Unhelpful Customer Service

[Phaeton]

I moved from your basic broadband service over to FTTC product & immediately had problems, firstly my static IP was removed after I had checked that it would remain, preventing my accessing my servers or my work. Then the quality & speed is horrendous, buffering on BBC iPlayer & Youtube, yet it is within acceptable limits so nothing gets done.
I have been with F9/Plusnet for nearly 20 years, obviously my browsing habits have changed over that period as everybody's has, but since going onto FTTC without any change in habit's I am informed I am hitting my cap of 40GB. This month I have hit it within 10 days, this is completely impossible however doing the right thing I have upgraded to the unlimited product. Does that help NOPE! they will not move me over until the 24th what use is that to anyone, I have even offered to pay for this month to be unlimited, is that acceptable NO! But they have got me locked into an 18 month contract so they can bend me over the table as much as they want.
Alan Smith

[adamwalker]

@Phaeton
Really sorry to hear about the problems you've had. I've changed the account type now for you. It's not something we can always do but I've been able to given the circumstances.
I'm concerned about the speed problem you've had, am I right in assuming that's still an issue? if it is what speeds are you seeing?
Adam

[dvorak]

Quote from: Phaeton

. This month I have hit it within 10 days, this is completely impossible

Sorry to hear of the hassles you've had but I'm not sure why you think that's impossible? Due to some hefty file transfers for work I actually hit 15GB in one day during peak hours this month, so an average of 4GB for 10 days seems very possible.

[Phaeton]

Thank you Adam, currently at work, so can't give you any figures, however the underlying figures have always appeared good, however the service would just stop working,  I have last months Samknows report card,
Downstream average of 36.54Mbps down with a low of 10.94 high 41.66
UPstream average of 9.28Mbps with a low 5.69 high 11.17
Latency 13.96ms 3.25 min with a max of 2154.66
Packet loss avergae 0.27% min 0% 50.00% max.
Not sure how these numbers compare with other users but as you can see latency & packet loss does get high on occasions.
This has been an ongoing problem for the past few years & I had hoped the move to FTTC would solve it. To give you an example, Youtube & iPlayer will buffer in the middle of a clip/program I recently thought it might be an issue with my Ubuntu/Chrome, but the same happens on the WII & the Humax Freesat box.
Dvorak, The reason I believe it is impossible is that nothing has changed in the way we use the service, I have not hit the limit in the last 20 years (jest) so why should I now?
Alan...

[orbrey]

Quote from: Phaeton

I have not hit the limit in the last 20 years (jest) so why should I now?

I suspect from looking at your post that it's...

Quote from: Phaeton

Youtube & iPlayer

You'd be surprised how much bandwidth streaming video uses. Not sure why the buffering though, might be worth trying a wireshark capture perhaps?

[Phaeton]

Sorry Matt, but you appear to have jumped to conclusions which unfortunately is a trait of Plusnet CS along cut & pasting stock answers is another favourite, very annoying when they can't even be bothered to change the names. We do not use iPlayer & Youtube very often as they do not work very well, let's hope this upgrade makes a difference. Although I have just run a test & getting a currently very poor 37.14 down & 5.48 up according to the BT Speed test. This is after rebooting both the fibre NGA & the router.
Alan...

[Chris]

You're only receiving  37 down & 5 up as your order was incorrectly placed on the 40/10 product. This was due to a bug we had recently, all new orders are correct but we're cleaning up and correcting the incorrect ones as they complete. We'll place an order to move you to the 80/20 service and this should complete tomorrow.

[Estragon]

Quote from: Phaeton

... the quality & speed is horrendous, buffering on BBC iPlayer & Youtube, yet it is within acceptable limits so nothing gets done.

I assume you now have your/a static IP again?  If so I suggest setting up a thinkbroadband Broadband Quality Meter (BQM) like the ones on this Plusnet page. Just (double?)click one of them and it takes you there.  If you don't already use thinkbroadband Main Site then you will need to register there.
I also run NetWorx all the time, which has a neat little real-time graph I fit into the Windows Gadget panel.  Careful on that linked page as it is full of lots of adverts for other products. Scroll down the page and look out for the "Quick info" panel on the left. (To the right of that are screenshots).
That lets you see exactly how fast downloads and speedtests are going second by second, so you see how consistent they are.

[Phaeton]

Thanks Chris, look forward to the new speed.
Estragon, Thank you for the help, unfortunately there is a flaw in your cunning plan, I would have to install Windows, which I see as worse than slow BB speed :)
Alan...

[Estragon]

LOL  :-[
You should still be able to do the BQM bit for you to monitor yourself, and let them add it to the page here :). As you can see from that page, some of them are very informative wrt latency issues.