Beware Of PlusNet Broadband

If you are looking for a new Broadband Provider or your first Broadband Provider and live in the UK then Beware Of PlusNet Broadband.

The wife and I have been with PlusNet Broadband since 28/08/2010 and have until now have found that they have a very high standard of customer service, then recently the Thomson Router that they provide started dropping signal (this is the second Router that we have had from them, as the first one  would not let the Laptop connect only and the Router had only been used for a few months), so a quick call to customer services and they suggested that we change the channel number of the Router, and all was fine until I upgraded the Laptop to Windows 8 Pro and the connection problems started again.

Then on Thursday we found out that we had gone over our monthly allowance of 60GB which is odd as we only use between 20-40GB a month.  I then contacted customer services about the problem as soon as I spotted it through their online messaging service while the wife phoned customer services who said that it sounded like we had our WiFi hacked and to change the Wireless encryption key which we did, we then got a reply from my complaint yesterday basically making out that it was our own fault for doing downloads during the day in stead of between Midnight and 8am when it's free and to set a limit on how much excess we want to pay.

So yesterday we made a trip to PC World and purchased the Netgear DGN 2200 ADSL 2+ Modem Router for £54.99 to replace the Thomson TG585 Modem Router that PlusNet provided and we thought that all was fine until I checked the usage this morning to find that we had apparently used 2% of our monthly allowance on Broadband Phone Calls which is impossible as we have not got Broadband Phone added to our Package, and used 1% of our allowance on Streaming which also is impossible as I've not even been on YouTube and neither has the wife.  So the wife contacted customer services online about it and was met with the response after sending saying that there is a 13 hour response time.


Our setup is a pretty modest one:

Netgear DGN2200 connected to the phone line  an 80GB HDD connected to the DGN2200's USB Port for the network Storage feature, Ethernet cable connected from Port 1 on the DGN2200 to a Power-line Ethernet Plug, Power-line Ethernet plug connected to port 1 on a Belkin 5 Port Ethernet Switch, Port 2 used for the Laptop or Netbook when using it at the Desk, a Humax Foxsat-HDR connected to Port 3 on the Belkin Switch, a SkyBox F3 FTA Satellite Receiver connected to Port 4 on the Belkin Switch and Port 5 unused. My Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S, wife's Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S and her Amazon Kindle all connected via WiFi along with the Netbook and Laptop, and it's mostly just the Laptop that is connected to the Internet most of the time and wife's Phone and Kindle connected when she needs Internet and my phone very rarely is connected via WiFi.

We're still waiting for a reply from PlusNet customer services, but I'll update when we do.

So in closing Beware Of PlusNet Broadband

Rant over

Roland