TalkTalk versus PlusNet phone & broadband

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Hi. Probably isn't geeky but could think where else to post (other than 'chat' where I've already posted but think probably traffic there is too fast!)

Any experiences of the above providers good or bad?

Have had PlusNet for many years and fibre optic broadband with them for over 18 months. I did have problems with broadband because of location but they were helpful in dealing with various issues very promptly and recommended I switched to fibre optic as coverage would be better. They were right and I've not had a problem since and I pay less than I was paying for ordinary broadband.

Thanks bico. that's very useful as hadn't heard of PlusNet until today and so was a bit sceptical as to whether they are any good. I'd love fibre optic but unfortunately isn't currently available in my area.

DD1 had Plusnet phone & broadband (not fibre optic) for a year or so & was very happy with them (then she moved back home so it wasn't her choice any more)

Which magazine are quite keen on Plusnet but not Talktalk (based on reader experiences)

We're coming to the end of our 12-month broadband contract (which was O2 but has been taken over by Sky) & we were considering Plusnet instead but DH is rather keen on the new BT Sport thing. I do hear negative things about BT customer service though which puts me off (Indian call centres mainly)

My aunt had Talktalk broadband a while ago. She lives in a remote area and her Internet connection stopped working, she spoke to Talktalk who admitted there was a problem and that was their fault. They were without Internet for around a fortnight, when they received the bill they had been charged for excessive usage during the period their Internet was down.

A similar thing happened to me with talkmobile, which I believe is run by the same people.

Plusnet are owned by BT, but are run as a separate company, I am with them and they have been very good. We only had one minor issue with the installation (new build house, so needed a proper install rather than just taking over from someone else) and when I called them they called me straight back, gave me full names & contact numbers, and even called back later as they said they would, once they'd spoken to the engineer. The engineer turned up on time, fixed the problem, and I got a follow up call the next day to check it was all still working ok. They'd also sent me emails explaining everything along the way but as I had no internet I didn't get them till it was fixed!
The online account management is simple to use, and the usage tracker seems fairly accurate too. I would happily recommend them (and even more so if they would do fibre round here...)

TalkTalk on the other hand I have never heard anyone have a good word for, and I think I would probably go to great lengths to avoid being with them.

Thanks ponders. Wow i must be the only person that hadn't heard of PlusNet! I'm currently with BT and my experience of customer service is "frustrating"! It varies whether I've got through to an Indian call centre or UK-based but regardless it does seem that one bit doesn't talk to another. Ironically I've learned that BT owns PlusNet so if I switch I can only hope that that frustration doesn't follow me!

Been with PlusNet a couple of years now, have fibre package. I forgot to buy via quidco, not sure if they still do offers via that but do look as you could get quite a bit of cashback.

Have called their support a couple of times, can't remember why now but I do remember that they were nice and friendly and resolved things quickly, remembering now time it was some new package deal they had available, just a quick call and they switched my plan to the new package, which worked out cheaper than my old plan!
Have phone with them as well as broadband, no problems there. I like the online portal thing for looking at bills and data transfer amount used.

I must make my cuppa quicker lol!

MrsGSR yes I keep coming across bad reviews for TalkTalk. Suppose I was curious to see if anyone had any positive experience.

Easy lovely recommendation.

Thank you both. It does seem that in only a few minutes there is a clear winner. Think that decides it though I'll sleep on it before going ahead and ordering.

So if anyone wishes to come to TalkTalk's defence...

Ah another rather satisfied PlusNet customer . Thanks cindy. I'm kicking myself why I hadn't come across them before. Fingers tightly crossed that they don't morph into main company-BT.

I'm with TalkTalk after being a happy & loyal customer of Bethere for over 6 years. Bethere had a similar reputation to PlusNet for having great customer service.

My DW made us switch to Talktalk as it's the only company who offers free international calls to her home country so she can natter to her mother.

We've been customers now for over a year and I'm trying to be fair here. By and large the service has been good. I like their website where I can monitor my bill. Change options and their kidsafe option might be a good idea for some people (a can of worms for others but I digress).

Recently though we had a major outage and I had to tangle with their technical support department. Now bear in mind that I work within IT for one of the largest IT firms in the country as a networking/firewall specialist....The experience was painful.

The staff were ever so friendly but had to stick to a script. They were resetting my profile when I knew it wouldn't fix it and refused to do it when I asked them to. Constant requests to reboot my computer when I knew it wouldn't help.

In the end you resort to lying and I'm not ashamed to admit I lost my temper and shouted "Look...i bloody do this for a living and what you are telling me is plain wrong. So stop wasting my time!!!!"

Now I set call centres up so I understand the entire logic behind this. I can see why they've done certain things and the use of text messages where you can reply 'fixed' or 'not fixed'.

It makes sense for the business. But as a customer it's frankly...fucking annoying!

It took about four days to get a TalkTalk engineer out who claimed he'd fixed the problem by yanking a wire out. It lasted an hour before my broadband went again. Another week before the BT Openreach engineer came who did manage to stablise my line but in the process killed my landline.

In the end I gave up and rewired the bloody thing myself to fix my landline.

So if you are still reading. TalkTalk are cheap, when it works (and that's most of the time) it's great. But when things go wrong be prepared for them to take forever to fix it and a very painful experience.

Haven't used either but looked into plusnet when we moved house, having had horrendous experiences with BT. The one thing that put me right off about plusnet is that they're owned by BT and I didn't want a single penny of my money to go to them!!

we've been with TalkTalk for 3 years now and are pretty satisfied. In fact, they even phoned me a few weeks ago a knocked a fiver of the bill for 3 months if we agreed to take one of their YouView boxes.
Speed is pretty good, and we take advantage of the overseas/mobile 'boosts', so our bill is never more than £35ish a month (for phone/broadband). not had any of the problems others have described so can't comment on the Tech support.
As someone commented, they do contact you quite often (IME every 2-3 months), but haven't been rude when i've told them i'm not interested. TBH, i usually hear them out as on several occasions they have reduced out bill by a few pounds.

Thanks peeps for all your stories/insights/experience. I've gone with PlusNet . Signora I know what you mean about money going to bt but as long as I get better service from the PlusNet arm I'll be able to live with it .

Oh meant to say you had me in stitches niceguy. Your experience is exactly what I don't want since although handy with a screwdriver I don't fancy playing phone engineer any time soon

I've used Plus.Net off and on for 10 years (off when I moved and had no landline for a while, but was using Three mobile via a USB modem). I've used ADSL since 2001, and have used other ISPs such as Eclipse, Freeserve, UKFSN, but in parallel with Plus.Net (tried the others as a backup since I use the internet for work all the time, and if one connection went down, I wanted a reserve.

I use Primus for line rental (they have just dropped rental to 5.99/month, for the most basic {no 'included' calls, which suits me as I use my mobile to call mobiles, and use 1899.com for calling USA {1p /min} and for calls to UK landlines 01/ 02 numbers are 5p per call, 0p /min... works fine whether 5 minute call or much much longer... was on a call to a client for 2 hours {call would have been longer by the cordless phone battery died... time for some new cordless phones!}). Obviously no included calls isn't what everyone wants, but it is quite a bit cheaper than any of the others (which 'include' the off-peak calls and charge a minimum of around 13 quid, unless you pay a year up front to get a discount rate... which is still more than Primus...

Very happy with Plus.Net, and saw they are expanding with a second call centre in Leeds (HQ is Sheffield). Doesn't bother me they are owned by BT as they have completely independent staff and management (and pricing / service). They now also have 0800 (from landline) and 0345 (included in most mobile call packages) numbers and they're open 24x7 including most bank holidays (not that I've needed them very often, have mostly rung to check on new accounts and why fibre in my area is only likely to give me 33-35 Mbps not 70-75 Mbps (!)

See MoneySavingExpert.com to also see their comments on Primus and Plus.Net (they had a few complaints about Primus earlier this year, but I've been with them for 2 years and have to say I am happy with them).

TalkTalk had (until this year) been at the top of Ofcom's complaints for around 5 years. Plus.Net on the other hand was recommended by Which? in both 2011 and 2012 (think they do their survey near end of year, so a few months to go for 2013 results). PN has won other customer service awards and aims to be open and honest (though they don't always act in the best interests of customers - for example, they brought in the new 'unlimited' accounts in December, but didn't tell customers on the old, expensive {25/month} unlimited accounts that the new account was only 9.99/month. It would have been good PR to have sent those customers an e-mail direct, or dropped the price, rather than assume they will find out via a 'blog post' on the Plus.Net site.

I feel sorry for some of their front line staff such as the support people who go on forums like ThinBroadband.com and have to 'defend' the policies {probably been told by the accountants not to inform customers about how price changes could save them money}... those front-line staff take the flak from people like me when they aren't being as "open and honest" about ways to save customers some cash, but don't actually say they've been ordered to do things that way by MD or accountants... just say that a decision was taken...

Um... niceguy2's experience is similar to that of one of my clients in Chester. He swapped to TalkTalk (probably his sister-in-law suggested it to his wife, because they chat for hours to each other)... recently his broadband went down. TalkTalk came to sort things out but managed to disconnect the wiring to his 'office' (one of the bedrooms, where his desktop PC is connected to the router with an ethernet cable).

It meant that for a week or so (until they got someone back to sort it out) the TalkTalk router had to be connected on another phone socket and he had to check his business e-mails using a laptop belonging to his wife or his son... his 'office' was useless with no internet or working phone.

EFNO - re Plus.Net doing fibre in your area - it's down to Openreach - which has a 'when and where' page on *> their 'superfast' site

I live rurally and am very limited as to who we can have for broadband, our choices are BT, PlusNet or TalkTalk. We were with BT and their 'award winning' my arse homehub. We had constant problems with the connection dropping out and they were expensive. We decided to move to PlusNet (and I must admit a £70 cashback offer from TopCashBack helped persuade me), the connection has been much, much better than it was with BT (which just goes to prove, in my mind, that it was the hub that was mainly to blame for our unstable broadband) and I pay less than half the price I was paying for more, I am now on unlimited broadband and free anytime calls whereas I was limited and only had weekend calls.

To be fair, if you can use BT or Plus.Net then there are probably a dozen or more other ISPs which could supply (ones which rent from Openreach, rather than those like Sky, TalkTalk, etc, which have their own dedicated equipment at the exchange). Plus.Net is definitely one of the cheaper options though :)

Glad you got a cashback deal - better the cash reaches you than some of the (fairly limited) "comparison sites" (which generally compare those which will pay a commission for anyone that visits /signs up via the 'switch' website).

Where could I find that info?

NetworkGuy, I've had the basic Primus phone package for the last year but I'm planning to move to Plusnet for both phone & broadband this month (our broadband was with O2 but Sky have taken it over).

Like you we make landline calls from mobile & use 18185 for international calls & 0845/0870, but I discovered recently that Primus have a 13p connection charge & charge 8p a minute for calls to 0844 & 0871 (can't use 18185 for those) so a single 5-minute call costs over 50p!!! I don't know yet how much Plusnet charge for those - it could be the same - but I've found Primus's customer service a bit lacking so I'm happy to have a change

O2 have a good bolt-on for international calls too - for £10 a month I get 3000 minutes, to up to 3 designated numbers (including calls to mobiles in US & Canada), plus a "local" number someone there can use to ring my mobile

I keep forgetting to use saynoto0870 mind you...

NetworkGuy - I've just checked our postcode again, and we're between two exchanges, one which says 'coming soon', and one 'no chance'. It'd make sense for us to be included in the 'coming soon', as this is a decent sized new estate of largish houses, with no cable. I'd expect there to be a massive takeup. All of which suggests we'll most likely be in the 'no chance' area...

hellhasnofurylikeahungrywoman - I assume you mean a list of alternative ISPs ? Unfortunately there must be 100 to 200 ISPs in total (based on looking at the lists on www.ISPreview.co.uk or searching www.ThinkBroadband.com for an ISP) so finding the ones using Openreach may not be that easy.

In most cases it comes down to entering your postcode or phone number to see (for each ISP) what they can offer / whether they can offer a service on your line.

Ponders - the 08 numbers you mentioned are charged high by all firms. You mention saynoto0870 but that's the now a bit out of date...

A bit of history... back in the mid-90s BT introduced 0345 (local rate) and 0990 (national rate) numbers. Mercury (Cable and Wireless) offered 0645 and 0541 as their versions.

Later on Ofcom had the 'Big Number' change to streamline all numbering, and brought about the use of 08xx numbers, hence 0845 and 0870. SayNoTo0870 came about because of the "Revenue Share" (passing part of the cost of the calls to the recipient business, leading to suspicion that firms deliberately kept customers 'queued' as it generated cash (fraction of a penny per minute for 0845, and around 1.25p/min for 0870, I think).

Ofcom recently (3+ ?) years removed the ability for "Revenue Share" on 0845 and 0870 (which is why you have found 0844 and 0871 which can be charged at higher amounts and can pass on income).