Votes for the better of the two for speed, service and reliability, please!

 

I'm looking at either of these two suppliers for a broadband and phone package but continually hear bad reviews about both. Limited choice where I live and no fibre yet. Only BT wholesale and TalkTalk boxes in the local exchange.  Both are offering speeds of around 18Mbps although I suspect this is unrealistic - current supplier achieves 8Mbps.  

 

Email is important to me and I konw Plusnet offer pop3 email accounts with addresses in the form [email protected].  I can't find any info on the TalkTalk website - can someone enlighten me?

Been with Plusnet for 3yr now internet and phone no issues. They supply a crap router but at least they let you change it for your own if you want.

I don't use their email so can't comment.

 

Fibre not an option for me. They claim 14Mb where I am and I think we get about 12Mb.

 

Talk Talk, I know people that have tried them. I don't know anyone that has stayed with them. They seem shambolic.

100% plusnet over talktalk.

 

Talktalk offer poor performance and poor customer service levels.

My neighbours with TT and cant wait to move.

I'm with Plusnett and happy to stay!

PlusNet for me and happy with it.

Service is good if you need to contact them.

Discount on your monthly payment if you introduce people.

Very reliable with excellent up time.

Static IP for £5 if you need it.

Option to not have their router and save money.

Not heard may good things about TalkTalk, but all the bad things were a few years ago if that helps balance things out a bit.

Its weird your all saying Talk Talk is no good.. I am on Talk Talk and in my opinion its really good... 

 

That said though I am with Talk Talk Business which didn't cost alot more than the standard ADSL service. You also get a free static IP address too with Talk Talk which were a must when I moved from Sky.

 

 

Oh.. and no traffic shaping from Talk Talk.

I'm with John Lewis Phone and Broadband - which is Plusnet in a light disguise! - and am very happy. Customer service is first class. Plusnet is also a Which? Recommended Provider. No contest in my opinion.

Why do you think those are the only options?? There a hundreds of ISPs out there using BT infrastructure - even TT and Plusnet use BT infrastructure- after all, Plusnet IS BT.

 

Try looking here instead of settling for tat.  http://www.ispreview.co.uk/

As I've said before - if TT were the last provider in the world I would rather use 2 baked bean cans and a piece of wet string to make phone calls

I am with TalkTalk and have no complaints (touch wood). I started with Lineone who were taken over by Tiscali who were taken over by TalkTalk. I use a Netgear router not their free one. I also have my telephone with them.

NOT TALKTALK! Anyone but them!

I am currently with them and would cancel tomorrow, but for the fact they want £275 for me to cancel!

Utterly utterly useless with even worse customer service.

Not a sky customer?

As I've said before - if TT were the last provider in the world I would rather use 2 baked bean cans and a piece of wet string to make phone calls

 

Bad experience?? 

NOT TALKTALK! Anyone but them!

I am currently with them and would cancel tomorrow, but for the fact they want £275 for me to cancel!

Utterly utterly useless with even worse customer service.

 

What is your issue? Why do you want to leave?

I'm with John Lewis Phone and Broadband - which is Plusnet in a light disguise! - and am very happy. Customer service is first class. Plusnet is also a Which? Recommended Provider. No contest in my opinion.

 

John Lewis does phone and Broadband? Wow I bet you pay a premium for that! I bet your bills are no less than £50 a month  :p

Another long-standing TalkTalk customer here and never had a problem

I've just this week gone with PlusNet.

 

I did a ring round for prices, how they are on the phone for a sale gives a reasonable clue of the best quality of service you can hope to expect if you have a problem. I phoned TalkTalk and the guy barely spoke English, so I hung up on him. Sod going through that if I get a problem. 

Thanks for your comments everyone, makes interesting reading.   In the Tiscali days, I remember TalkTalk had a terrible reputation for service but there do seem to be a few more people sticking up for them now, However, seems the vote out of the two is for Plusnet.

 

I've been with a little Exeter based ISP, Eclipse, for 8 years now and can't fault their customer service - on the two occasions where I've had to call TechSupport I'm through in under a minute and talking to an English person with intelligence. However, service is capped at 50gig and I seem to be using most of that these days. BT also seem to be ramping up their line prices all the time, so whole package is now costing quite a bit. 

 

I'm a little out in the sticks, so suppliers like Tesco want to charge loads.  I discounted Sky as I'm just not comfortable going with a company where the Murdochs are the major shareholders.  TalkTalk and Plusnet seem to have good value offerings. Just need the reassurance that my choice will be the right one!!

If you check out my link you will discover there are more than a few ISPs that offer line rental/call packages, and charge significantly LESS for line rental than BT do; in contrast Plusnet charge MORE than the BT rate for line rental. If you make a lot of overseas calls you will find some have call charges that are cheaper than calling a UK number.

My old ISP Vispa charge 5ppm to call China - landline or mobile - and no crappy VOIP voice calls either!! However they seem to be selling out to TalkTalk (they made a botched attempt to transfer my line), and tech support has become shockingly bad over the last couple of years.

 

I havent paid BT a penny in about 8 years and am currently very happy using Aquiss 80Mb Unlimited Fibre

What is your issue? Why do you want to leave?

 

First I had rubbish ADSL that kept dropping out and scarely reached 2mb. I was assured that all my problems would be sorted with Fibre, so I went to Fibre Large, "up to" 76mb. I only get 35mb, wired directly to the modem, on a good day. Several calls to tech support, and engineers booked who didn't turn up, a "bright sparks" - their term - engineer turns up. Says using line analysis quite categorically that there is NO problems with the line, but I only have a 40mb profile and I was "clearly missold" the 76bm package as it looks, to him, as though the full 80mb profile hasn't been released by BT in my area.

 

A mate of mine, in a very small village 2 miles further from the exchange than me, gets the full 80mb from BT at all times. The engineer tells me that this is because BT skew the profiles so that their customers get more priority.

 

So for six months I've been paying for 76mb and getting, on average, about 20mb. They refuse to address the miss-selling issue and their only solution is to put me on Fibre Medium which would cut my upload speed from 10mb to 1.9mb. No thanks.

 

To put the cap on it all, last week I had multiple outages of my email accessed via imap and smtp. Webmail worked ok. Contacted them via Twitter, they asked me for my landline number and an alternative contact number, which I gave them. They replied to say that a customer callback had been booked for 10am the next day. So far so good.

 

At 10.30 the following day, get a text on my mobile (the alternative number I gave them) saying that TalkTalk had tried to contact me but I was not there. If I do not contact them within 5 days the call will be cancelled.

 

I contacted TT via Twitter again to ask WTF? and they said I needed to be at home to take the call!!! For starters why didn't they say that? Why should I have to take more time off work to discuss their useless service, and lastly why should I need to be at home to help them diagnose a problem with their email servers!!!

 

And on top of this, to be told that it'll cost me £275 to cancel a contract that they are in breach of - well that's just taking the mickey.

 

In three months, the cancellation fee will be £200, which is what Utility Warehouse will pay for new customers.

John Lewis does phone and Broadband? Wow I bet you pay a premium for that! I bet your bills are no less than £50 a month  :p

The charge for my service (which includes all phonecalls 24/7) is less than £30 normally...and I have "negotiated" a "loyal customer" discount off that. So, an excellent service at a reasonable cost.

And to GentleGiant's "Plusnet IS BT".....BT own them, yes, but they are run as a separate entity. For example, customer service calls go to Yorkshire, not India and customer service is so much better.

 For example, customer service calls go to Yorkshire, not India and customer service is so much better.

 

Still arguably a language barrier then......

Still arguably a language barrier then......

Do you know...I was going to say something very similar - but thought better of it!

I have had some experience with Plusnet - my parents signed up with them .

 

(We were both using identical NetGear DGN2000 routers).

 

My parents are on the same exchange as I am, and are about 200 meters closer - I know where the cables run as BT had to replace them all after a major snafu by British Gas about 7 years ago.

 

My knackered old 1960's phone line was giving me 5.5Mbps, and a replacement line upped that to 6.5Mbps - with my old ISP.

 

They had a brand new line fitted after major rebuilding work - and were getting 2.2Mbps - PN were claiming the exchange was over crowded, something the local OR engineer said was BS.

 

Their line stats were in EVERY WAY better than mine, so they should have been getting nearer 8Mbps.

 

BT then did a 21st Century upgrade to prepare for Fibre, I noticed an immediate improvement to 7Mbps down and my uploads improved from 250Kbps to 900Kbps.

 

My parents saw no improvement.

 

Please explain this as anything but PN line throttling.

There is no such thing as line throttling on PN. Trust me, I know. If your parents are having issues then you need to press PN for a resolution.

If all else fails, drop me a pm.