ISP Plusnet to Replace Pre-Paid Line Rental Saver Discount UPDATE

Customers of UK ISP Plusnet may be interested to know that the provider has announced that they’ve removed the option of their annual Line Rental Saver (LRS) discount (i.e. pay for 12 months in advance to save money) from their acquisition journey for new home broadband services.

Not so long ago pre-paid LRS discounts were still quite common among the main fixed line broadband ISPs and often strongly promoted, although over the past few years a number of providers (e.g. Sky Broadband) have withdrawn these or reduced their level of visibility, which is due to various changes within the market.

The rising focus on “full fibre” (FTTP) services (i.e. where separate line rental charges are irrelevant), as well as the advent of “naked” standalone copper broadband products (e.g. SOGEA) and the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) decision in 2016 (here), which forced ISPs into combining the cost of line rental and broadband on their packages, has made LRS less relevant.

Despite this some providers, such as BT and their sibling Plusnet, do still offer LRS and it continues to deliver a moderate cost saving (usually equivalent to a reduction of around 10% off the monthly line rental price, albeit paid annually). At least that was the case until this week, when Plusnet began calling on comparison sites to remove any mention of it.

A Plusnet Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We’re always looking at new ways to give our customers the best value possible, so we’ve replaced Line Rental Saver with more flexible and competitive offers. This means we can change our offers to suit our customer’s needs but always with the same great value.”

We did check earlier today and Plusnet’s own website still mentions LRS and it’s still promoted to existing customers via their online account pages, although by the sound of it this may not last. In terms of the aforementioned “more flexible and competitive offers,” we couldn’t see anything too different on their website from what they’ve previously been promoting.. yet.

No doubt existing customers will be looking to test this commitment to offering the “same great value” in the future, particularly in light of the financial impact on consumers from COVID-19 and future job losses etc.

UPDATE 22nd April 2020

Plusnet have confirmed that LRS is currently still available for their existing customers, which means that the change is currently only focused upon new subscribers.