shutter wrote:
Isn`t this present situation, something akin to the Beeching cuts, on the railway branch lines?
Possibly.
Personally I look to the example of British Leyland in the 1970's.
Leyland had become a monolith owning many different brands of cars which management got frightened meant they were competing with themselves.
Their answer - nobble some of your own products to stamp this out.
You then had the farce of Triumph having under powered cars because they only wanted Rover using the better engine.
The classic example was of the Austin Princess, having the entire design crippled because management refused to allow it to have a hatchback as designed because they wanted this to be the selling point of the Maxi.
Leyland naturally failed and became somewhat of a laughing stock, while loyal customers switched to foreign cars and never came back.
My personal feeling is that Plusnet is a victim of the change of ambition of its owner B.T. who got into the multi play business and is going head on with SKY.
Sky I always felt was Plusnet's natural rival while B.T considered itself the premium brand in the mass market suppliers. (Also being there for people who disliked BT and were unaware of the ownership situation)
As with Leyland, I feel the shift of ground for BT left them with a bit of dilemma regarding Plusnet. They didn't want to to compete with themselves so maybe it was this what made the choice to focus on the bargain basement area, dominated by Talk Talk.
The price war and over the top offers recently has naturally swelled the numbers. We all know that support, service etc costs money and gradually we have seen the decline of these with Plusnet.
Similar to the respected brands of Hoover and Hotpoint in the 1980's that were bought by the cheaper Italian suppliers. There is money to be made on the original reputation.
As it took time for people to notice in the late 1990's/ Early 2000's that their replacement Hotpoint machine was essentially a re badged Indesit machine they could have bought for 25% less without the Hotpoint name, eventually these people got wise and switched to Bosch or AEG machines.
Plusnet still has a number of awards for service in the recent past, the forums exist and a lot of people whose Internet was setup in this period and it still works would still recommend and be happy with Plusnet at present.
This is the advantage it has over Talk Talk at present so it is profitable to make the most out of this, hence the type of commercials we are getting.
I personally have never seen this end well in the long run and I try to get out before things get too bad and you are stuck behind 1000's of others running for the lifeboats when things really start falling apart.
The absence of the reps, especially to help a vulnerable woman begging for help in another forum (the reason for me resigning up and posting again) is alarming.
I have to really have a think about moving again as this level of communication is just too low to rely on if something unexpected interupts my service.
WE have staff who are POSTING 
and a new one too 
