Plusnet seems to not value loyal customers

[#1]

Thanks for that. As an ex-customer, I don't follow their performance as keenly as I did, but the decision by BT Groups Consumer Division to make the brand a 'low cos' internet service only provider will obviously have had some effect - if you do not need to support so many services, you don't need so may staff.

I  note with interest that ISPReview,  whose 'report' was the only one I read still appears to think the 'brand' is a stand-alone business - it isn't.

[#2]

My contract expires in 6 months, my mothers in 2. I would like to renew with them as the broadband service, up to now, has been stable and customer support generally good and with no "language difficulties". However, the lack of choice (no full fibre availability and lack of digital voice) has made for a difficult choice. Whereas I am in the countryside, mum is in the city so whereas I am not surprised by the unavailability of full fibre at my location, I was surprised by the unavailability of it at mums near city centre location. CityFibre and Virgin Media seem to have beat OpenReach to the post with fibre and yet there is still no indication of when an OpenReach provision will become available. For mums contract I no longer have the time to wait. This is hardly the fault of PlusNet, but the lack of a migration path to modern day speeds and digital voice is likely to be the deciding factor for us. Mum's PN BB with landline provision still costs around £44 p.c.m on contract. I am not keen to switch over to EE (not had a particularly good experience with them in the past) and because of their pushy ignorant/lying (could be either) sales people I am not terribly keen on Virgin Media either, but mum does have the option of any of the CityFibre providers. Unfortunately at my address, full fibre is available only via Virgin Media until Openreach get their finger out. Date still unknown according to PN.

In view of the fact that Openreach seem to be well behind their competitors in rolling out fibre, it is disconcerting to read that PN will no longer negotiate prices to keep loyal customers. I guess the profit margin has become thin. Yes, they can still offer us a continuation on FTTC, but a move to full fibre and VOIP with other providers will cost about the same or less so I don't think that PN can afford to be playing hard-ball and haemorrhaging customers to the competition.

[Batphone]

Batphone

For VoIP, you can sign up to one of the VoIP providers, buy an adapter, Grandstream, Cisco, etc, which plugs into the Hub 2 router; a phone base station then plugs into the adapter, and 'Bobs your Mothers Brother'. Not all phones are compatible, so you may need two newish ones..

Some VoIP providers sell their own phones and adapters as a complete kit, or you can go down the route I followed and skip off to E-Bay ( life's hard on a pension 😢😢)...but it works mighty fine.

It might keep you and mom going until Openreach eventually decide they really want to install new Full Fibre broadband lines in hard to reach places ..and TOWN CENTRES in my case.

[#4]

@Batphone 

If CityFibre is available at your Mum's you could check their website to see what ISPs are provisioning on fibre./ Some of them will provide fibre broadband with a digital voice service (a bit like BT / EE) so that you just plug the existing telephone into the phone port in the back of the router, with no need for new phones or adaptor. 

I move to such a service with Zen provisioned on CityFibre (fulll fibre) and the cost was much less than my then PN broadband and phone service (FTTP), with no mid term price increases and proper UK support.

[#5]

Customer loyalty for anything is long gone, except for car insurance which was supposedly regulated. It didn't really bring prices down, it just meant new customers also paid more. I don't understand why it is better for any business to alienate and lose customers they have already gained and pay out to attract new ones. It must make business sense to someone, otherwise they wouldn't all do it.

I came back to PN from Sky when they wouldn't negotiate and they lost a TV customer too. Can't say I have noticed it as a non sports/ films watcher. I have an SSD plugged into the back of my TV and does the job as well, just can't record 8 items at once 🤣

Mark

[#6]

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@Marksfish wrote:

I have an SSD plugged into the back of my TV

@Marksfish  Intrigued   Plugged into what (?)

Looked up SSD here (knew SSD stood for solid state drive but not the specifics) but the page refers mainly to PCs and laptops:

Interface: Check the interface compatibility of your device. SATA SSDs are widely compatible with most laptops and desktops that have SATA ports. If your device supports PCIe or NVMe interfaces, consider PCIe or NVMe SSDs for faster performance.

... do TVs have SATA ports (?)  or is there something that acts as a bridge between standard (old-ish) TVs and SATA ports (?)  

I'm not very techie so a simple answer would be appreciated

Thanks.

.

[#7]

Charlescot: "The the renewal prices do seem exceptionally high at £48/year extra. Almost seems like trying to wean customers out of Plusnet to close it down."

Sadly, after my discussion with PN yesterday, that does look like a distinct possibility.

I was actually offered quite a reasonable price, but it seems they do have PN products on offer as well as those from EE, but the EE products are being offered first. The PN products are a bit cheaper, but the EE ones come with added extras like a deal on a SIM. The fact that they are selling EE products first and only mention PN ones when you ask questions and in a somewhat negative light (i.e. implying that the EE product is a better deal) does make it seem like they are having to follow the wishes of their (formerly BT but now) EE masters.

Shortly afterwards I got an e-mail from their sales team and it came from an ee.co.uk e-mail address, so it seems that I was, in fact, speaking with an EE representative rather than the PN sales team. At no point during the conversation was I told this.

Regardless of who owns whom, my arrangement is with PN, so why would I want to share my details with EE? Might this perhaps explain why legal information that I had sent to PN when the account was set up and that was previously on record was not available to the EE representative?

But yes,I fear that my experience does appear to support the view that EE are deliberately running down PN as a separate brand, which is kind of sad.

[#8]

But yes,I fear that my experience does appear to support the view that EE are deliberately running down PN as a separate brand.

BT Consumer Division policy - of course they want to sell you the higher-priced products - and tie you into the BT ecosystem. 

[#9]

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@Penny wrote:

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@Marksfish wrote:

I have an SSD plugged into the back of my TV

@Marksfish  Intrigued   Plugged into what (?)

Looked up SSD here (knew SSD stood for solid state drive but not the specifics) but the page refers mainly to PCs and laptops:

Interface: Check the interface compatibility of your device. SATA SSDs are widely compatible with most laptops and desktops that have SATA ports. If your device supports PCIe or NVMe interfaces, consider PCIe or NVMe SSDs for faster performance.

... do TVs have SATA ports (?)  or is there something that acts as a bridge between standard (old-ish) TVs and SATA ports (?)  

I'm not very techie so a simple answer would be appreciated

Thanks.

.

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Mine's plugged into the telly USB port, something similar to this:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/388408977581https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/388408977581 

[#10]

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@Marksfish wrote:

Mine's plugged into the telly USB port, something similar to this:

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https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/388408977581 

Wow.  Only £19.49 for "2TB External Hard Drive Disk Memory Storage USB 3.0" SSD - from recall, amazon prices for external 2Tb hard drives (the non-ssd sort) were way above that.

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@Marksfish wrote:

I have an SSD plugged into the back of my TV and does the job as well, just can't record 8 items at once 

@Marksfish 

So, next question - how do you get the TV to record to the SSD (?) I have a youview -type box, that records stuff (don't understand how it does that but it has an interface that enables selection of programmes etc.) however have been trying to identify some way of recording stuff to permanent storage, for which the SSD looks ideal

There's a USB port on my (old-ish) TV (2013), which works to output stuff recorded previously (from vhs) to the desktop here. The mechanics of setting up an SSD drive for recording from the TV, though, completely beyond me, hence the question 😕

(checks youview box) There is (it seems) a USB port on the back of the youview box, but I don't know how the youview box could be told to record to an SSD drive plugged in there, either 😕

All this stuff seems (to me) relatively unfathomable so any light you can shed would be very much appreciated.

.

[#11]

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@Penny wrote:

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@Marksfish wrote:

Mine's plugged into the telly USB port, something similar to this:

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https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/388408977581 

Wow.  Only £19.49 for "2TB External Hard Drive Disk Memory Storage USB 3.0" SSD - from recall, amazon prices for external 2Tb hard drives (the non-ssd sort) were way above that.

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@Marksfish wrote:

I have an SSD plugged into the back of my TV and does the job as well, just can't record 8 items at once 

@Marksfish 

So, next question - how do you get the TV to record to the SSD (?) I have a youview -type box, that records stuff (don't understand how it does that but it has an interface that enables selection of programmes etc.) however have been trying to identify some way of recording stuff to permanent storage, for which the SSD looks ideal

There's a USB port on my (old-ish) TV (2013), which works to output stuff recorded previously (from vhs) to the desktop here. The mechanics of setting up an SSD drive for recording from the TV, though, completely beyond me, hence the question 😕

(checks youview box) There is (it seems) a USB port on the back of the youview box, but I don't know how the youview box could be told to record to an SSD drive plugged in there, either 😕

All this stuff seems (to me) relatively unfathomable so any light you can shed would be very much appreciated.

.

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I don't know how good the one is that I linked, just that it is similar to my 2 that I have.  I don't know about Freeview boxes, but my telly has Freeview Plus installed on it (JVC and Goodmans smart tv's). I just use the record button on the remote. I'm sure if your box was able, the remote would have record and replay buttons (maybe)/ Also pauses live TV, like Sky+

[#12]

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@Marksfish wrote:

I don't know how good the one is that I linked, just that it is similar to my 2 that I have.  I don't know about Freeview boxes, but my telly has Freeview Plus installed on it (JVC and Goodmans smart tv's). I just use the record button on the remote. I'm sure if your box was able, the remote would have record and replay buttons (maybe)/ Also pauses live TV, like Sky+

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Well I appreciate the reply, but can't (yet) figure out how to get the TV to record to the USB drive.  Have dug out the TV manual (Panasonic Viera) but (I think) the USB drive is only for playback, not recording.

Meanwhile have tried putting a flash drive into the USB port on the back of the youview-type box   The remote has all the usual buttons for recording, playback, pausing live TV etc, but doesn't seem to have anything for designating where else (aside from the youview-type box itself) to record *to*.

Looked the box up on duckduckgo and it would appear that the USB port on the back is intended (only) for keyboard access for users who are unable to use a remote.

So, struggling a bit, here, to fathom how it would be possible to get the recordings to go anywhere but the box.  Maybe your TV is just more recent and has more capabilities

.

[#13]

Should've been an LG TV, not Goodmans 🙄

I'm not sure all TV's have the capability. As I say, mine have Freeview Plus built in and it was just plug and play. I really don't know about other TV's and Freeview boxes i'm afraid.

I also get the option to watch stored films and listen to stored music already loaded on the drive.

[#14]

@Penny 

In an attempt to close down this discussion and get this thread back on topic.

The capability to record is a feature of some of the latest Smart TVs. I have it on my 2023 model LG TV.

On mine It's not that useful in terms of using it as a recorder as the the TV effectively only has one active channel. By that, I mean that you can't record one channel whilst watching another. However, you can record the same channel as you are watching. You can use it to pause a live broadcast, when you continue it swaps to the recorded version. You can also set it to record programmes even when the TV is on standby. In terms of memory, I just use a128GB, fast, USB memory stick. Recording is set up via the TV remote.