Have been a Plusnet customer for some time with no issues. This all changed on 13th November 2025. I really hope that someone senior from Plusnet monitors this forum as the company’s customer service has been diabolical.
Our broadband was supplied by what I think is called part fibre – telephone landline from the house connected to full fibre cable in the street. Contract up for renewal in late November 2025 and Plusnet were offering full fibre for initially £24.99 a month which was less than we were paying for part fibre, so we opted for that.
On the 13/11/2025 an engineer from M J Quinn for Openreach attempted to pull the new fibre cable through the underground duct using the existing landline cable. The cable snaped (underground) and he could do nothing. This left us with no telephone land line (which I know we would be losing anyway) and more importantly, no broadband. The engineer said was sure that Openreach would send someone out ‘almost straight away’.
2 ½ months on and no progress has been made. On the 13th of November Question 251438679 was created, this now has 51 entries on Help Assistant! I have had numerous emails and texts giving a new date for the installation; all have passed with nothing being done.
As I understand it, Openreach need to formally obtain ‘permission to work’ on the pavement from the landowner. The landowner in question is our Local Authority, Wigan Council, who I contacted on 19th December 2025. They advised me that they have not received any requests from Openreach to carry out work on the pavement outside our house. They went on to say that if they did receive a request, they would have no issues with giving permission to work. I immediately passed this on to Plusnet along with the email address at Wigan Council.
On the 14th of November an Openreach engineer had called and asked about attaching our broadband cable to our next door neighbours, to avoid digging up the pavement. We said no as the property is let, the landlord lives abroad so cannot be contacted. On the 29th of December we were accosted by the very irate neighbour from the other side, saying that Openreach had called at their house asking for permission to do the same thing. We had never been asked about this and if we had would have said no, as we know this neighbour can be ‘difficult’, to put it politely.
The only positive gesture from Plusnet was to supply us with a Mi Fi device on the 15th December. This does supply broadband via 5G some of the time, though it frequently drops out and must be re-booted. It is way too slow to stream movies and refuses to connect to our televisions.
Finally, to add insult to injury, in December Plusnet increase the amount they took via Direct Debit from around £30 to £61. When I queried this, I was told that we were now ‘out of contract’ and they couldn’t bill us under the new contact (£24.99) until the equipment was installed!
