Oh @mars, this is oh so familiar to my own experience! May I join your rant please?

We had been with Virginontherediculous ever since they took over a now defunct CATV years ago. At first, they promised us the world: Unlimited email addresses, unlimited website hosting facilities and they would ‘bundle in a telephone line for a small consideration….

We had little choice at the time as other providers were not in this area then. We started off at £30 something a month and we used to get regular calls from a lady with an Indian accent trying to upsell their services and attempting to engage us in a new 18 month higher cost contract (that we were told was a special introductory deal that saved us money of course).

We resisted these ‘tempting’ offers for some years and during this time, the price would increase by inflation + 3.5% every year. Then, the subtle sales technique changed; we are sorry but we can no longer offer webhosting service (but no reduction in price of course). We had to give up our personal website as we could not justify more fees to A.N. Other services. Another year or two past with steady exorbitant increases in a diminishing service level with more frequent outages and a terrible customer service ethic. The next announcement was that we could not have unlimited email addresses and yes, another price increase! Virginontherediculous informed us that our current ‘special promotion’ was terminating shortly but that they could offer us another bundle of TV channels we had no need for for an amazing 90 something quid a month and by the way they had to go to VOIP services and these would be also be at a higher price too.

They ran very slipshod over us with the VOIP phone connection - even when we explained we were on the vulnerable persons register, they cared not that our connection for the existing ‘phone connection was downstairs in the hall but they were not prepared to do more than plug an adaptor into the back of the new router for VOIP - the router is upstairs and nowhere near a phone line! We had to re-arrange our whole ‘phone service with temporary extension leads and a reverse connection into the back of an extension ‘phone socket upstairs to keep our phones working. During the setup, the engineer told us he was going to his van for a fitting …. and he swiftly drove off never to be seen again!!! By this time, I had had more than enough of VOTR.

We have since moved to Zen Internet with a gigabit connection, a supplied router and 2 wifi repeaters to ensure we have robust signals throughout the house (1930’s thick brick walls everywhere that sap the signal). We have bought Fritz phones that link directly to the Fritz router and our total monthly charge is less than half that we had to pay VOTR at the end of our contract with them. (It is a whole ‘nother story of how we struggled to not renew our contract with them when it came to termination time.)

In addition we have mobile phones and have a service contract for those with Smarty.

I can only add that VOTR have trained the help line staff in India in some very ingenious methods of answering calls without accepting any cancellation of service requests! Regrets, Toodles.

My Vodafone FTTP broadband was down for a month when I wanted to port my VOIP number from Vodafone without porting the broadband connection.  The terms of Ofcom licences make provision of porting of this nature mandatory and there is absolutely no technical reason for any broadband downtime at all, the two services (a VOIP number and your broadband provider) are as independent as access to a website and your broadband provider. 

Notwithstanding that they are obliged to provide this service (they tried to tell me otherwise but I persisted) the only process Vodafone had to do the port out was to cancel the whole service then re-order.  They could only do the latter once the old service had fully been purged from their systems, which took a month because of the billing cycle. 

They did supply a 4G dongle a couple of days after they deliberately took it down (without my consent), but speed was poor and several services didn't work.  Compensation claimed and received!

Pathetic!

I should start by saying that despite what follows, Plusnet has been excellent over the 20 or so years I’ve been with them: UK contact centre, competitive pricing, fast responses to queries etc.

A couple of years ago we woke up to find we had no internet connection.  I tried the normal steps to find out what went on and then called up customer services.  Apparently Openreach had server problems overnight and needed to reload profiles but it should have been resolved already.  CS ran some tests and declared there was a problem with my phone line affecting my broadband.  I explained that I had FTTP, that I was calling them on my phone line and it had no problems.  This bit was quite difficult to get through to them but it was agreed an engineer was required to visit to resolve the fibre problem.  

An engineer duly next day to announce he would be here in about 10mins to fix the phone line.  I explained that phone was fine it was the fibre that was the problem.  His job was down to fix the phone but he was ex-openreach and could take a look at the fibre as well.  He duly changed faceplates on the phone sockets(!) then looked at the fibre and announced that the lights on the modem were showing a good connection so it was probably a problem with my router.  That was feasible: it was a few years old, and everything pointed to the underlying infrastructure being ok.  However having worked on IT best part of 30 years I wasn’t wholly convinced that my router failed at the same time as a failure on Openreach’s side.  Bought a cheap router, configured it, didn’t work so returned it, swapped back to my old one and got in touch with Plusnet again.

Explained the issue again and the agent announced there was a problem with my phone line!  More difficulties ensued explaining I had FTTP, I was calling from the phone so it was obviously working, and an engineer had already attended to “fix it”.  An engineer was booked to turn up to fix the fibre connection.  Next day, I got a call from the engineer to say he was 10mins out from attending to fix the phone line.  I explained that it was a problem with the fibre connection not the phone line.  He just said that the job was to fix the phone so he would need to check with base and call me back in a few minutes.  That was the last I heard from him and no one turned up.

Back on the phone to Plusnet to explain the problem all over again.  The agent announced there was a problem on the phone line and they would need to get an engineer out to fix it!  It would seem that no amount of explaining could get over that my broadband was on fibre, had been for 10 years or more, was installed by Plusnet and I’d only ever been with Plusnet.

Basically, to cut a very long frustrating story short, turns out that although they installed the system and I’d been renewing it year after year they didn’t offer such a product (phone line plus FTTP) so this wasn’t reflected on my customer record so the agents didn’t believe me. This all stemmed from being on a beta FTTP rollout with them back in 2011 which I jumped at because they gave me free internet which lasted 5 years.  Eventually someone more technical than the phone agents got involved, properly looked into it and worked out what the problem was.  Openreach hadn’t restored my operating profile and couldn’t do so for some reason.  I had to set up a brand new account without a phone line and my connection was restored within 2 hours.  I wasn’t bothered about the phone line and we’d already been discussing dropping it.

It took over a week with no internet except what was available on a poor 1-bar 4g connection from our phones.  Compensation was paid up of around £360.

Despite all that, I’d still recommend Plusnet.  In the 20 years I’ve been with that’s the only problem I’ve had and I’m paying £26.99 for 160mbps connection.  

That's why I moved to Andrews and Arnold and then Zen having used bargain basement ISPs in the past. Technically competent and deal with issues promptly. Might be a bit more expensive, but worth it.

@andrewj heartened to know that. Blue light on the router came on late last night. Hopefully that’s the last phone call I have to make to tech support for the next couple of years 😉

Oh this is so resonant. I live in an area with no mobile coverage and poor FTTC internet.  The Scottish alt net GoFibre has been pulling fibre around the country roads near me and I got an email saying they were ready to connect so signed up.  They sent a stop message to Zen, my current provider, with a date for installation and just before the install realised that they had gone early and the network was not ready. Everything was reversed until two week later and Zen sent an email saying sorry to see you go and the line then went dead!  Try sorting that out standing 400 meters into a barley field, on top of a round bale to get a mobile signal. 

GoFibre blamed Zen who blamed GoFibre.  Took a week to get reconnected to Zen on a new contract and a further week to get my old phone number back. Zen compensated me and GoFibre have promised to match that if I end up with them in the future.

Two weeks without functioning internet or phone was a real challenge, talk about first world problems!   It does make you very inventive though.  A long extension lead into the field between me and the farm house, wifi repeater cable tied to a fence post, plastic supermarket bag on top to keep the rain out. Another repeater at a facing window of the house and a login to the neighbours wifi. Just functioning enough to get email and basic internet.  MacGuyver would be proud!

Posted by: @hml1827

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That's why I moved to Andrews and Arnold and then Zen having used bargain basement ISPs in the past. Technically competent and deal with issues promptly. Might be a bit more expensive, but worth it.

Both of which (in most cases) use Openreach for the last mile - proving that the problem is NOT with Openreach!