Reply to post: Re: Crappy business models

Plusnet is doing us proud again with early Christmas present for customers: Price hikes

TonyJ

Re: Crappy business models

I was with Sky TV for years. I mean well over 20 - probably even closer to 30 - and going right back to their very early days of an analgue (big round) dish and seperate receiver and decoder.

I was a subscriber to their full package because the kids liked movies and I would try to watch the occasional F1 race or other sporting event.

But I was getting more and more frustrated at their drip-drip-drip price increases and when it crept up to almost £100 per month I had enough. To be fair, I'd had enough way before then but the ex wife and kids did make good use of the package.

When I called to cancel, they were quite willing to lob almost 50% off the montly price there and then.

But I'd made my mind up to leave, so I processed the cancellation and switched to Freesat. There was a bit (ok a lot) of moaning initially because in fairness to Sky their GUI has always tended to be both very slick and very intuitive whereas the GUI in the Linux based Enigma 2 variant boxes is anything but*

But...they got used to it. We still have the options to pause, rewind and record live TV as well as the very convenient series links. We don't miss anything premium as ultimately it tends to find its way to Netflix, Amazon etc and I'm a happy bunny.

With regards to ISP's - I was with Nildram initially when ADSL first arrived here. They were bought (I forget who by) and it tanked, so I moved to Sky when they first rolled out their ADSL product line. After them I tried Zen who, despite most people loving for their quality and service, were truly dreadful to me - I had sub dialup speeds, pings would disappear into the ether and it was totally, utterly, unusable for the time it was in and all they would do was say the problem must be at my end.

I switched to Be and they solved the issues from the get-go and were brilliant. Then FTTC arrived and the only provider was BT, so I went with them for a few years on a business contract.

Again, though, the drip-feed price increases began and by the time I left, between the phone line, the static IP's and the actual broadband, it was topping £75 a month!

Vodafone business fibre with double the number of static IP's, no line rental** and UK call centres who, on both occasions I've called them were brilliant, costs me £32.50 per month all in. And I can't recommend them enough.

* That was until I found Wooshbuild Infinity which does all of the difficult work for you - orders the channels properly for your region, adds decent skins (though I like the default, personally) and a whole load of other plugins and add-ons that are incredibly handy.

** Yes I know they effectively bundles the line rental and they just don't list it as a line item, but still.

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