Plusnet..Will anyone else be better???

Hi all,

Let me straight off the bat state that I am a pissed off Plusnet customer.

I have been with them for a year or so no, having migrated from BTOpenworld
and was *absolutely* sold a monthly contract unlimited service and had this
confirmed on numerous occasions. By unlimited, I understood this to mean
that I could download as much as I wanted within the physical constraints
of the transport mechanism

I'm not one of the "bad boys" and possibly won't be too affected by their
caps. I do download a bit of bittorrent p2p, mainly TV programmes like CSI,
Enterprise & Stargate Atlantis...however I do use VOIP from home. I am a
home-based worker and I use a corporate soft-phone. I also have a wireless
network with another 3 PCs attached, though traffic usage on these is very
low.

I can *kind of* see why they are introducing caps..it is the way they have
gone about it, that has really pissed me off. It is almost as if they made
a determined effort to antagonise their customers.

They embarked on a "fixed" survey
Published the results and made them look as if the users had approved of
them
They then completely ignored these results and introduced caps, roughly
half of the limits in the survey.

Then in a blatantly dishonest manner, they have tried to use a real cloak
and mirror act to state that these caps are in no way a change of existing
T&Cs, merely a clarification..though there is no mention at all, of any
sort of Fair Usage in the T&Cs for them to clarify.....besides T&Cs..to the
best of my knowledge can not be legally "clarified" or embelished..the
appropriate level of detail should be there to begin with.

So, do I take my custom elsewhere or just accept that I am paying my money
to a dishonest company?

Well, I had a long chat with Zen this morning and the guy trotted out the
company line that "We have no plans for any bandwidth cap at the moment"
and indeed, the website clearly states "no bandwidth cap"

However, during the course of this conversation, I asked what would likely
happen if, together with the advent of MaxDSL, Zen found themselves
inheriting masses of users, expecting to be able to download 500Gb of files
every month..and he admitted that if this were to happen, Zen would likely
be reluctantly forced to take actions to ensure the viability of the
service for the majority of their users.

And therein lies the problem...If I migrate from PN, will I be jumping out
of the frying pan into the fire??

I am frankly disgusted with PN's actions throughout this whole debacle, but
as the "I'm alright Jack" faction have been professing, it's my money and I
use it where it is most effective *for me*.

Does that mean that I will ever trust PN again...unlikely.
Does it mean that I will tell people what I think of my ISP if
asked...absolutely
Would I recommend PN as a reputable ISP...NO!!
Will I be migrating away on a point of principle?.....Only if whatever deal
I find is better *for me*

YMMV
--

Regards

John [Essex, UK]
Remove the obvious spamtrap to reply

JC <johncalias-newsgroupsATyahooD0TcoD0Tuk> wrote:

> And therein lies the problem...If I migrate from PN, will I be jumping out
> of the frying pan into the fire??


yes - at least for any other BT-based breadband access in the UK

cu

mgk
--
Send virus warnings?

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20000512

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 12:07:27 +0000, JC
<johncalias-newsgroupsATyahooD0TcoD0Tuk> wrote:

>And therein lies the problem...If I migrate from PN, will I be jumping out
>of the frying pan into the fire??

It all comes down to money in the end. If a company gets enough high
volume users so that it starts seriously impacting their income from
the service then they will have to take action one way or another. I
personally think the Plusnet "solution" of caps is better than the
approach other ISPs like BT have taken in the past, where they just
expell the users they don't like.

People like AOL and ntl seem to be the exception to this rule. I
suspect AOL are too big to notice the heavy users, ntl are too
disorganised to realise they are there...

>I am frankly disgusted with PN's actions throughout this whole debacle, but
>as the "I'm alright Jack" faction have been professing, it's my money and I
>use it where it is most effective *for me*.

While I think the Plusnet caps are the right way to go I do agree that
the way they have gone about it has been, how shall I put it, silly...

I have never got the impression that there was anything malicious
about their actions, just mis-guided and not so well thought out from
a presentational point of view.

>Will I be migrating away on a point of principle?.....Only if whatever deal
>I find is better *for me*

Couldn't have put it better.

I am currently on Lite and the fact that uploads and over night
downloads come off my total has always annoyed me. When the new regime
comes I will be moving to the lowest cost Premier option.
--
Andy Norman (E-Mail Removed)
http://www.norman.cx/
Replace the fish with my first name to reply

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:22:17 +0000, Andrew Norman <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>I am currently on Lite and the fact that uploads and over night
>downloads come off my total has always annoyed me. When the new regime
>comes I will be moving to the lowest cost Premier option.

I'm playing the cyncic here, but I am going to assume that a lot of
people take advantage of the 1am-8am "download what you like it wont
go toward your usage" thing. I wonder what the result of that will
be...

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:31:18 +0000, Richard Sobey <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:22:17 +0000, Andrew Norman <(E-Mail Removed)>
>wrote:
>
>>I am currently on Lite and the fact that uploads and over night
>>downloads come off my total has always annoyed me. When the new regime
>>comes I will be moving to the lowest cost Premier option.
>
>I'm playing the cyncic here, but I am going to assume that a lot of
>people take advantage of the 1am-8am "download what you like it wont
>go toward your usage" thing. I wonder what the result of that will
>be...

I had been wondering that too. I expect my usage to go up, I'll be
paying a couple of extra quid most months though as well.
--
Andy Norman (E-Mail Removed)
http://www.norman.cx/
Replace the fish with my first name to reply

Markus G. Kl?tzer <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> JC <johncalias-newsgroupsATyahooD0TcoD0Tuk> wrote:
>
>> And therein lies the problem...If I migrate from PN, will I be jumping out
>> of the frying pan into the fire??
>
>
> yes - at least for any other BT-based breadband access in the UK

To clarify, not LLU ISPs that don't use BTs network for data transfer.
For example, bulldog.
(though their coverage is very, very limited).

Even these ISPs will still have to pay something for network bandwidth,
but probably not as much as BT. (85p/GB)

Andrew Norman <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>> I'm playing the cyncic here, but I am going to assume that a lot of
>> people take advantage of the 1am-8am "download what you like it wont
>> go toward your usage" thing. I wonder what the result of that will
>> be...
>
> I had been wondering that too. I expect my usage to go up, I'll be
> paying a couple of extra quid most months though as well.
> --

I guess that is why they said 1am. You must be hardcore without a
dayjob to fill your pipe at 1am regulary without clocking up bw before
and after.

So I'd say we will be a while of that being a problem

cu

mgk
--
"Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go;
they merely determine where you start." -- Nido Qubein

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:46:49 +0000, Andrew Norman <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:31:18 +0000, Richard Sobey <(E-Mail Removed)>
>wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:22:17 +0000, Andrew Norman <(E-Mail Removed)>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>I am currently on Lite and the fact that uploads and over night
>>>downloads come off my total has always annoyed me. When the new regime
>>>comes I will be moving to the lowest cost Premier option.
>>
>>I'm playing the cyncic here, but I am going to assume that a lot of
>>people take advantage of the 1am-8am "download what you like it wont
>>go toward your usage" thing. I wonder what the result of that will
>>be...
>
>I had been wondering that too. I expect my usage to go up, I'll be
>paying a couple of extra quid most months though as well.

I was trying to point out that if a lot of people do this, you may hit
contention since this may effectively turn into a peak period for
Plusnet's heavier users. Therefore you may not be able to download
very much!

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 14:14:58 +0000, "Markus G. Klötzer"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Andrew Norman <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>> I'm playing the cyncic here, but I am going to assume that a lot of
>>> people take advantage of the 1am-8am "download what you like it wont
>>> go toward your usage" thing. I wonder what the result of that will
>>> be...
>>
>> I had been wondering that too. I expect my usage to go up, I'll be
>> paying a couple of extra quid most months though as well.
>> --
>
>I guess that is why they said 1am. You must be hardcore without a
>dayjob to fill your pipe at 1am regulary without clocking up bw before
>and after.
>
>So I'd say we will be a while of that being a problem

Except that at least one of the p2p apps has a handy plugin that lets
you choose how much bandwidth it uses at different times of the day...

I already use this to queue up things (Linux and MSDN ISOs mainly) for
download overnight on my non-Plusnet 512k line that doesn't count
overnight downloads.
--
Andy Norman (E-Mail Removed)
http://www.norman.cx/
Replace the fish with my first name to reply

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 14:14:58 +0000, "Markus G. Klötzer"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I guess that is why they said 1am. You must be hardcore without a
>dayjob to fill your pipe at 1am regulary without clocking up bw before
>and after.
>
>So I'd say we will be a while of that being a problem

I wouldn't.

Task Scheduler -> 01:00 -> Start usenet batch download or P2P app.

08:00 -> get out of bed and if the task hasn't already completed then
suspend it for the next night.

17:00 -> get back from work and add that days required leeching to the
task.

Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

Total user time required = 15 minutes a day or so.

I assume your definition of "hardcore" is someone with the brains to
do this - in which case you're probably right in that the average
Plusnet user probably doesn't have the brains to do this ;-)

The above was a joke (sort of) for those of you requiring a humour
transplant
--
John Naismith