Our internet connection is playing up. The upstream connection has been stuck at 288kbps since monday. Not the end of the world in itself, I go through the documented troubleshooting procedure, which revolves around a BT speed test tool. The BT test tool demands extra tests, after reconnecting at bt_test_user, at which point the test tool has a DNS failure. Fail 1.

I raise a support ticket on the Plus.Net website. When I click 'submit' I am redirected to a page requesting old credit card number are updated. Support ticket is not submitted. Fail 2.

Entering new credit card details fails repeatedly claiming the card number doesn't match the card type. I retry repeatedly, checking the numbers and card type carefully. No Joy. Fail 3.

There is no option to remove the old card numbers, despite payment being by direct debit (which is up to date). Fail 4.

I phone their tech-support line, and to be fair on plus.net the guy at the over end of the phone is very helpful and submits a ticket and attempts to remove the invalid cards.

I get a text message telling me the ticket has been updated, but the message is to big to send by text message. I brave the somewaht slowed website to read the message, which asks us to connect the modem directly to the Master Test Socket, and I attempt to reply that we have the older design master socket that doesn't have a test socket, and that the modem is already plugged into the test socket, return to Fail 2.

It's almost like they want to lose customers to Virgin/NTL cable.

I used to recommend plus.net on the strength of their telephone support after bad experiences buying direct from BT (formerly the nationalised entity British Telecom, now privatised, incompetent and main purveyor of wholesale ASDL in the uk.) When I was with plus.net in Leeds we had endless trouble with the ancient copper 'last mile', as every fault report got passed on to BT, who passed it back insisting it was plus.net's fault and round and round again until we got fed up and went with NTL. For the record, the essence of that fault report was "we lose our ASDL internet connection every time the wind gusts above a stiff breeze, and there is an audible crackling noise on the phone line. If it's ecxeptionally windy phone calls are sometimes interrupted. The same thing happens to everyone else on the street who has a suspened phone cable, the newer houses at the end of the street with an underground cable don't seem to be affected," If that isn't a sign of damage to the copper cable suspended between the house and telegraph pole, I don't know what is.

BT bought Plus.net in 2007, and have been serving even more Epic Fail than before the sale. Entertainingly I still get spam from an email forward set up on an account that hasn't existed for several years.

I continue to reccommend Virgin/NTL as their cable infrastructure actually works. Their less than competent billing system and support staff is less of an issue as they either forget to charge you, or the phone support staff get confused and send an engineer.