Right up until yesterday i was all set to order adsl from plusnet but
i'am not quite sure anymore. I have been reading the posts about
plusnet and people been receiving emails about the amount that they
have been downloading in a month. Although hearing about this i was
still thinking of using them as no isp is perfect especially as i use
bt yahoo anytime at the moment and wasn't happy when they gave a 150
hours a month usage on their dialup service.

I have also been hearing about plusnet been slow recently and have
started to wonder if i should take the risk by signing up with them.

I also suspected that once broadband took off isp's would start to
introduce caps and that before long all isp's will be capped, but i
could be wrong. All this makes me wonder if i should take up bt
yahoo's broadband offer or move to another isp when switching over to
adsl.

Do people think Plusnet is still a good isp to go with or not worth
the hassle? if not, are Zen any better? Although i don't want to spend
quite as much as £25 a month on adsl at the moment.

Thanks for any advice given.

du.

<du@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:41ac562b.7478632@news.btinternet.com...
I was one of the people who got put on the pipe of doom, so maybe my opinion
is biased but I'll give it anyway.

Up until two weeks ago I never had a single problem with Plusnet. Speeds
were always constant and everything worked great. Two weeks ago I got the
initial email about being moved over to the pipe of doom. Long story short,
it wasn't handled very well by Plusnet in my opinion and I'm left with a
2mbit connection that I can't get more than 10-40KB/s from. I'm leaving
because of this.

I am however a very heavy user so the odds are you will never be in my
position. It's very difficult to get some sort of figure out of Plusnet as
to what they deem acceptable usage. Everyone who got the email had
downloaded more than 140GB/month for three months. Is this the monthly
limit, I don't know.

Plusnet are supposed to be publishing a FAQ today that will hopefully clear
this up. It's even supposedly supposed to have a actual figure (two weeks
late but at least it's there).

I would hold off doing anything until you read that FAQ, and then make up
your mind.

If you are a lite user though 10GB/month I don't see you have any problems
at all.

<du@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:41ac562b.7478632@news.btinternet.com...
Plus net WAS a good ISP. I was considering them as well. But there is no way
I will now go to an ISP who will do something like this to the users who
fully paid for their service. That means they could turn on me as well at
anytime. So I will most likely go with Freedom2Surf, Zen, Vispa or Broadsurf
cos they all have excellent reviews and do not moan about heavy users. +net
is clearly punishing the users when its their own fault for not preparing
for service they offered IMHO.

I strongly suggest you read some reviews on other ISPs here before you make
your decision:
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/threads.php?Cat=&C=4
and
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/top10.php

It would be more correct to say that Plusnet have tried to resolve the
matter in a fair and open manner. Many ISPs would have just quietly dumped
the users concerned.

du@hotmail.com wrote:
I'm a PlusNet user, and I am very happy with them so far.

I would recommend them to anyone not expecting to download hundreds of
Gigabytes each and every month. It's probably best to go for the 1Mb/s
Home Lite package at £14.99/month allowing up to 1GB of data per month,
with the option of paying £2 per any extra 1GB in any month.

Oh - and in case you are wondering - I'm not on the referral scheme so
I'm not recommending them for any personal gain.

I hope that balances the arguments up just a little bit.

And why not? The following email just arrived from Plus that spells out the
reality in great detail.

"There has been some speculation surrounding PlusNet's management of
its broadband network and its response to customers utilising the
service significantly beyond its design. The following information is
provided to bring clarity to the situation.

It is important to understand that the wholesale cost for Broadband is
made up of 8.40 (ex VAT) per month per customer for the local loop
component and 31,130 (ex VAT) per month per 155Mb segment of a 622Mb
central pipe (BT broadband network transit). Depending on customer mix
and product mix, typically between 4000 and 10000 customers may be
serviced per segment. The resulting costs per customer are common to
all ISPs.

In order to frame the discussion further, industry average for
Broadband utilisation is circa 7GB per month per customer, across all
speeds, ISPs and account types.

PlusNet, Pipex, Zen, Nildram, Eclipse etc. all have to offer a better
all round service than BT, Wanadoo, AOL and Tiscali and in most cases
are also offered at a lower price. When looking at PlusNet's products
specifically, Broadband Home Premier 512k at 21.99 (inc VAT) is a
fixed cost service without a data transfer cap and with a contention
ratio of 50:1 (up to 50 users sharing 1 unit of capacity).

It is worth bearing in mind that, due to the nature of variable usage
across a customer base, there is always going to be scope for bursts
of utilisation by individual customers in any given month. The issue
is when users consistently use significantly greater resource than the
product can support.

Considering all of the information above, we have budgeted for the
average usage on Home Premier 512k to be up to 10GB per month. This
budget is based on the current wholesale structure and pricing.
However, there are many legitimate activities which can push people to
using more than this per month, and so we have taken that into account
in building the overall platform capacity.

It becomes very clear, if you put all the information together, that
no ISP can sell sustainable Broadband for less than 30 inc. VAT per
month and support users that continuously use in excess of 50GB per
month in the current wholesale environment. By the end of 2005 every
ISP will either be leveraging LLU, DataStream, UBC or CBC to provide
Broadband services. Indeed, over the last 2 years, a number of ISPs
have already started to deal with customers who have unsustainable
usage, some covertly but others not so, including Wanadoo and Virgin.

Having established that specific customers were using the service
significantly beyond its design, we identified that this issue was
threatening the sustainability of the service for all customers.
Specifically we have established a model that delivers an above
average service for a below average price. However, this model cannot
reasonably support customers consistently using an average of 50 times
the service design.

At this point we looked at what other providers were doing in relation
to this issue. We didn't feel that the approaches already taken were
appropriate for our customers. They either went against our open and
honest policy when interacting with customers, or did not enable an
above average service to be delivered at a below average price for all
customers.

We engaged the PlusNet UserGroup (http://usergroup.plus.net) to
discuss potential methods of managing the very small percentage of
users undermining the quality of service available to the rest of the
customers at the price point being offered. Following this
consultation, actions were decided and taken. The intent was to ensure
the fixed cost Unmetered Broadband proposition was maintained. The
intent was also to avoid the implementation of data transfer caps,
which would affect all of our customers.

The action taken was also designed to make other customers with usage
patterns closest to the 0.3% (who may not have been directly impacted
by the current process) also consider their usage levels.

The specific action was to request that 0.3% of all broadband
customers moderated their usage.
Their level of usage was inordinately high, resulting in an impact on
the quality of service for all. This 0.3% of customers were using
approximately 10% of the available platform. This equated to data
transfer levels that were consistently between 140GB per month and
600GB per month.

The objective of this exercise was to protect 99.7% of the customer
base from adverse effects resulting from the usage of the 0.3%.
Natural outcomes of this exercise were identified as:

a) A voluntary change in usage by the 0.3% of customers
b) Implementation of a solution to manage the overall capacity
available to these customers
c) Customers who didn't accept either a) or b) moving to another provider

As a result of yesterday's implementation, 8% of our total capacity
has already been freed up for the majority of our customers and a
performance improvement has been experienced by nearly all of our
customers as a result. 0.2% of customers were initially given 2% of
our overall capacity. Given the usage patterns of these customers, it
follows that their own broadband experience is being impacted by each
other's usage. For the first time this usage has not impacted the vast
majority of customers.

We are committed to providing a high quality of service at a great
price, and we will always take steps, to maintain this for our entire
customer base. We hope that the measures that are currently in place
will be successful; however there are a number of further options
available which can be explored. These could include:

+ Reduction in per-customer performance when individual usage goes
beyond a certain level e.g. 100GB for a 512k service
+ The introduction of charges for usage beyond a certain level e.g.
100GB for a 512k service

Any such additional measures would only be aimed at consistent
unsustainable usage patterns, and would be undertaken following
consultation & communication with our customers.

As a result of feedback received we are now looking to implement
flexibility on the managed platform to facilitate access to the full
potential of the network in non busy periods

While not everyone was going to be entirely happy with the events of
the past few weeks as there was never going to be a magic solution for
this problem. We have taken an approach that benefits the vast
majority of our customers, short and long term.

Regards,

Ian Wild
PlusNet Customer Support"

Can you name another ISP that would have taken the same open approach?

<snip>
This should have been sent two weeks ago, instead of annoying people with
their unquotable cap. At least now we know it's 100GB, if they had said this
two weeks ago I wouldn't have had a problem and could have arranged to
migrate sooner.

Next question to clear up is what figures were used to decide who went on
the pipe of doom. The initial posts by the plusnet support staff indicated
that ONLY the figures over the next 14 days would be used. 14 days turned
into 11 days. So what figures were used? Did they simply divide 100 by 32 to
get a daily figure and multiplied that by 11?

Next question, how does someone get of the pipe of doom? There's no way
anyone can download 100GB a month on it, so presumably everyone is off next
billing period?

Can we get off the pipe earlier?

I have arranged to migrate, can I get off the pipe earlier of will I still
be charged for my 2mbit even though it is performing at between 12KB/s and
30KB/s?

Final question, why do I use a capital M everytime I type Migrate?

<du@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:41ac562b.7478632@news.btinternet.com...
I would stay well away. You are in a good position at the moment where you
can search all the providers available. I went with Plusnet because I heard
some good things about them but it went downhill rapidly after joining and I
found the customer service line dreadful.

It's your money but moving FROM Plusnet was the best thing I ever did.

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:24:38 -0000, "Gareth :-\) voom"
<iam@wanapoo.co.uk> wrote:

the last year - the Customer Services personel are truly atrocious in
our experience - the worst kind of chip on the shoulder smartarse
teenagers with bad attitude.

And now, to cap heavy users, who have signed up in good faith and paid
the advertised rate for the service, is a further slap in the face to
all those who used to recommend them to our friends.

We moved our various accounts to Zen 6 months ago - they are better
than the 2004 Plusnet in every way, IMO.

My sentiments exactly

I have been with them since August on an unlimited 512K service. Since
then my connection has never ever once failed (with Netgear DG834
router). I up/download between 6-12Gig/month. Most (maybe 80%) of the
time I get excellent download speeds - usually at 490-500kps. The
remaining 20% of the time it fluctuates at maybe 40-80% capacity
(according to the graph in DUMeter). My connection has never 'not
worked' or been 'slow all evening'.

In my opinion their TEXT Usenet service is excellent.

Their binary service varies between rubbish and excellent. At the
moment it is excellent with >95% completion on the few groups I
subscribe to. They claim to have recently upgraded their Usenet
servers after a bad 3 or 4 weeks. Hopefully it will continue to be a
good service after they have tamed the >150GB/month leeches. I used to
pay for a binary NG service but find that is no longer necessary.

Their Portal/Web Page has masses of incredibly useful information - if
only you can only find it - a bit of a dogs dinner here.

They might come in for criticism on some or even several counts but at
least they read it and reply publicly. I don't see Tiscali or any
other of the really crap providers taking a blind bit of notice of
comments from customers. Come to that, which of the better providers
do either?

....just my 2p's worth from a very happy Plusnet customer.

Phil

"N/A" <not@thome.com> wrote in news:41acae90$0$50902$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-
reader01.plus.net:

To be all fair, the email system is generally reliable however it has been
having issues today. The last time I remember having problems with email
was near the beginning of the year when the storage platform upgrade had to
be brought forward.

--
Colin
*Drop DEAD from the email address to reply*

<du@hotmail.com> wrote
snip......
Good ISP! Difficult to say, if by good your mean a service that has a
reliable connection and staff that try to help then yes, if you mean good
as in a service that doesnt punish its users, and sets actual
understandable limits on what you can and cant do then NO.
I personally wouldnt choose them as an ISP, I would go with your Zen choice
out of the 2 providers, and also consider eclipse, nildram and demon, all
of which have connections that IMO are as reliable as Pusnet.

On 30 Nov 2004 in uk.telecom.broadband, "Gareth" wrote:

what went downhill ? Just curious, as I know there are various aspects of
the service which don't seem to robust, but on the other hand, I've never
relied totally on Plus.Net for hosting / mail / news as I've been using
other services and run some for my own clients.

Not spoken with any staff in 30 months from memory. Rarely need to call
UK firms, though I did speak one weekend about a year ago, with a query
about some non-'ISP' facility from my current ISP (backup MX service).

Seems to meet the needs of many others. I think the fact we have quite
a lot of choice does no harm, and from where I'm sat, can see none that
could be said to be "perfect" in everyones' eyes :-) Peter Morgan.




--
PlusNet <http://tinyurl.com/24ymz> - I recommend them and save some cash.

In MsgID<313h6mF34v049U1@uni-berlin.de> within uk.telecom.broadband,
'Peter Crosland' wrote:

Funny that we haven't heard of such an event on this newsgroup then.
I notice that uk.net.providers has been similarly quiet over this
issue.

--
Dave Johnson - requiem@freeuk.com

"Dave J" <requiem@freeuk.com> wrote in message
news:n48qq05akq3tau07a3df4epl4vl40n4ikg@4ax.com...
They wont automatically dump them cos Pusnet are happy to keep grabing the
money, especially from some home users that may be paying £56 odd quid per
month, they seem to want to have it both ways, on the one hand they want to
moan at the heavy users (whoever they are {we never got a heavy gigabyte
figure}) while on the other hand they seem happy to grab the cash for these
users.

Dave J wrote:
But I can remember one where an ISP slapped a 1gig per day limit on all
their customers, in the not to distant past

Gareth :-) voom wrote:
That's strange, because I have found quite the opposite.

I would definitely consider PlusNet.

Dave wrote:
Good luck to anyone using the providers suggested above!

If all the heavy users are migrating there, things are going to have to
change to support them, and will they be as open as PlusNet about it?

Time will tell.

"Dave" <not.valid.for@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:cojh8q$jdc$1@news6.svr.pol.co.uk...
Dave

Can't agree with you there.
I think PlusNet would be happy if the resource hungry users just migrated/left.
I don't expect them to state that publicly.
As they (PN and others) have stated these users are not a source of net (economic
use of the word) profit.
PN's recent statement clarifies the situation for me.
Going to other ISPs that do not have such policies (yet) will make a re-run of
this a likely event.
Heavy users are going to have to pick very carefully.

The way PN have dealt with (and I agree they have made mistakes) reinforces
my recent decision to join them.

I will still recommend them (but not to heavy users).

eric

--
Remove the dross to contact me directly

"kraftee" <kraftee@spamoff& die.com> wrote in message
news:41ad765a$0$9324$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...
I think that was NTL wasnt it ?
Are they still enforcing that limit ?