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Supposedly premium service, at premium cost, with appalling service.

pitchfader
Newbie
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎29-11-2009

Supposedly premium service, at premium cost, with appalling service.

I've been keeping up-to-date with the problems with speed that have been reported on the support pages over recent days.
We have been experiencing drastic drops in download speed over the past few weeks. In the evenings, we are unable to watch a video on YouTube, for example, without it stopping to buffer every five seconds or so. My girlfriend is keeping (or at least trying to) up-to-date with an online project that posts a video blog each day. So far, she hasn't been able to watch a single video due to seriously limited bandwidth.
Performing a speed test on various facilities (including www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk as advertised on the PlusNet control panel) reports speed as low as 0.2mb. I have tried calling the support line, but give up after considerable time waiting in a queue with no answer. I understand that PlusNet are working on correcting the problem, and this is appreciated. However, when I am paying for a premium service, I expect a premium service. The service I am getting from PlusNet is, regrettably, unacceptable.
Given my line of work (I am an online software developer) I rely on having a solid broadband connection as I often work from home. Both my father and girlfriend's father have broadband from Talk Talk, which costs them nothing as part of their package. They both live within 1 minute of our house, and experience nothing less than the maximum speed of their line at nearly every given time. At peak times, the speed drops slightly, but is still considerably fast.
With this in mind, I would like to ask PlusNet for a response to the following questions:
1) Whilst I understand work is ongoing to resolve the known speed issues, when is this work expected to be complete, and how long will it be before full service resumes?
2) I understand that any broadband package is sold on a basis of offering "up to an agreed download speed". I also understand that this is dependent on many variables such as the distance between the exchange and the customer, the quality of the line, the setup within the home and the equipment used. With this in mind, I am pleased to report that when my broadband service has worked as advertised, I can achieve speeds of around 6.5mb. So with this as the benchmark of what I can expect, and the exceptionally low speeds I am actually experiencing, what is the procedure that I would need to follow to cancel my subscription and exit from my contract from you to seek an alternative supplier. Given the quality of service is currently unacceptable, I feel that I am well within my rights to end my contract early as the current quality of service provided by PlusNet falls well below that advertised.
Regards,
Matthew Alexander
9 REPLIES 9
Mark
Grafter
Posts: 1,852
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Supposedly premium service, at premium cost, with appalling service.

Hi Matthew and welcome to the forums.
I'm really sorry to read that you're having problems.
I'd like to understand a bit more about your issue and some of the very knowledgeable gurus here on the boards I have no doubt will also be interested in digging into this one.
Could I ask you to post up the stats from your router and the results of a BT Speedtest http://speedtester.bt.com/ and we can see whats going on.
orbrey
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 10,540
Registered: ‎18-07-2007

Re: Supposedly premium service, at premium cost, with appalling service.

Hi pitchfader,
I'm sorry it's been a bad experience so far. As regards your questions:
1) Unfortunately we don't have any updates yet. We'll keep updating the thread and keep working on it - you should have seen the updates regarding the extra capacity and the work being done on the routers and switches. We'll be updating that post again within the next couple of days, I'll get an update on where we are at the moment and post back a bit later.
2) I understand that it's frustrating but please give us a chance to look into the issues and try and fix them before you cancel - I can see you raised a fault earlier on this month but it didn't get to the point where we were able to escalate it for you. If you raise a fault ticket I'd be happy to test the line for you and let you know if I can see anything immediately apparent.
pitchfader
Newbie
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎29-11-2009

Re: Supposedly premium service, at premium cost, with appalling service.

Many thanks Mark and Matt for your fast and helpful replies.
I am using a Netgear N2000 router, but have also tried two other Netgear routers (DG834g & DG834gt) each with similar to identical results.
Since starting this thread, things have improved a bit which is obviously good news. What is odd though is that the results reported by http://speedtester.bt.com are considerably better than what we are actually experiencing. For example, whereas http://speedtester.bt.com reports actual speeds of between 4.5 - 5.5mb, any other speedtest tool reports far lower (all between 1.2mb and 2.5mb). Furthermore, web browsing is still very slow and videos on YouTube continue to jerk and buffer. When downloading files (I have several web server with reliable connections which I can use for testing) we are experiencing download speeds far nearer to 1.5mb than the faster speeds reported by http://speedtester.bt.com.
Could you shed any light on what might be going on, or what other steps I can carry out to ensure my service is running as fast as possible?
Kind regards,
Matt
VileReynard
Hero
Posts: 12,616
Thanks: 582
Fixes: 20
Registered: ‎01-09-2007

Re: Supposedly premium service, at premium cost, with appalling service.

If you want to view Youtube videos, there are Firefox add-ons which allow you to download the video to disk.
If you then play it from disk, you will not experience any slow-downs at all.

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

Mark
Grafter
Posts: 1,852
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Supposedly premium service, at premium cost, with appalling service.

Hi Matthew
Would you mind posting the results of the BT Speedtest along with the line stats from your router. That'll be a good starting point for us. With the BT Speed test results we need to see the full out put. Just copy and paste it from the web page.
pitchfader
Newbie
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎29-11-2009

Re: Supposedly premium service, at premium cost, with appalling service.

Hi Mark
I'm afraid I didn't take a note of the exact results from the BT Speedtest and it is saying I can't complete another test within 3 hours.
Here are my line stats thought:

System Up Time 49:11:49
Port         Status                TxPkts          RxPkts           Collisions Tx B/s      Rx B/s Up Time
WAN        PPPoA                786099        1139810       0                     570          7772 49:10:12
LAN        10M/100M                51718           2030            0                     70            1        49:11:46
WLAN     11M/54M/270M       1186853        795247        0                     8028        626        49:11:22
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 7296 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 26.0 db 13.0 db
Noise Margin 12.2 db 22.0 db
Regards,
Matt
Edit: Apologies for poor formatting, it looked ok on edit mode.
[Moderator's note by Adie (Adiewoo) tried to tidy format. failed.
69gillan
Newbie
Posts: 3
Registered: ‎30-11-2009

Re: Supposedly premium service, at premium cost, with appalling service.

I live 302 metres from an exchange, BT estimate I should get 6.5MPS and what do I get? a service no better than dial up, plusnet really need to close and move it's customers to a company that can actually provide a service, Plusnet=joke!
zubel
Community Veteran
Posts: 3,793
Thanks: 4
Registered: ‎08-06-2007

Re: Supposedly premium service, at premium cost, with appalling service.

Moderators Note
@69gillan:  Please do not cross post.  if you have an issue with your broadband, please post your own thread so that it can be followed up.
B.
pitchfader
Newbie
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎29-11-2009

Re: Supposedly premium service, at premium cost, with appalling service.

Well, things have actually picked up significantly since my last post. I have just downloaded a setup for an application at 630kb/s.
The Bt Speedtester is giving me the following results (Apologies if this doesn't format correctly)
Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test:  -provides background information.
Download  Speed
5002 Kbps
 
0 Kbps 7150 Kbps
Max Achievable Speed
Download speedachieved during the test was - 5002 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :7296 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 6000 Kbps
If this continues, maybe my problem has been fixed?