topic Re: What an excellent business plan!! in Plusnet Feedback

What an excellent business plan!!

Sunny — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:35:55 GMT

Hi, I am so frustrated with Plusnet speed faults and me having to do all the work to prove it is not my equipment at fault, or, stand the charges if BT decide it is my fault, how do I know if it is or not. It could actually be Plusnet reducing my speed because it only happens after 2.30 every day, but they would not admit fault of course, just like BT, no as usual it is always the customer at fault.
I had this fault initially when I moved to Plusnet, took weeks to resolve but it mysteriously resolved itself, I don't think so either BT or Plusnet did something.
Now weeks later I have the same fault and again no one will accept that it is not my fault, took a week for them to actually tell me I would need a BT engineers visit by the way but I may have to pay the £170 charge, yeah right I am really going to believe BT.
They have an excellent business plan, wish my business could do it. Provide a poor BB service paid for by the customer, then when there is an issue say it is not their fault, BT must come and Check and it could cost me £170! In the meantime we will keep charging you anyway as we have to pay our supplier, excellent plan, keep their profits going instead of refusing to pay BT, their supplier for a poor service, a bit like scratch my back and I will scratch yours and the customer will pay us.
Any advice anyone as I am going to investigate a mobile service, after all it cannot be any slower!!

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

James — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:41:24 GMT

Morning Sunny.
Could you be a little more explicit as to what your fault is? Is it just your web speeds that are being affected during peak times of the day, or are we talking about downloads?
Also - We don't make any money from the £144+VAT charge. That's what we are charged by BT. Ultimately, if you have tried using a different router, different filters and you're wired directly into your master socket with all other telephony devices removed, then it's very unlikely to be your equipment at fault.

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

pjmarsh — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:59:48 GMT

If I remember correctly, I'm sure someone said once it is very rare for anyone to be charged that fee, and if you have done the checks that are asked and still get the fault, then it is unlikely to be you at fault. I think the ISP have to declare when raising a fault with BT that the customer has been informed that there may is a £144+VAT charge, otherwise they wont try to resolve the fault. James would be ina better position to confirm/deny that though.
Phil

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

Alex — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:23:36 GMT

Yep, when I've raised a fault in the past with a different ISP .. same procedure.
They asked me to check my equipment, and I had to agree I could be subject to the fee if it was my equipment at fault.
But if you've done all the basic checks with different hardware, I'll think you'll be fine.

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

Sunny — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:49:25 GMT

Quote from: Jameseh
Morning Sunny.
Could you be a little more explicit as to what your fault is? Is it just your web speeds that are being affected during peak times of the day, or are we talking about downloads?
Also - We don't make any money from the £144+VAT charge. That's what we are charged by BT. Ultimately, if you have tried using a different router, different filters and you're wired directly into your master socket with all other telephony devices removed, then it's very unlikely to be your equipment at fault.

James I am sure you don't make any money from it but the issue is who my contract is with and it is with Plusnet not BT. What I am trying to say is that if I could have a business plan like Plusnet I would always make money even though I provided a bad service because my get out is and I quote "Any recompense for faults is dealt with on a case to case basis, following the fault being resolved. Unfortunately broadband is not a guaranteed service. As such, in the case of a fault, our supplier still charges us for the service, and as such we would normally still charge yourself for this.
Kind regards,
*****" unquote
jim:red agents name removed as per forum rules mod:end
If Broadband cannot be guaranteed, why should we have to pay you every month? We should only pay for what we get. Any other service we get we we pay for or we do not pay and, at least the companies normally try to be of assistance and recompense for poor service especially when once again have to spend our time & our money or take time off work trying to resolve what is not actually our fault.
The time is now 14.45 and once again the speed has dropped dramatically, what exactly happens at this time every day to cause this?
Over to you

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

Emma — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:56:43 GMT

If its happening at a certain time of the day is there anything that comes on such as central heating or do your neighbours have radio masts (dabbling in ham radio) anything like that.

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

Sunny — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:10:41 GMT

Nope there is nothing I know of that happens at 2.30 every day. I just did a speed test at 15.07 and these are the results, any advice appreciated because I really am so frustrated being piggy in the middle.
Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test: -provides background information.
Your DSL connection rate: 3712 kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is - 3000 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 1301 kbps
If you wish to discuss these results please contact your ISP.
If you are experiencing problems with specific applications, servers or websites please contact your ISP for assistance.
Your test has completed please close this window to exit the performance tester.

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

James — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:36:09 GMT

Hi Sunny,
I appreciate that you are paying for a service and that it slows down during peak times. It's almost definitely going to be exchange contention, which I'm afraid we have no control over. I also understand that it's a pain, but ultimately you're paying for a self-install contended service which doesn't carry any SLAs (at the BT end). Unfrotunately to get a non-contended service, you're looking at a leased line, costing thousands of pounds per month.
With any luck, BT will upgrade the VPs at your exchange, making the problem dissapear, but I'm afraid that's entirely down to BT.
If it is a contention issue, it's extremely unlikely that a BT engineer will be able to fix it.
As to the exact time - there's nothing on our network that suddenly happens. Is there anything in your house or on your street that gets turned on at that time, do you know?

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

Sunny — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:42:23 GMT

jim:quote
James as far as I know nothing happens at that time, what is frustrating is that the problem in Nov 08 mysteriously disappeared after a lot of hassle.
Last week the problem started again, something is going on and I do suspect BT but my contract is with you, not them. Can you clarify if you are actually part of BT? Reading these forums it looks like a lot of others feel like me, that you accept what BT tell you and do not support your customers.
This is the latest test result so you can see that I am not getting decent speed. My village is a small one and there are not many people using BB her.
Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test: -provides background information.
Your DSL connection rate: 3712 kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is - 3000 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 1301 kbps

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

James — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:09:57 GMT

Hi,
Ultimately, you don't have a fault. You are using a contended broadband service which is performing to its desgned limits.
Yes, your contract is with us and we supply a resold wholesale product from BT Wholesale (who we're not a part of). If you had a genuine fault I assure you that we would persue it with BT. However, as it's 99% likely that the problem you're seeing is down to contention, we would very rarely send an engineer out.
If you are convinced that there is a fault on your line, then we will send an engineer out for you, but you have to be aware of potential charges.

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

Sunny — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:23:14 GMT

Oh well if that is the issue then no matter how much I pay even if I upgrade I would not get a better speed from what you are saying.
1 MB is ridiculous really in this day and age.
I will just have to look around to see what else is on offer for BB or put up with slow speeds. BB in this country is so bad, it must be the worst service in the world & Gordon Brown says he wants every one to have it, god help us then, we will all slow to a crawl.
I am certainly not going to pay anyone to come and tell me something whcih I cannot prove is right or wrong.

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

James — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:26:20 GMT

I know it's a pain and I really am sorry that it's causing you hassle
Ultimately as long as you remain connected to the same exchange equipment (without it being upgraded), I wouldn't expect the situation to improve.

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

hadden — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:02:01 GMT

Although the BT speedtester reports 1301 kbps, did you try other ADSL speed tests, eg MyBroadbandSpeed or Speedtest.net?
I've found that the BT speedtester figure for "actual" IP throughput can be a lot lower than the true "actual". For example, a couple of minutes ago I tested my connection with BT speedtester... it confirmed my 3000kbps profile but with an "actual IP throughput" of 588kbps!
If that were true I'd be a bit miffed.
However I then started a download of a large file and it was a happily sitting at a real download speed of over 2400 kbps.

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

Sunny — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:22:45 GMT

Hi Johnj, I have done a speed test as you suggested but get varying results. Pinging Maidenhead using speedtest.net I get just short of 3mb pinging Dublin I get 3.5mb but the actual speed is very slow whenever browsing. I do not game or anything like that, no large downloads as like films or music even, just a normal web browser. My broadbandspeed gives me 2997kbps, what I am actually getting I have no idea.
As the fault is intermittent as well it is hard to find out what is going on.

Another factor is conflicting info from Plusnet, you can see that I am told it is a contention issue but this is the reply(below) from the support desk, so what do I do and who do I believe, the contention issue or the BT fault issue, I think Plusnet are confusing the issues for a lot of people.
( Looking through your account history I can see you have referred to ticket 27****** which was a fault you raised in November.
This was a different type of issue as there was lot of disconnections occurring on your line that was causing the speed problems, but this time the connections are stable but you are suffering from a low internet throughput speed.
From all the testing we have done, your sync speed shows that this is the expected speed for your line (around 3.7MB) and your IP profile also sounds right at about 3MB.
As your throughout speed is the problem (your previous responses suggest this has been as low as 69kbps) there is not much more we can then to arrange for a engineer to come out as my colleagues previous response to run some tests and see if they can locate a problem.
The only time you would be charged for a engineer visit if the cause of the slow speed was determine to being caused by your equipment, hence the reason we have asked you to run through the check-list above and to cover all the points detailed.

If you wish to book one in, please let us know but as always please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any further queries.
[internal]
File Transfer AVERAGE THORUGHPUT/SESSION1301

Test Outcome : Pass Circuit Sync Status : Circuit In Sync Mux Port Status : In Service Upstream Link Info Loop LossLoop Loss Add TextSNR MarginErrored SecondsHecErrorsCell CountSpeed23.5 22007362302448 Downstream Link Info Loop LossLoop Loss Add TextSNR MarginErroredSecondsHecErrorsCellCountSpeed44 900381768963712 DSL Max Data BIP Interface Data Current line rateLine rate change timestampMaximum Stable Rate RecalcuatedProfileTimestampMaximum Stable Rate30002009-01-31T10:54:38N2009-01-19T10:12:383424 Fault Threshold RateInterleaving FlagServiceOptionServiceOption StatusServiceOption Update Timestamp2739A1THIS LINE IS STABLE AND WELL WITHIN ERROR/RETRAIN LIMITS FOR THE CHOSEN SERVICE OPTION (ILQ=GREEN)2008-11-17T06:11:07
Kind regards,)
Anyway Johnj thanks, advice always appreciated when people take the time.

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

pierre_pierre — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:36:16 GMT

have you checked your Exchange http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/ that will give you the current, to get recent history add to the end of the address &plugin=vp&etashow=yes

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

Sunny — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:55:06 GMT

Checked that as suggested and everything is green ( There are currently no known capacity problems on your exchange. There may still be an exchange problem, however BT are not currently reporting that they are aware of it. Please contact Support if you are having speed problems, who can advise further.
Record last updated: 12 Jan 09)
Any other suggestions please are most welcome if it helps to sort this out.
Can anyone tell me if Sky BB would solve the issue or indeed going mobile with a dongle?

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

hadden — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:24:38 GMT

Those results that you quote for Speedtest and Mybroadband speed will be based upon the amount of data that is actually passing between their servers and your computer. As you saw, the three results that you have were slightly different because they were connecting to servers at different places. You also shouldn't expect the same result at even slightly different times, even to the same server, as the other traffic on the internet changes constantly and your test information may not take the same route each time.
The above results are all based upon actual data between those servers and your computer and I believe they would be nearer the truth than the figure you got from BT speedtester. Although that 3.5mb figure is a wee bit surprising as your profile (3000 kbps) should limit the speed to 3mb. Regardless of the slight inaccuracies the figures do seem to indicate that you download speed is in the correct ballpark for a good connection.

However, what you say about the speed problem is that it is specifically the "web browsing" that is slow. So, it would probably be a good idea to try and get an objective measurement of why that seems slow. Then someone may be able to home in on the exact problem.
To be fair to James he did start out by trying to work towards what type of internet use was showing the speed problem
There are quite a few factors that can make web browsing a bit slower than a simple speed test. Can you give an example of a particular web site and how long it is taking to load on your screen?
PS. "ping" really refers to the test that measures how long it takes for a small amount of information to go from your PC to the other server whereas the speed tests usually measure the volume of data that travels in a second, which is more useful in this case.

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

Sunny — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:41:15 GMT

Hi again, sorry for not understanding "ping" I am a complete novice with all this.
Say I want to browse http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html or http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7878418.stm indeed any newspaper site it seems to take ages for the pages to load, especially after 2 pm.
I have no way of knowing exactly how long it takes because I do not know how to measure it.
Once again thanks for your time explaining this to me.

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

hadden — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:22:04 GMT

It's a good idea to mention the "novice" label as there's a better chance of getting some help in english without jargon words, but it's not always guaranteed
The simplest way to measure the how long it takes is just to note how many seconds until the page is complete on your screen (hopefully minutes are not necessary).
On my PC, for those examples that you gave, the BBC page took 14 seconds for the first parts to appear and 20 seconds for the page to be completed on my screen. The Daily mail page took 27 seconds for anything to appear on my screen and 45 seconds to finish appearing. As a comparison the Plusnet home page took 3 seconds to start appearing and 6 seconds to finish.
The variation was very likely due to the complexity of the pages, for example the Daily Mail page included a lot of pictures and other bits and pieces (generally pretty messy). As each image of that page had to be loaded separately, it meant that your browser had to make many downloads from the Daily Mail website instead of one. There is usually a gap between each download while your computer and the server with the information discuss what image to download next and all those gaps add onto the overall load time.
I'm simplifying things a bit as there is more to it, but that should give a rough idea about one reason for the slowness.
If your web page load times are similar to mine above, then the slowness is more a reflection on the inefficiency of those web pages.
As a comparison here's the equivalent pages still from the Daily Mail and BBC but with the fancy stuff left out.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/textbased/channel-1/index.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/text_only.stm

Re: What an excellent business plan!!

pierre_pierre — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:38:06 GMT

Mobile slower, Sky use the same cable as PN
Try this one, click on exchange checker under availability on lhe LH side http://www.samknows.com/broadband,
You Might get better with LLU, but some of the choices dont touch with a barge pole