Basically we want to switch from Sky. They want to charge us nearly £50 a month, just for 32mb fibre and anytime calls. So we found a few deals, but I have no idea what to go with and perhaps other members have any suggestions. Plusnet seems like the best deal at just £38 a month for £12 months for 76Mb fibre, including Anytime calls. Anytime calls is a deal breaker, my mrs. absolutely requires it, so we have to have it. Any suggestions, and does anyone who use Plusnet know if you can use your own hardware, Sky prevents this and it's been a massive annoyance for quite some time - because I know for a fact they control my speeds.
Are you in a VM-covered area? Also obligatory - Avoid TalkTalk [and from what i've been hearing PlusNet too] like the proverbial plague.
You get that with any ISP though, we've been with TT for years (over a decade) and only had a few issues. Most of the people I know are on PlusNet fibre and they've been generally fine. Virgin seem to have the most issues out of my group of mates, but even they haven't been bad enough to say avoid them.
Yes, you can use your own hardware. Have been with PlusNet for a number of years and don't really have anything negative to say about them.
I've been with Plusnet for years too, and I've been very happy with them. In fact, they were very good when helping to resolve a local exchange issue. Many fibre users in the area where affected, including BT Infinity customers, and I was working with many of them to highlight the issue (long story). Anyway, many of them were livid at BT for closing their trouble tickets early, sometimes more than once! I only raised one ticket with Plusnet and it remained open until the problem was resolved. They were excellent.
Nope, no VM. They have no plans either, there isn't enough demand in our area. And i've dealt with Talk Talk about 6 years ago. They gave me a landline, but never gave me internet - the router was never delivered either. 2 months of constant delays and excuses, I called them and found out that they didn't even have me on file. I got 2 months of free phone calls - Wish I'd known so I could've called every premium number available. That's good to know. How is their customer service? I've heard bad things.
I've rarely had to contact them, but when I have everything has always been dealt with quickly and satisfactorily.
I'm thinking about Plusnet - Do they have a habit of increasing prices at all, past the increase as the deal expires?
I've been with Plus.net a few years and they've always worked out to be the best value. They did put the price of Fibre up about 6 months ago, but then everyone else seems to have done too! Yes, you can use your own hardware too (well at least after the BT Openreach box).
For an alternative, I can recommend Zen. They are a bit pricy at £46 compared to £37 on PlusNet (after deals) but they are not one of the big ISP. So far, they haven't implemented any web filter. They are also open about anything they are forced to put in place that will invade our privacy: https://blog.zen.co.uk/ip-bill-now/ So I feel good supporting them. For me, fast reliable internet is a critical part of my house utility. Unlike gas/electricity, I'd happily spend a bit more for better privacy and service.
This may be weird.... BUT: If you can get a good deal I have been using BT Infinity for the past few years for my fiber and have had a total of 3 hours of no internet and they had warned me about that before hand. Yes the Tech Support is terrible, but I can easily enough use my own kit and my download and upload speeds have been consistently high since day 1
^^ This. I've been with BT for about 6 years or so and got Infinity as soon as it was available on my local exchange. I've had exactly 0 issues with it.
I had an absolute nightmare with Plusnet to get it set up... Original date to go live of 17th October, got pushed back to 24th November with no explanation, multiple Openreach engineer visits later and eventually got connected 13th DECEMBER. And they charged me over £100 up front when I signed up in October, had ZERO compassion for the fact my wife was doing a Masters and needed an internet connection, offered no compensation and just put all the blame onto Openreach. Thankfully I haven't had to spend 40 minutes on hold to talk to them since, but I won't be renewing...
No problem here either with BT, mind you most of my neighbours are on VM, so there isn't exactly much competition on the opeanreach line for me. I did ditch the Homehub for a better router though because the wifi on the Homehub was a joke.
My first tour with plusnet was pleasant and tbh if it wasn't for the price rise at the end of the contract when the offer expired I would of remained. Went to Sky and they were alight until the end of the contract. Last month with them was a disaster and they messed the switching dates leaving me with no internet for half a week, plus billing issues. Out of spite I won't use Sky again. Went back to plusnet and their customer service has been excellent but there have been performance issues. Overall it's been a downward spiral. When looking I avoid TalkTalk. I have never heard a single good thing about them and the same with EE/Orange (1 out of 1 disliked them which isn't a large pool). Their payback scheme last time I looked seemed weird to me. BT customers generally seem very happy and have heard many people sing their praises (I was one when still living with parents) unless there are issues such as over billing or performance (Father-in-Law and a few others). Dealing with their customer service would send anyone on a rampage. Anything after Home Hub 3 has been a nightmare from the amount of tech support I've been providing friends. All Virgin customers are happy if you can afford their offers. Zen done well according to a recent article as did a few others. They're one I'm looking at currently for the next switch.
Been with VM since the beginning, and was with NTL before that. I had a small gap in between where I was using Bulldog (cable & wireless, 8Mb adsl), but recently Virgin Media been a bit crap.... in fact quite a bit crap. Took them 5 months to fix an issue with our landline. Hardware issues with numerous not so Superhubs - MDD Timeouts, FEC errors and some questionable engineers who couldn't decipher their own equipment logs The upsides are that they offer the fastest speeds around, no-one can match 200Mb and the TV packages are OK. If you go all in, as others have said it can get very expensive!
On the default 200Mb package, you get 12Mb download, which is still fairly respectable but they will throttle you if you exceed upload limits. Or 20Mb upload on the 200Mb Gamer bundle, which doesn't throttle upstream at all but you'll pay extra for it.
Since hearing about Zen Im looking at switching to them once my BT contract is over for a couple of reasons, the main being Free Static IP which is one thing i really want. Do Agree the HH3 from BT was trash I had a few of them start to fail. but as I had a spare it didnt really affect me and now I use the old While Openreach Modem but then feed my own router and Wireless AP.
