topic Re: Price Hike in Plusnet Feedback

Price Hike

murox2017 — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 16:42:58 GMT

I really object to this latest arbitrary price increase for Broadband connection . The service I get now does not even justify the current prices, it less than 3mbps!! If there was an increase in speed I would not argue, but no just pay more for slow service and be expected to pay up no questions asked!!

Where is the value for service? Where is the minimum guaranteed internet connection speed ?

Disgruntled ? yes you bet I am, even a small private company is offering me speeds of around 10+ and will charge me less per month for the privilege. Shame Plus Net doesn't, can't or won't try to bring sensible connection speeds to all its customers.

Re: Price Hike

Mav — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 16:48:40 GMT

Moderator's note:

This thread has been moved from General Chat to the appropriate board.

Re: Price Hike

Minivanman — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 18:55:43 GMT

Somebody needs to get a grip on that situation as 3mbps is an absolute joke in this day and age.

"The UK Government has set out its ambition to introduce a broadband universal service obligation (USO) across all of the UK with a minimum download speed of 10Mbps. This is considered to be the speed which enables full participation in a digital society"

Forcibly challenge Plusnet on it and demand either a refund, compensation, or both. It's just not good enough. Failing that get in touch with the Ombudsman Services. I did, and got a result.

https://www.ombudsman-services.org/sectors/communications/advice-and-cases/broadband-speeds

Re: Price Hike

Jonpe — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 19:10:42 GMT

What result did you get? One of those chocky bars?

Re: Price Hike

ejs — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 19:11:40 GMT

@murox2017 wrote:

a small private company is offering me speeds of around 10+ and will charge me less per month for the privilege.

So why don't you take that service then? I don't really think there's any useful purpose in trying to get one particular company to provide you a particular service level or price when there's already a better alternative available.

Re: Price Hike

jelv — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 19:18:28 GMT

@murox2017 What speed does the BT Broadband Availability Checker say you should get?

Re: Price Hike

Minivanman — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 19:37:39 GMT

@ejs

But surely even allowing and accepting various price and service levels, they should all be providing the same level of provision (line speed) surely?

How much of it is based on existing BT equipment for example. Much of it I should imagine, so I see little reason why one provider should be any better or worse in the same area, so whatever way you shake it 3mbps is totally unacceptable in this day and age and even more so when so much better is 'promised'.

Lets pay for what we get, not what we don't.

Just saying.

Re: Price Hike

murox2017 — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 19:41:12 GMT

I might well do that, there is a thing called brand loyalty and I feel a big company like Plus Net could, if they wanted to, put pressure on BT Openreach for example to get the infrastructure right for everyone. Maybe if accountants didn't run the company they would. do something to help the customer.

Re: Price Hike

murox2017 — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 19:48:23 GMT

I should have mentioned that the small private company is via satellite not copper wire. Of course it is basically BT that fails to improve infrastructure which would enable Plus Net and others to offer a better service - oh I forgot BT owns Plus net don't they.

Re: Price Hike

ejs — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 19:59:07 GMT

@Minivanman

I assumed that the alternative was based on something other than BT. So if someone builds there own fibre network, or sets up a fixed wireless service, or whatever else, we're not interested, we only want BT to do it.

Personally I find our 3Mb connection perfectly adequate, but then the types of stuff I do on the Internet hasn't really changed in 10+ years, and I've over the years I've gradually run out of things I want to do on the Internet. Even if we upgraded and then I could download a whole film in a few minutes or whatever, it wouldn't make any difference and I wouldn't have the time to watch it.

Re: Price Hike

murox2017 — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 19:59:58 GMT

Speeds vary from less than 1mbps to an all time high of 2,8 !! Tonight I don't know because the checker couldn't even load, right now I seem to have got a reasonable connection, earlier I could not get online at all.

Re: Price Hike

murox2017 — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 20:04:58 GMT

I take it you can actually watch a film via internet, that would be nice. I have tried but the constant buffering takes more time to load than it does to watch the five min. snatch of film!!

If I actually got 3mbps I would be very happy!

Re: Price Hike

pjmarsh — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 20:18:03 GMT

Openreach is a Public Company not a Charity. They need to at least make their money back from any expansion they do over a reasonable amount of time. No amount of pressure from an ISP is going to change that.

They have done quite a bit of expanding with government money (in the form of BDUK). How and where that was spent was at County Council level, if I remember it correctly.

Re: Price Hike

ejs — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 20:24:41 GMT

I tend to download things and maybe watch or skip through videos a week or two later.

The problem with most of the remaining areas that still don't have a "superfast" service available from BT is that those places are probably the places that are the most expensive to upgrade. Most areas still have some sort of local authority run scheme going on making improvements, and they don't always give the contracts for the upgrading to BT, sometimes they go with another company (such as Gigaclear).

Re: Price Hike

Minivanman — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 20:53:51 GMT

@ejs

That's good to hear if your 3mbps serves your purposes but I would suggest that for many others myself included it does not and it did not.

I'm not a gamer so was not greedy for download speed but I did however want to watch movies online without buffering and download without it taking all night - which at 3mbps it often did - and if I was not lucky it did not hang up. Add to that multiple demands especially when the grandchildren want to hook up, the wife with her phone and kindle, the smart TV plus the phone now we are using the VoIP system, and you can see how it all starts to get scrambled.

We are on FTTP now so all well and good as far as it goes, but the 3mbps max we had for months would just not cut it now.

Re: Price Hike

murox2017 — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 20:56:12 GMT

Charity has nothing to do with the simple will to improve a bad service. By the way, why should I pay even more for a service that doesn't live up to the most basic internet demands, like getting online each day

Re: Price Hike

Minivanman — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 21:07:14 GMT

Yep.

Re: Price Hike

pjmarsh — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 08:31:58 GMT

There is currently no obligation for anyone to be able to supply you with any kind of internet connection.

When the USO comes in then there would be, up to a certain cost. There is nothing to say that Openreach would be providing the USO for broadband either. If you can get a Satellite, 4G, Wifi (or whatever) connection for a "reasonable" price that is over 10Mb then that might very well meet to USO.

On your question of "why should I pay more", then the reverse could easily be asked by others, in that why should you pay less when the cost of providing that connection is more.

Re: Price Hike

Minivanman — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 09:24:49 GMT

Well no, but in this day and age there is an obligation to make it available yes?

One might just as well say there is no obligation to provide decent roads and moreover, roads without potholes!

Re: Price Hike

pjmarsh — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 09:50:25 GMT

Not at the moment there isn't.

To take your roads analogy, it would be like having a house with no roads to it. There wouldn't be an obligation for anyone to build a new road to that house (unless it was stipulated in the planning permission, but then it would be up to you to build that road.). Likewise with you having to build that road, you could get the fastest internet connection developed, but that would be up to you to commission and pay for, which is where leased lines and such like come in to play.