Why are plusnet offering slower fibre packages than all other ISP's

[#1]

So my exchange goes FTTC at the end of the month, obviously I will not be staying with plusnet as the experience has been horrible from start to finish but I would have probably put up and shut up had I not found out that plusnet are offering less than half the speeds of other ISP's such as BT and ZEN?
Whats up with that?

[#2]

Because the higher speed product 80/20 is still in trial and when you look at the problems - a good thing too http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,102776.0.html

[#3]

Yip, As Jim has said, we've taken a cautious and I hope sensible approach to this. There are some people enjoying a great experience on 80/20, myself included, although like many, I had some challenges initially.
As can be seen on our forums and those of other providers, 80/20 is still suffering from teething problems and until we're comfortable those have been resolved, we'll not rush into a mass release.
Mark

[#4]

Roughly translated that means "enjoy your problems with another ISP" or alternatively "stay here and enjoy the best support (generally)" 

[#5]

Well I will be taking my chances elsewhere then, the other ISP's offer the slower product too so if it is bad then I will simply downgrade.
With plusnet it seems there is no option at all.
Support is OK with plusnet however if you have a real issue they cant solve it, and point blank refuse to do any in depth investigation or root cause analysis, at least that is my experience personally and also with the business packages too, such as 7 weeks to set an rDNS record.

[#6]

may i  say something,, i was  with BT  untIl  last  week  now  with PN   .( not  fibre)
I  WAS  SO NERVOUS  ABOUT    JOINNING..  but  wow....
 the  speed is  amazing..  the PN  team   fantastic..
   removed  my  bt  wires,, re-installed the  pn  and  the  service  is  fabulous,,,  
  not  sure  why i would  need  fibre optic..unless  it  has  that already> ?.

[#7]

@inhost
What price do you want to pay? At least £37pm unless you have access to cable, then you may get it a couple of pounds cheaper.
http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/compare/fibre_optic/?gclid=CPWCtcTQsrACFdKBfAodqSikVw#products=more...
And that's before you get to Zen and add the Line Rental on 

[#8]

Honestly price is not an issue.
If it is a more substantial product I will pay for it, I also hate the fact that money is the first line of defence for plusnet when you even hint at looking elsewhere.
The internet is a part of every day life now and it is 100% my living so it is not something I try and cheap out on, I do object to paying about £40 p/m for a 2mbit line with plusnet that has at least 3 - 4 days of downtime p/month and once it comes back up to be told that "they" have fixed the problem, yet when asked what caused it they have absolutely no idea and further more refuse to carry out any further analysis.
So yes, we live in the UK so I expect ISP's to rip people off just because they can but hiding greed behind stability is ridiculous and borderline insulting, IP Profile rage all over again.. it is just a stealth cap on bandwidth.

[#9]

Quote from: inhost

The internet is a part of every day life now and it is 100% my living so it is not something I try and cheap out on, I do object to paying about £40 p/m for a 2mbit line with plusnet that has at least 3 - 4 days of downtime p/month and once it comes back up to be told that "they" have fixed the problem, yet when asked what caused it they have absolutely no idea and further more refuse to carry out any further analysis.

Have I made a mistake or were we talking about Fibre? Whilst what you've mentioned above is unacceptable, that's hardly relevant to what Fibre packages are offered. I'm not necessarily defending Plusnet's prices, but I don't think you will find better support (in general) and be able to converse in english for the price that we pay. By reports that I've seen you might get better support at ISP's like AAISP & Zen but at the same time you will pay for it. But in any event when what appears to be the current fiasco with 80/20 Fibre being down to Openreach and BTwholesale that's not going to magically disappear by moving ISP.
So is FTTC coming to you imminently? Would I be right in assuming you are on a business package at the moment, if not what are you paying £40pm for? Whilst the problems with your connection are ongoing, at that price I wouldn't be putting up with such appalling support either!

[#10]

Quote from: inhost

So my exchange goes FTTC at the end of the month, obviously I will not be staying with plusnet a

Given that Cheltenham was FTTC enabled at the end of last year and most of the town still does not have it, and this seems to be typical BT behaviour you might have a long wait. The nearest FTTC cab to my house is now only about a mile so I might get it in another 6 months or so.

[#11]

Yes we are talking about fibre.
Zen have English speaking staff, I had the top package, with the traffic priority etc hence the price, I have no idea what the package name is or even that they did a business specific package to be honest so shame on me if that is the case.
I recently downgraded the package to the basic one assuming at such horrible speeds there was little point in paying the extra for zero advantage, so now I end up paying about the same possibly more for the extra bandwidth.
It is good to have a UK based call centre however in my experience they are no better in technical ability than the staff of Orange or Sky or be, just different accents. the bottom line is once they have asked you to plug in to the test socket and change the micro filters for the 10th time the 'expertise' stops. and when it randomly comes back up they send me 2 text messages and an email letting me know they have fixed it yet they can never tell me how and always tell me that there are no specific resolution details on the previous case when asked to refer to what ever caused the issue the last time.
The exchange goes FTTC on the 30th, I can reach the cabinet with my arm if I stretch out of the front door.
My point about the speeds is, why not offer 80/20 with the option to downgrade to 30/10 (or what ever it is) if 80/20 is not doing well, rather than just give lower speeds by default?
I have only put up with plusnet this long as the fibre carrot was dangled in front of me, now I find out that they are offering less than half of the maximum capability I feel pretty angry about it.
To top it all off I called them on the 28th for a MAC code, I then asked why it had not been sent on Saturday and I am being told I never asked for it because they cant find a record of my call, and I need to call back when that team is at work, given the jubilee rubbish that will now be 06th (classic computer said no situation) lucky for me I called from an office that has recorded calls, I now have the CD of the conversation burned to disk and it will be posted to them with ofcom CC'd
This is turning in to a bit of a rant but apart from BT I have never had such a poor quality of service in my life, late delivery, multiple failed regrades, "lost" telephone calls, script lead staff, poor product specific service, less than 90% up time.
/rant
[me=inhost]sends more bee's to attack plusnet!  [/me]

[#12]

Edited: I thought you said you were close to the exchange and not the cabinet ....my bad.
A mode can delete this if they wish.

[#13]

Well, I don't blame you having a rant inhost, with all the issues you've described, I'd be somewhat t'd off. Regrettably there seem to be too many posts of late along a similar vain, and if Plusnet aren't slipping back into the bad old ways of a few years ago, they certainly seem to have done a TalkTalk! (For those that don't know - that means expanded too quickly and not got enough adequately trained staff to cope - as you say just script led). When you consider how many customers Plusnet now have, and as you will only get a small proportion on here complaining, there must be loads more out there suffering similar issues. Shame.

[#14]

Hi inhost,
Sorry to hear of your dissatisfaction with the service. Firstly, we can now change an account to Extra from Value immediately, rather than waiting until the next billing date. So, in order to rectify that for you I'll discount any extra usage charges you've incurred this month and change you onto extra immediately.
As for the fibre, even though we are currently only offering a 40Mbps product we are trialling 80/20, so if you were to go on the fibre 40Mbps product you could go on the trial at no extra cost. I personally think it's much better to have a trial like that, rather than bring out a product that still has teething trouble.
If there's anything else I can help you with then please give me a shout.
Jojo
p.s. I also notice ADSL2+ is available at your exchange. I could upgrade you to that and maybe squeeze a bit more speed out of your connection.

[#15]

re the offering from Plusnet,
our exchange is supposed to be delivering FTTP from June.
I see there have been some Plusnet trials with FTTP, but are they done and dusted now?  Will a FTTP product be available soon?
Gunsmoke