I've been with Plusnet now for about 18 months. When I originally joined them, my house was on a Market 2 exchange which qualified for its discount rates. When I was moving home to where I am now, they gave me a decent offer to help me move my then ADSL package with them to a Market 1 exchange for the same price as I would be charged on a Market 2/3 exchange for 18 months. The downside is that it would only be ADSL1 only, so speed was limited to around 6.5Mb down & 0.4Mb up (compared to ADSL2+ 17Mb down & 1Mb up). But I could live with that.
During the summer Plusnet gave me notice of an increase in the line rental price and the 30-day notice to leave my contract without penalty kicked in (not forgoing I still had around 6 months left of my line rental saver, but I was trying to play for offers here) - I phoned them up a couple of weeks later asking for my MAC code and got put straight through to its retentions. When I mentioned that TalkTalk was available now on my exchange (compared to when I moved house) they were prepared to match on cost for TT's Simply Broadband package, but I said that while TalkTalk could do ADSL2+, Plusnet couldn't as they were delivered over the 20CN from my local exchange, and I was looking for better upload speeds from what I currently have. However FTTC was available to me and they made an offer to match that for 18 months which I took. What I have now is actually better than TalkTalk, as the upload speed is better (TT limit you to 2Mb upload unless you're on their premium FTTC package) at around 9Mb, with download around 30-32Mb & no data limit. Also as long as I remain on Plusnet with line rental saver I'll get evening & weekend calls included still, which TT don't offer at the same price base. Once I pay the next line rental saver due in the spring, that should last until my FTTC contract with Plusnet runs out conveniently enough in early 2016 and so I'll be able to play my cards again then. But so far Plusnet have done me some very good deals without a huge amount of prompting. With the FTTC service I've also got a static IP set up with them now (£5 one-off fee). Customer support with them has been generally good, though I've had a couple of bottlenecks with orders in the past with them they have been sorted out. So would I recommend Plusnet? I'd say they are certainly worth considering, especially if you're not on a Market 1 exchange.
Prior to Plusnet, I was with Sky BB for a year. Again in terms of service I had no problems with them, but I'm pretty sure at the end by the time I got them to subsidise a new phone line into my place, took advantage of a 12 months half-price offer & got a significant amount of cashback from them via Quidco, I'd say in the end I cost them money.
As for BT, I can't think of any good reason to be stuck with them unless you are on an exchange with no LLU provider, or you want to take the BT TV package, or you want BT Sport included to watch via Sky. If you're stuck on a non-LLU exchange, arguably the Post Office have the best value package available for phone & ADSL broadband.
