Hi there,
I recently moved to SSE for phone and Fibre Broadband, being an existing customer for their Gas and Electricity. The deal is supposed to be 24 months at 1/2 price for the Fibre, but you do need to read the small print as there's all sorts of getchas. The service went live on 11 August. I had previously been with PlusNet on their basic Fibre (Essentials I think), but the service had been gradually deteriorating since earlier this year, and I had started to get multiple disconnects per day, sometimes reconnecting automatically, but mostly not and PlusNet insisted that there was no problem. At one point they insisted that I carry out a lengthy sequence of speed tests, but the fault was nothing to do with speed issues, it was the constant disconnections which I was trying to resolve. At this point I decided it was probably a good time to move to another provider.
I received a comprehensive information pack when I first contacted SSE, and subsequently received written notification of when the service was to go live, and the standard warning that if I was not at home when the engineer called to activate my service, I would face a bill of £108, which was a load of rubbish as I already had a Fibre service active at my home. Anyway, I waited in all day on activation day, and yes, you guessed it no engineer called which really p*ssed me off, so I got on the phone to them and negotiated a compensation type payment, which they assured me would be applied to my account. At the present time I can't say whether this has happened or will happen, as their billing system appears to be similar to the energy bills which is on a 3 monthly basis. Mine is due during October I think. Just remembered, a couple of days after my line was activated, I got 3 further letters dated 3, 4 and 5 August reminding me about the potential fee of £108 if I was not at home when the non existant Openreach engineer came to activate my service - at this point I could do nothing but laugh about it
As for their Fibre service, I don't think I have anything to complain about, as I am now seeing sync and throughput speeds, slightly better than when I first went on Fibre with PlusNet. The first week or so was without Interleaving being applied - I had never had that while with PlusNet - but has now settled down quite nicely as far as I can see. If you are interested (or anyone else is) please take a look at mydslwebstats where you can find my line
stats under user 'toulouse'.
Good luck
toulouse