It seems that for the 3rd week running, Plusnet have ‘forgotten’ to connect us to the internet. A process which takes 5 to 7 working days apparently.
Can anyone reccomend me an isp that gets its finger out and connects you quickly? Am tired of trying to run a business on the 3 inch screen of my phone! Don’t need epic amounts of download, prob less than 20gb would do.
Any reccomendations? Cheers

http://www.zen.co.uk/

Not the cheapest by a long shot, but if you want good customer service and a connection that is rock solid then they are the boys to go with.

Sorry, but getting you connected to the internet shouldn’t take longer than 2 weeks. I’ve signed up with Sky last friday and it should go live next monday (10 days).
The key thing here is exchange capacity. If you live in a densely populated area, then the exchange will potentially have minimal spare capacity, meaning exchange upgrade required which can take some time.
If you e-mail me your address details and phone number I’ll have a look and see whats available to you…..

Ah, plusnet, the little company from Yorkshire that everyone raves about…

…which is owned by BT (who everyone hates).

Cheers BigYinn, ygm…

Will check out zen. You would think that plusnets connection time would be shorter if they are owned by BT, not longer! Dunno about being raved about, most of the feedback I’ve seen on Plusnet has been despairing!

try O2, good prices and pretty good customer support (plus a more reliable and faster connection than anyone else can give me in my area)

G

+1 Zen

Have been with them for about 2yrs now. If you have an issue (which is unlikely anyway), you get to speak to a polite/professional/proper English-speaking person in England. They know what they’re talking about and even go beyond the remit of their “cover.” They also call you back too.

Another recommendation for Zen from me – excellent customer service and support, but they are more expensive than most.

+1 for 02 here. Just waiting for their FTTC offering.

I’m on BT, but that’s because I’m on the older adsl network, not adsl2. I’ve had 2 months of talking to India about th connection dropping to 128k. Last night after about 5mins they asked what I had called about!!! Their customer service is utter garbage.
Had o2 at old house, spot on

zen for me as well.

Zen here to, not cheap but best service IME

+1 for Zen.

Been with them now since 2004.

Not the cheapest, but customer service is the best that I’ve experienced.

was with zen previously on a standard package with rolling monthly contract – very good. I think it was about £15 a month.

Currently on namesco broadband, 50GB limit on one of their more expensive services is £35 a month. Expensive but worth every penny – I work from home a couple of days a week and have to have home access 24/7 regardless. We live in a rural area so paying more for a better contention ratio means that I don’t get hammered during peak hours. Their customer support has been excellent and connection was really fast (was with the evil that is sky ‘connect’ broadband – they decided to throttle all ssh connections to about 2kbps thus making it unusable).

I have been with Plusnet for about 8 years including two house moves.

I had a performance problem in my first property which was traced to a damaged cable external to the property and resolved pretty quickly.

Overall I am a satisfied customer but have not used their customer support for a few years other than to arrange a house move just over a month ago.

I am moving again soon and will probably stay with their ADSL service until my area is VDSL enabled at which point I will consider my options. If PlusNet can offer VDSL at a good price I will probably stay with them.

To the OP – if you are running a serious business then just buy a PAYG broadband dongle – T-Mobile do a good deal which includes 3 months usage for £60.

OP – Are you running your business on a ‘home’ service? I would pay the extra for a business service with defined support if I was betting my livelihood on it.

Been with Plusnet for too long to remember (must be 12 years plus, it was Force9 originally and got bought up), never had an issue. Tech support has been good too on the couple of occasions I’ve had to use it.

Go to http://www.samknows.com, plumb in your details, pick an LLU provider. O2 are good (because they’re Be Internet rebranded), Sky are good (if you get Sky TV). Zen are excellent, but weren’t offering LLU last time I looked. Tiscali and TalkTalk are awful.

Another for Zen here… great service.

Zen here as well.

They were great when I had a speed issue which was all BT openreach’s fault. I would have hated to deal with a call centre.

+1 Plusnet (well F9)

Been with them for 15 years or so in various guises, have moved 8 times, had problems sorted without issue and they ALWAYS call back when they say they’re going to.

Faultless for me.

Be Internet provided me with a planned downtime notice that arrived after they had already dropped the connection, which was handy.

They dropped both my bonded lines at the same time instead of doing it in sequence.

Their call centre staff read out the same script for a day and a half and promised that everything was in order at their end whilst my IT guys checked and rechecked EVERYTHING at our end.

Eventually we got passed up to a senior engineer who fixed the problem in 2 hours.

I wrote a lengthy but polite complaint letter explaining how the problem could have been easily avoided with proper notice and access to a qualified engineer.

They haven’t responded at all.

Alarm bells should have been ringing when it took 4 phone calls and 3 emails to set up my Direct Debit correctly.

Good point on the dongle- annoyingly my vodaphone one doesn’t work here…

Just had a chat with the nice people at O2. They checked the line and told me that it isn’t posible to connect at the moment, as we are on a split line. A fine time to find that out! Plusnet didn’t mention this issue at all, despite me asking repeatedly if there was anything I needed todo this end. Wish me.luck with BT customer services…

Did O2 mention DACS at all? In which case its BT’s responsibility to remove DACS (at their own expense), but be aware that if you’re the last house at the end of the line and there aren’t any spare wires (pairs in BT speak), you may be sh!t out of luck in the short term and depends how quick BT move to sort it. Removing DACS usualy takes approx 2 weeks to complete and its down to the BT to organise (the placing of a broadband order will trigger BT into action)
DACS allows 2 lines to run down 1 pair of cables using a multiplexing unit which isnt compatible with broadband.
I think you should be ok, as my BT checker shows a spare pair at your DP (local connection point).

SKY (if you have it)

£6.50 a month for unlimited broadband her.

You could make friends with your neighbour and ask if you can use their service (assuming their wireless bleeds into your house).

another +1 for o2. Had Be Broadband, which they took over, who put their own fibre optics in the exchange.
BT broadband customer service was mind bogglingly shit

Cheers Bigyinn,

Don’t suppose u can put your hand on the number for the relevent dept of BT? I did look on their website, but was unsurprised to find no telephome numbers. Been in the twilight zone so long nothing is suprising…

Cletus- I only wish we were close enough to the neighbours, it would be a whole lot easier!

Zen again

Zen here too.

SKY (if you have it)

£6.50 a month for unlimited broadband her.

Pay peanuts. Get monkeys. Well, at least if you live anywhere that’s not got the super-fast offering available. My parents live in a large Devon town and are on the Sky deal. Their broadband is unusable from about 4pm until 10pm due to shaping; no iplayer, skype, anything.

We had exactly the same problem only as mentioned they also throttled ssh connections to about 2kbps from 8am until 12pm which made working from home impossible.

And their customer service / technical support is useless – they have a script that they cannot deviate from no matter what.

Essentially, if you can’t get Sky LLU then you’re stuck with ‘regular’ ADSL – this is BT Wholesale, which is unlikely to be any different as which provider you go with.

Agreed about the support though, they’re hard work.

We use 3 x Zen connections. Never had a problem with them.

Zen are very good, excellent non moron level support, but pricy.
I can pretty much deal with all the regular issues such as hardware or user error.
@ eviljoe, sorry no contact numbers for BT, all done over interweb. Having said that, its not your job to sort the DACS removal out with BT, whoever is / will be providing your DSL will take care of that for you.

I was with plusnet but got swayed by TalkTalk. That lasted 4 days thanks to piss poor connection speed,rubbish wireless router and inept support staff.

Plusnet have been very helpful for me. But TALKTALK are best avoided.

STILL WAITING!!

Plusnet called on Tuesday to tell us we were finally connected. We weren’t. If we want to get out and go with someone else, do we still need a MAC number? (Which apparently it takes a week to generate?!)Surely if they haven’t provided a service, we don’t need one?

According to OFCOM, an ISP must provide a MAC within five working days and free of charge (the rule is called “GC22”).

I believe you’ll need a MAC from whoever is currently provisioning ADSL on your line, even if it’s not actually working.

Here, page 68.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/telecoms/ga/cvogc18032010.pdf

“The Communications Provider shall communicate the MAC to the End-User
in writing by letter and/or by e-mail within five working days of receipt of the End-User’s request save for [if they do it over the phone instead]”

Virgin have been good for me. Bit of bother with initial setup but quickly remedied by a phone call to their UK call centre. Their customer service has been ok since too, when we had line problems.

Cheers Guys,

Deep breath, and back to the phone…