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| Tiscali or PlusNet? |
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| message from Cap'n on 27 Jun 2005 |
I would favour PlusNet, but my live-in landlord has seen a Tiscali ad
(1mb for £14.99). Can anyone supply any ammunition?
Thanks.
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| Dicki Dido replied to Cap'n on 27 Jun 2005 |
A friend of mine who was a customer of Tiscali had problems with the
occasional dropped line, but was more concerned with the very poor customer
service.When phoning he was often left waiting listening to music for
twenty minutes at a time.Plusnet have great customer service and he is now
very pleased he changed
I have been with Plusnet for eighteen months price has gone down -always
one of the cheapest,and there is no limit to downloads.I used to be with
freeserve but left owing to poor service.Plusnet have excellent customer
relations,having rung them twice and the call was answered within a couple
of minutes,and problem was sorted virtually straight away.No
problems with disconnections and dropping lines,very reliable and
extremely helpful
The Which report stated the following and I quote"The Plusnet package is a
BestBuy with a good download speed which have been really consistent over
the last quarter.Plusnet stood out in our satisfaction survey, performing
well in almost all areas, from ease of use to connection speed and customer
and technical support.""
Plusnnet won best consumer ISP in 2004
If you choose to sign up with Plusnet,please use my ID- beechville96 as a
referrer and save me a few pence
Thanks, Keith
"Cap'n" <captain.black@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:x9adnS2r4uVW013fRVnyrQ@brightview.com...
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| David Bradley replied to Dicki Dido on 27 Jun 2005 |
Everything I write is original and in my own words but on reading the message
above makes me believe that this is at least the forth ocassion that the same
[well almost] indentical paragraphs have appeared in thiis Newgroup. We seem
to have some script kiddies [from PlusNet ?] lurking here whos sole aim is to
earn "a few pence" rather than being objective about the service they are
getting. Everything said about PlusNet could equally apply to any number of
ISPs out there except their service is what it says on the tin. For that
reason you will pay a few pounds more than the magical sub £14.99 that seems
to blind so many that they can't see the error of their ways.
David Bradley
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| Peter M replied to David Bradley on 28 Jun 2005 |
It might be the fourth time "Dicki Dido" has posted the same text, but if
the Which? quote is incorrect someone would point it out. It isn't as if
this is a posting unrelated to the query, even if the same text has been
put out more than once.
Hang on a second... from time to time there are posts about Bulldog, but I
don't see you giving Sunil criticism for mentioning his bdol a/c number.
I can see why, when someone like "Dicki Dido" posts the same or similar text,
several times in a short period, it'll annoy. Making the further suggestion
that it clouds judgement *may* be true, but may equally just be viewed as you
being 'dismissive' about any views held when something is recommended by a
user who happens to have any link with the provider...
So, are you saying someone will stay with an awful service, because they have
saved the odd 50p here and there, and further, that they'd always gloss over
problems ? Seems to be a pretty strong criticism, to me, if you're suggesting
someone could be willing to lie about a service solely for a small saving. No
doubt there'll be times when someone posts incorrect information by mistake,
or something that had been reliable changes in a matter of weeks or days to
being rotten, but to imply that positive posts are not based on the service
they use is a notion I won't accept 'lying down' :-)
While you asked about a week ago 'for balance' about those who have left
Plus.Net to post, it seems like only one (from an ISDN account) actually
stepped up and posted. So clearly the newsgroup gets used by a number of
regulars, some of whom happen to use Plus.Net, or Demon, or some other ISP,
but the times one sees others is only briefly, when they want a few comments
on hardware or services, and disappear off again for months, (the way many
newsgroups get used... useful for info, forget it the rest of the year!)
So what, specifically, about Plus.Net do you consider to be a lie ?
LOL. Some time back you suggested a load of ISPs would be on your 'do not
touch' list, but I've yet to see anything concrete about Plus.Net which is
going to suggest you have good reason to dislike their service... I would
never claim theirs is the best, it suffers problems like many, if not all,
ISPs do. They seem to have a higher (or is it more 'open') maintenance
schedule, with mail a few times a week about some item having work done,
compared with, for example, Claranet, and I remember very few announced
maintenance tasks when I used Freeserve ADSL (for some 20+ months). But
the 14.99 Broadband Plus account is not 'for everyone' (which is where
their 21.99 account comes in)... Plus.Net has had quite a lot of critics
(myself among them) for not making the decision to tell all those who are
on accounts costing 29.99 and 39.99 a month that they could switch to the
21.99 account. Put simply, though, for 2000 kbps, 21.99 (or 14.99) is a
very difficult price to beat, and understandably, if Plus.Net don't put
cash into advertising, but use personal recommendation as their way of
getting customers, you *will* see the odd post that you detest. I bet
if "Call 18866" or "1899" did something similar, you'd see posts about
them in uk.telecom (some people still post with their 'just-dial.com'
access numbers for international calls [the individual gets some small
portion, about 1p/minute I think] but for Plus.Net, "Dicki Dido" is just
the latest poster who has come to annoy... some while back there was
the infamous 'broadband.plus.com' userbut s/he has faded away :-)
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| David Bradley replied to Peter M on 28 Jun 2005 |
Accepted.
Hmm, the sigingficance of that statement was not realised.
Unless you have duplicity of ISP accounts, or responsible for a number of
teleworkers using different providers, you have no benchmark to judge by. What
might have happened historically with another providor might not be true
today.
Dell boy's famous statement "You know it makes sense" seems to apply here.
I now accept that I was probably in the wrong club [Newsgroup] for posting
such a message; rather like expecting a deep conversation about football while
at Wimbledon this week.
Bit strong the use of the word lie here; it is just the way that Plusnet
manage the service to the end user that consistency is SO variable and that
the goal posts for acceptable use move so frequently.
Time is of the essence here but I will draw upon my experieciencies with users
with PlusNet that I support. If there problems are unrepresented by the
general mass, that is the way the cookie falls.
I would
Read and sort of understood from it that PlusNet is neither a good or bad ISP
and can only be considered as the best because of their pricing structure for
those savy enough to be on the right tarriff.
David Bradley
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| Phil Thompson replied to David Bradley on 28 Jun 2005 |
but of course, its an advertising campaign
"please use my ID- botchville69"
Phil
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| Cap'n replied to Dicki Dido on 27 Jun 2005 |
Aha! A 'Which' quote...that'll get him!
Thanks.
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| wooosh replied to Cap'n on 27 Jun 2005 |
Yes,
Plusnet 2MB for £14.99
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| "David G. Bell" replied to Cap'n on 28 Jun 2005 |
On Tuesday, in article
Sorry, that's Tiscali. 1MB service with a couple of GB included in the
GBP 14.99, then so much per GB.
Maybe calling it "capped" is a little misleading, but I can't think of
many reasons to choose it in preference to other services. Maybe OK for
somebody who is away from home a lot?
No, I can't see that particular deal making sense. Except as a
marketing ploy to give something spectacular in the advert.
Other people will tell you why you shouldn't deal with that company, but
that's a slightly different thing. On this 1MB deal, their own adverts
and info are enough.
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| "David G. Bell" replied to Cap'n on 27 Jun 2005 |
On Monday, in article
That's a tightly-capped service, though if I remember right they charge
extra for each GB over the cap, rather than cutting you off.
Not a good deal.
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| Peter M replied to "David G. Bell" on 28 Jun 2005 |
Which is a tightly-capped service ? From Plus.Net there are two accounts
at 14.99. One is their PAYG account with a 1 GB quota, AFAICR. They now
(well, since April) also offer Broadband Plus, which is intended for mail
and browsing, primarily, with traffic shaping to reduce priority of those
types of traffic which are associated with downloading from binary NGs or
peer-to-peer applications. I've no idea quite how effective this is when
someone tries to download the odd MP3 from a newsgroup (ie around 5-10 MB
rather than a DVD - no DVD player here to know have been interested in it
anyway :-) but someone has suggested it runs at about 20% of their normal
download speed for other traffic... No actual quota and per GB charges to
consider for that one, for sure. So it depends on what "Cap'n" wants...
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| Tony replied to "David G. Bell" on 28 Jun 2005 |
Tiscali are not into 'Good Deals' just now.
They haven't got a viable 1MB package on offer at the moment, let alone a
good 2MB deal! (That's just a pipe dream) all their packages have a tight
cap. They have dumped the only package that was a reasonable one (1MB 30GB
cap) in favour of a 15GB cap, and furthermore they wrote to everyone earlier
in the year promising a 1MB upgrade, which turned out to be capped.
Their customer support is crap, and you get routed to someone in some far
flung part of the world, who can't speak proper English, and they are
usually about as much use as a chocolate fireguard when it comes to helping
you with technical support.
I wish they would bring their service up to date!
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| Graham replied to Cap'n on 27 Jun 2005 |
Both Tiscali's news servers have been down since the early hours of the
21/6/05 to about 1700 this evening. Even when they are working they are
total crap.
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| Cap'n replied to Graham on 27 Jun 2005 |
Hmmm...news servers.. Do PlusNet carry newsgroups?
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| Graham replied to Cap'n on 27 Jun 2005 |
Yes.
They did have their fair share of problems a while back, but I understand
they perform very well at present.
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| Old Codger replied to Graham on 27 Jun 2005 |
Except yesterday when I could not get any new posts after around 0600. OK
again today and seem to have collected all yesterday's posts.
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| Cap'n replied to Old Codger on 28 Jun 2005 |
Thanks to all for the fedback. Off to state my case...!
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| Steve replied to Cap'n on 27 Jun 2005 |
Nice to see that someone has a sense of humour : )
Judging by recent comments in the group, I think the answer is obvious !
I thought your post was actually taking the p*ss!
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| Cap'n replied to Steve on 27 Jun 2005 |
No piss take! :-)
It'd be easier to be able to give him a few examples, rather than have
him search this newgroup - which I'm not sure I could convince him to do!
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| Peter M replied to Phil Thompson on 28 Jun 2005 |
I had not noticed before that May wasn't included. One thing to remember
is that while Metronet looks to be a good choice, there's the lump sum to
find for the activation fee... and for 1000 or 2000 kbps, unless use can
be guaranteed to be limited, monthly fees of 26.75 or 38.75 might deter a
potential customer... However, for the original poster - get a router to
use for the connection - it will make life so much better than relying on
a USB unit (and assuming you two will be sharing, will make good sense!)
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| Phil Thompson replied to Peter M on 28 Jun 2005 |
no, me neither. They're trying to back off the speedtest league as
there are a lot more people on higher pseeds but not enough testing to
make the results reliable. Also speed is but one factor in choosing.
I threw it in to provide a sample set of data on user opinions more
than as any form of recommendation. Given the thread title :-)
Phil
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| Peter M replied to Phil Thompson on 28 Jun 2005 |
Understood. I have used it and can recommend it, but only for certain types
of user, and if higher speed might become an issue (eg with the new BBC media
player coming in the autumn) then it's only fair to compare the 35+ figure for
2000 kbps on Metronet, with less, for some of the other ISPs. Peter M.
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