a note near the top explain that web browser ect is not rate limited but in rush you just skip straight to the table for the product your interested in and miss this info. so having a clomun at the top of each table saying browser,voip ect. line speed would make double sure the info is sein.

UNMETERED stands out from the crowd. Which is what plusnet normaly do

Surely it should be comparing 18 months.....
(and don't forget the house moves and "unmetered" usage) 

The £5.99 price is the price the majority will pay. TalkTalk's £6.49 offer is restricted to their LLU offering also I believe, so the comparison is consistent (lower price compared).

Sorry Mand but I don't agree, it's still comparing apples with oranges.  TalkTalk's LLU offering is in most market 2 exchanges but they aren't seeing £5.99 from PN but £11.99.  Peter makes a point of saying  "it's important to set customers' expectations correctly"  let's see it!

Have you looked at this from a 'how much it will cost you' point of view?
A BBYW1 to Value switch for a market 3 exchange is very attractive even with an 18 month tie in.
18 months at 5.99 on value = 107.82 - that's it price is fixed.
12 months at 9.75 on BBYW1 (2GB) = 117.00 but price could change.
So if you are happy to stay for 12 months you could switch to value now and after 12 months, transfer out (ie break the contract) and it will still be less than staying 12 months on BBYW1.

Also, the PN T&Cs say that if you are on value and the price changes to your detriment, you can get out of the contract free.  Will be interesting to see what happends when VAT goes back to 17.5%

Once on the value product, you can change to unlimited or pro within the 18 months (and presumably any new PN products) so if ADSL2+ comes along you should be able to switch to it from value.

Mand.
My switch to Value went through today.
Got the 'welcome' email from plusnet which says...

Your Plusnet account details
=============================

Broadband Product: Plusnet Value

Monthly Subscription: ?5.99


Contract: 18 Months
You contract will end on 22-08-2010.

 
Usage allowance: 0Gb

@cjags

Thanks for that, I'll get a problem raised to correct it.

When I check my account summary on the PN portal it says 10GB allowance so maybe the email text is wrong?

What is worrying is that the account summary says the monthly charge is £11.99 (for value).
Shouldn't this be £5.99 because I am on a market 3 exchange or will I get a permanent £6 a months discount?

The account summary is just a display issue bug that's being worked on, hopefully it should be fixed pretty quickly.