Sky to Plusnet Rant.

[Bob Williams]

I have been without internet since the afternoon of the 26th. Story:

Signed up to Plusnet on 12/10/17, as they asked for at least 10 days before Sky contracts end on the 26th. Sky stated in their last letter that they would not end my broadband service for 10 days after the 26th: in fact they shut it down on the afternoon of the 26th. Plusnet Bband began late on the 26th, but they had not sent me their Hub, which has their password, or my account details, which have the account password. Total ballzup!

I made a series of calls to PN, stating that I had no internet access because they had not sent the Hub, or the account details. I also stated that my village has no Mobile coverage; we can receive texts, but struggle to send and/or reply to them. I had given my email address, landline and mobile numbers when I signed up, so advised them to call my landline if they needed to contact me.

They texted me. To advise me to access their website or text them. ?

After another call to PN, they said the Hub had been despatched on the 27th. On the 28th, I had another text: “Good News! Your Hub has been despatched today!” I received it on the 30th, yesterday, set it up. It failed to work after umpteen attempts. I called them again and they tried to ‘talk me through the fixes’ Yeah, done that. Done that. And that. No lights, no net, its blue light must have emanated from a Norwegian Blue Parrot’s fundamental orifice.

They said they would send me another. Fine, I said, that will be over a week without internet, so they promised me some “Downtime Refund.” Then I told them I had a 3 yo TP-Link 9980 VDSL router, which I could install if I had the password. “It’s on the Hub.” “That is YOUR Hub!” I said through gritted teeth, “It will not work with another router!” – “Use your account password.”  “I. Do. Not. Have. My. Account. Details. Because    you    have    not   sent    them    to    me.” I said, slowly and clearly.

They gave me the password in a text, which I immediately changed  in the router’s webpage. Today I set up the 9980 and it works fine. So I will wind up with two horrible PN Sagem VDSL ‘Hubs’, one of which does not work and another which might. Or might not.

The 9980 stays, it is a good piece of kit: my son, daughter and grandson all have the same router. Slightly mollified by the fact that PN are giving me almost 3Mbps more download than Sky managed.

There are pieces of fingernail and possibly specks of blood, in my keyboard…. Gone for a lie down.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Drezha]

I know your pain. Today I ended up having to call Talk Talk again.

We had fibre installed at cadets not to long ago – getting 55 Mbps download and guaranteed minimum is 44 Mbps.

I’ve had a Pi monitoring it, just out of interest (as I’ve got it setup there as a file server), so as it was always on, it made sense.

Well, it was barely usable last night, so complaint day today! They’ve now got 14 days to fix it, before we move away from them. For free, as per their terms and conditions. They say that it has a “line fault” so we’ll see what they come up with.

 

This is the firm that thought they were supplying an address over 10 miles away from the actual supply address. ? (which is why we’re still with them and not someone else).

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Oo a proper pair of rants ?

Hope it gets solved.

[Bob Williams]

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

Oo a proper pair of rants Hope it gets solved.

Don’t do half-hearted moans, neither does Chris apparently! A neat monitoring diagram Chris, btw. ? I just carried out regular speedtests, which is how I noticed Sky losing 3 Mbps download. They gave all kinds of “explanations” at the time, none of which made sense. That’s when I first knew I was not going to renew my contracts. Today Sky sent me not one, but two kits of cardboard boxes to return the Q box, with two separate address labels and one humungous great big plastic bag. I was not happy with the boxes: there is an inner and outer box and the assembly is ludicrously insecure. So I used some packing tape and cardboard packing to secure it. LOTS of packing tape, actually. They will have a good time opening that… ?

The TP Link router is working fine, currently giving me around 15Mbps down and 0.60 up, from Plusnet. More than I had with them 3 years ago. Also, I have installed Freesat today and it’s working happily with the Sky dish and its new LNB. SWMBO is happily watching “Flogit” as I type this and has completely mastered the remote in about 10 minutes, which is a tribute to the very good EPG. The Humax 1100S HD-R appears to be upscaling non-HD to 1080i and the HD is true 1080p, which is fine for our degraded vision. Atm, we are very happy with it.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[tadka]

I went from Pusnet to Sky over a year ago. Now Plusnet wants me back and their offer is £3 cheaper than Sky but I’m staying with Sky. Upload is 20% faster than it was with Plusnet and connection is very stable. With Plusnet I had frequent connection drops.

[RSB]

I personally swear by plusnet. Never had an issue but I have come across instances including my were you actually have to call them and ask them to raise the upload speed to its full potential.

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Bob Williams]

Yes I had to do that when I was with them before. They throttle services, IMO as a result of being a BT puppet. (I can’t prove that) If a user complains, they throttle other users to improve your download. Sooner or later they come across someone who does not complain and it all settles down. Tip is not to comment if a neighbour complains about Plusnet!

MSE website is full of complaints like that, I never comment. But I came back to them for a reason, they were the 3rd ISP I had been with. Worst was Eclipse, they went from ADSL 2.5 Mbps to 0.50. Dial up speeds! Think they were taken over.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[The Duke]

TalkTalk say they never throttle. They probably do of you really take the pee, but I don’t know what that amount would be as we use above 700gb a month.

it’s probably more now. But since TT’s packages all went unlimited uploads, they removed their online usage meter that I use to use. Their rep said as they are unlimited across the board there is no need for it. I liked it, I was always checking to see if we hit the 1TB. The only time we ever did is when we was away, and it was something like 800 down and 500up. I asked the two elder lads what they had been upto, and they said “nothing”.

God knowns what they was upto. Our uploads are usually around 100 a month. I have no idea where the uploads come from.

[Bob Williams]

Ah, “Nothing, dad!”

The answer you get from your male offspring, who always forget that you have been a lad yourself. Best two answers from my lad:

*The night I was up watching telly after his mum had gone to bed, he must have been about 19. Hammered on the door, had to let him in. he was stood there in underpants, shirt and socks. No trousers. But he had been doing – “Nothing dad!” Turns out he was visiting an engaged lady whose fiancee came home unexpectedly: he had managed to get a 72 hour pass, he was 2 Para. I threatened to smack him myself for doing that to a fellow Cherry Beret, but could not stay mad for laughing. He eventually got his pants back and his wallet, from a mate living next door to the lass. I pointed out to him that it could have been a very different ending, probably in hospital.

*The night SWMBO and I came home early from a show, as it was krap. His bedroom light dimmer switch was on low. I opened the door carefully and it was obvious from the noises floating down the stairs, that he and his then GF were enjoying themselves. I rattled the door, there was a brief silence, followed by muttering and a scuffle. After about 15 minutes they came down “What have you been up to?”

“Nothing dad.” – as GF’s face turned beet red.

Something like the conversations between me and my dad over a similar situation, years ago. Nothing new under the sun…?

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Drezha]

Bob Williams wrote:

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

Oo a proper pair of rants Hope it gets solved.

Don’t do half-hearted moans, neither does Chris apparently! A neat monitoring diagram Chris, btw.

Nothing that fancy Bob! Just a graph knocked up in LibreOffice using data from a CSV file. The Speedtest results have been recorded with speedtest-cli which uses the same servers as the Speedtest website and records the output into the CSV file. All I did was set up a cron job to record it every 4 hours.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

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