Product Refresh
Quote from: darkskye I posted this in the original post comments but I'll reiterate here for completeness:
1) Will I still be able to use Max Pro?
Yes
Quote from: darkskye 2) Will it still be worth having Max Pro?
From the table posted on the first pages there is currently no speed capping (but still proritising) on upstream bandwidth.
The fact there is a table for this scares me slightly, as it suggets that speed caps may later be introduced for upstreaming
The table is there just for completeness, there are currently no rate limits in or planned for upstream speeds, it would be silly for us to sell Max Premium at an additional cost and then rate limit to the standard Max upload speed.
Quote from: darkskye 3) Will I be able to keep my netblock as is, and am I ever liable to lose it?
You'll keep your netblock and are not likely to lose it.
Quote from: darkskye 4) I moved house in August 08 and I believe that my contract was reset to 18 months anew, would I be liable for the remaining 10 months upfront?
(If the answer to this is yes, I'll be very disappointed as I've been a loyal and active broadband customer since 2004 or there abouts)
You can carry over your deferred house move contract, and have this running concurrently with the new 18 month contract on the new products. There would be nothing to pay to move over though.
Will the BBYW products have any new speed restrictions imposed in the near future?
If not, why should I move to these speed limited "new" accounts?
Can we have a comparison table please?
If not, why should I move to these speed limited "new" accounts?
Can we have a comparison table please?
Quote from: darkskye I posted this in the original post comments but I'll reiterate here for completeness:
1) Will I still be able to use Max Pro?
I gather this has been answered as Yes
2) Will it still be worth having Max Pro?
From the table posted on the first pages there is currently no speed capping (but still proritising) on upstream bandwidth.
The fact there is a table for this scares me slightly, as it suggets that speed caps may later be introduced for upstreaming
there has allways bein upstream cap tables for all bbyw options and can be found here http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/products/archive/bbyw/experience/upstream_speeds.shtml but i certainly will not be happy if PN start capping upstream down from 832kbps as what would the point in me paying an extra £7.50 a month once iam use to the full 832kbps on unlimited. granted i was getting capped on option 3 well below the current upstream caps on unlimited but hay dont dangle a carrot in front of me then snatch it away plz plz plz dont
Can I get some clarification on the difference between a download site and a download server and normal every day browsing?
My thoughts:
Plusnet Pro is worse in every respect compared to BBYW Pro. It's now a 12 month contract, new customers get none of the added extras e.g. domain hosting and webspace, plus the price of additional GB has gone up.
Plusnet aren't offering any products with less than a 12 month contract. And 18 months? That's rubbish.
Even worse, it seems Plusnet have forgotten about the whole idea of retaining existing customers. Mobile phone companies eventually learnt that if they don't want their customers to move off after the end of their contracts, they need to offer something to retain those customers. At the very least, Plusnet could've offered 1 month contracts on the new products to existing customers, minus the low lead-in prices if necessary.
I'm not happy with the way the products are being advertised. I quote from the PN homepage: 'Plusnet Unlimited broadband from £11.99 a month'. Err, no it's not, that's just a lead-in price - at a minimum, after three months you'll have to pay £15.99; at the most, you could end up having to pay £19.99. And those prices are hidden in small print - as, in fact, is the mention of an 18 month contract.
Oh yeah, and 'unlimited'? Please, don't insult your customers. In reality, through traffic shaping Plusnet have forced users of the unlimited product to adopt much the same kind of usage styles as BBYW customers, just, with the lack of availability of fast speeds during peak times rather than the lure of free downloads off-peak. It amounts to much the same thing though: peak-time usage on Plusnet Unlimited is actually effectively limited to just surfing, VoIP and gaming - God help you if you try and do anything else.
Plusnet, it seems, have done their usual trick of ceasing availability of all old products to existing customers with the introduction of the new ones. I guess Plusnet are still yet to learn that speaking of a product as an 'option' (e.g. Premier option 2, BBYW option 3) provides the impression that the actual product is just Premier or BBYW, and that the option is changeable whenever anyone wishes, same as changing the amount of inclusive bandwidth. I raise this because, as has been mentioned elsewhere, one of the significant features - in fact, I think it might have even been a selling point - of BBYW was the ability to switch between products each month if necessary to match your needs. Doing this now will, I expect, require pleading to the Comms Team, and even then as time goes by I wouldn't want to take it for granted that they'll still be willing to switch people to old products.
So, overall, I feel this is a very poor set of products. Much better, in my opinion, would have been to retain the original set (perhaps with some pricing adjustments where necessary) and just add a 'Plusnet BBYW Value' option at the bottom of the range, in the way that BBYW Pro sat at the top. But no, Plusnet forgot about those people called existing customers, and have instead introduced all this Tiscali-style rubbish that locks people in to contracts until their hair turns grey.
In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not impressed.
Plusnet Pro is worse in every respect compared to BBYW Pro. It's now a 12 month contract, new customers get none of the added extras e.g. domain hosting and webspace, plus the price of additional GB has gone up.
Plusnet aren't offering any products with less than a 12 month contract. And 18 months? That's rubbish.
Even worse, it seems Plusnet have forgotten about the whole idea of retaining existing customers. Mobile phone companies eventually learnt that if they don't want their customers to move off after the end of their contracts, they need to offer something to retain those customers. At the very least, Plusnet could've offered 1 month contracts on the new products to existing customers, minus the low lead-in prices if necessary.
I'm not happy with the way the products are being advertised. I quote from the PN homepage: 'Plusnet Unlimited broadband from £11.99 a month'. Err, no it's not, that's just a lead-in price - at a minimum, after three months you'll have to pay £15.99; at the most, you could end up having to pay £19.99. And those prices are hidden in small print - as, in fact, is the mention of an 18 month contract.
Oh yeah, and 'unlimited'? Please, don't insult your customers. In reality, through traffic shaping Plusnet have forced users of the unlimited product to adopt much the same kind of usage styles as BBYW customers, just, with the lack of availability of fast speeds during peak times rather than the lure of free downloads off-peak. It amounts to much the same thing though: peak-time usage on Plusnet Unlimited is actually effectively limited to just surfing, VoIP and gaming - God help you if you try and do anything else.
Plusnet, it seems, have done their usual trick of ceasing availability of all old products to existing customers with the introduction of the new ones. I guess Plusnet are still yet to learn that speaking of a product as an 'option' (e.g. Premier option 2, BBYW option 3) provides the impression that the actual product is just Premier or BBYW, and that the option is changeable whenever anyone wishes, same as changing the amount of inclusive bandwidth. I raise this because, as has been mentioned elsewhere, one of the significant features - in fact, I think it might have even been a selling point - of BBYW was the ability to switch between products each month if necessary to match your needs. Doing this now will, I expect, require pleading to the Comms Team, and even then as time goes by I wouldn't want to take it for granted that they'll still be willing to switch people to old products.
So, overall, I feel this is a very poor set of products. Much better, in my opinion, would have been to retain the original set (perhaps with some pricing adjustments where necessary) and just add a 'Plusnet BBYW Value' option at the bottom of the range, in the way that BBYW Pro sat at the top. But no, Plusnet forgot about those people called existing customers, and have instead introduced all this Tiscali-style rubbish that locks people in to contracts until their hair turns grey.
In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not impressed.
