Milk Cows? Advice on a good provider?

[#1]

I was going to say ripped off but that might not be taken as polite so 'milk cows' seems as polite as I can manage.
I spent 6 months in a third world country and thought wrongly that I could download and send e-mails as per usual on my laptop once I managed to get someone to run out a few miles of bell wire as an excuse for a telephone line and get connected via dial up.  Well I struggled against the 'sometime never' attitude and finally got connected (that is between power cuts and the telephone lines being stolen for scrap).
Could I perform the simple task of receiving and sending e-mails?  Not on you life, at least not with Plusnet  I did manage to download e-mails but was prevented from sending them without the frustrating experience of having to log on to webmail to send.  It might not be that much of a problem with dialup in the UK but with super slow third world telephone lines it was a nightmare.
I contacted Plusnet and had a plethora of stupid excuses about sending spam via the server etc., all a load of rubbish because Netfirms allow relay e-mail from anywhere in the world and they do not get banned as a spam server, they also have proper front page server space without the cretinous 'fp' prefix and the need for a re-direct script.
So back to the 'abroad problem', hundreds upon hundreds of spam e-mails on a slow connection and having to use webmail, Plusnet service to customers, NOT!
Anyone remember the catalogue of errors we long suffering customers have put up with including allowing data to be stolen from their secure servers?  deleted e-mails in their thousands?  downtime for a few days at some points?  talk about loyalty from us the customer but what about the loyalty back?  Too much effort to help the customer by providing a service.  They survey about the broadband checker but where is it on the member page?  Still hidden amongst the user interface with many clicks to get to it.  For God sake how much effort to make it prominent and quick to access, too much trouble for doing something quickly as a service for customers.  Now if you don't want broadband, can't afford it or move house they will rip us off with a disconnection charge and make the excuse it is not them but BT, THEY ARE BT, do they think we are stupid?
To move on, I feel a sick headache coming on.  2GB usage allowance go a few b over and £1.25 charge for not even a GB,l WHY?  I could not use my allowance for 6 months and no refund, you see it is not balanced, hence we are the milk cows, it only works one way. Why is there a fine of 25% added to the amount over the allowance, is Plusnet/BT run by politicians?  What happened to fair usage?  too much of a fair concept?
So by now you will be on the verge of saying "why not link:censored to another provider?
That is my next question.
Does anyone know a provider that might respect a customer that has already been loyal for many years with the same provider?
O2 seem to offer a good deal that on the face of it is better than Plusnet and the allowance is only subject to fair usage just as the old Plusnet FRIACO used to be.
Anyone know of others or of the O2 option, I am confused by the confusion marketing that goes on with all the various providers (including the move Plusnet makes in that direction since it was on the cards for BT to buy them out).
Advice would be appreciated, I don't want to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Thanks,
Kevin Elks.
cp:red Please don't try to avoid the word censor. mod:end
cp:green Bold tag sorted mod:end

[#2]

Go to O2 there the best of the rest out there. i put my sister on to O2 for the cheapness and the fact that she only needs it for genral web surfing.
Yes they will send you text messages why you wait to get connected ect but the whole reason they offer cheap broadband is due to it being funded by the moblie phone bussines.
nearly once a week i have to fix somthing for my sister. the likes of using an open dns server insted of O2's cause that sucks alot of the times meaning half the web was not working for my sister.
And god forbid if you have to ring CS up and ask them a simple tech question then sit back and lap there dumbness up.
you think the grass is greener else where then change provider but i will still be here waiting for you to return after the min 3 months contract you get with O2. or why dont you go to BT and be stuck with them for 18 months.
And i belive plus net was bought by bt retail. bt wholesale are responsable for the copper wire ect

[#3]

Hi there.
I'm really sorry to hear that you seem to have had a bad experience.
I've read your ticket regarding the attempt to use our relay servers from overseas in Dec 07. As was explained at that time, to allow access to our relay server from a non Plusnet connection, especially in the part of the world where you were, is not something we could facilitate for the reasons outlined in your ticket at the time.
However things have moved on a bit since then and we now offer authenticated SMPT access to our mailservers for subscription customers. Had you added the SMTP server details of the ISP you were connected to whilst away, you would have had no issues sending email.
As for the

Quote

GB usage allowance go a few b over and £1.25 charge for not even a GB,l WHY?

We simply advised you that you were coming close to your included usage allowance and should you exceed that we would charge you £1 for an additional GB. I believe it is better to advise customers of this rather than simply take the money. The email you received also goes on to explain how to change your account if you feel that your usage is changing.
If you intend going away for an extended period again, give us a ring. I am confident we could come to an arrangement to "park" your account whilst you are away.
If you have any further queries or concerns dont hesitate to post back. I'd be happy to give you a ring if it would help clear things up.

[#4]

Quote from: kentbusinesses

I spent 6 months in a third world country and thought wrongly that I could download and send e-mails as per usual on my laptop ... ... Could I perform the simple task of receiving and sending e-mails?  Not on your life, at least not with Plusnet.  I did manage to download e-mails but was prevented from sending them without the frustrating experience of having to log on to webmail to send.  ... ... I contacted Plusnet and had a plethora of stupid excuses about sending spam via the server etc.,

Even with my travels in the UK, I have found that ISPs' insistence that you can only use their outgoing server when connected through their connectivity to be a right pain. PlusNet is no different in this respect from any of the others that I have used. And while, like PlusNet, they don't use authentication of any sort on their outgoing SMTP server, restricting access is the only way to prevent the server becoming a spam relay.
So I coughed up my US$15 and got a basic (one fee for a lifetime) account with fastmail.fm. I now rarely use the PlusNet outgoing server, and then mostly with basic command line emailers that cannot cope with authentication. For all modern email clients it is trivially easy to set up the necessary SMTP server authentication for fastmail.fm. Then it doesn't matter wherever you are, email goes on its merry way swiftly and completely free of fuss.

[#5]

Gmail will do the same as fastmail.