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BT cuts you off, Plusnet blames Openreach... welcome to “seamless” broadband switching

 
Well & Truly Off The Grid
Last Post by Mars 1 hour ago
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Mars
 Mars
(@editor)
Illustrious Member Admin
Joined: 6 years ago
Posts: 4925
Topic starter 20/10/2026 2:49 pm   [#3200]

Rant alert!

With everything getting more expensive, we’ve been going through our bills to see where we can make some sensible savings, and broadband looked like an obvious place to start because BT was charging us well over £50 a month while Plusnet was offering the same speeds for £27. That is more than £275 saved over a year, which is a worthwhile amount of money, although I am beginning to wonder whether I should have factored in the cost of watching an orange router light slowly erode my patience.

I have always hated switching broadband providers because so much of my work depends on having a reliable connection, but after being assured by Plusnet that the whole thing would be seamless and easy, we reluctantly decided to go ahead. We are, after all, in 2026, the fibre is already installed and we had a perfectly good connection before any of this started, so I allowed myself to believe that changing the company taking our direct debit might be a reasonably straightforward exercise.

BT managed to disconnect us in the early hours of Monday morning with surgical precision, while Plusnet said we would be up and running that day, so out came the old router and in went what looks remarkably like the same router wearing a Plusnet badge. Monday passed without anything happening, and when I checked this morning, the website had replaced its previous message with We’re really sorry there’s been a delay with your installation. 

I then spent almost an hour on the phone to Plusnet, and I will give them credit for having someone in Sheffield available to speak to (unlike reaching BT that entails speaking with chatbots headquartered out of India), although the conversation became increasingly frustrating as we worked our way through several escalations. Apparently, Openreach is the issue, BT was also brought into the discussion at one stage, and the eventual answer was that Openreach had been contacted and the switch could take up to another 48 hours. I must say the UK has mastered blaming someone else, and I probably found disconcerting is that everyone I spoke to didn't really have an answer or could provide any assurance. Given it's 2026 l said earlier, I'm staggered that this process is more transparent.

I appreciate that technical problems happen, but our connection was working before the switch, and nobody has given us a clear explanation of what has changed or what needs to happen to restore it. We live rurally, our 5G coverage is patchy and fibre is a substantial part of how I earn a living, so losing it means rearranging work around an unreliable mobile connection while waiting for an update that might or might not move things forward.

The saving is still worth having, but this is exactly why I was reluctant to switch in the first place, and every passing hour makes those assurances about an easy, seamless handover feel a little more ambitious. Somewhere between BT switching us off, Plusnet switching us on and Openreach doing whatever is required in between, somebody needs to take responsibility for getting us connected, because I have now spent considerably more time managing this supposedly effortless switch than I spent finding the deal.


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