I was with O2 for 18 months and they’ve been fine – hardly a problem but they’ve gone and sold the business to Sky – who I don’t want to give my money to.

I’ve moved to Tesco but they can’t get the service to work – insisting the fault’s inside my house even though there’s been no problem at all for 18 months with O2…
I’ve had BT and Virgin in the past – neither could get the service to work and customer services were appalling (and appear to have bad reps generally)

So looking at alternatives, Talk Talk and Everything Everywhere get poor reviews for customer service (which is pretty important IMO with broadband as it’s not something you can sort on your own)
I’ve heard PlusNet service is poor but this is just hearsay.

I’m not after the cheapest deal, just something reliable with customer service who can actually sort problems out (and can do evening/weekend engineer callouts)

Do I have any options at all? 😯

I’ve been with ADSL24 for years and have been excellent outstanding all round, switching to BT later this month though for unlimited usage.

Zen

Sky here I’m afraid. Excellent quality, excellent customer service. Possibly a case of nose face?

Interested in this too as I don’t want to give sky any money either. Interested in BT though as they are including their sports package.

Sky here I’m afraid. Excellent quality, excellent customer service. Possibly a case of nose face?

Possibly. Just trying to avoid giving my money to such a nasty organisation…

The irony of the Murdoch’s getting my money cos they’re the only ones who offer decent customer service!

Paint it how you like, I get 10 mb and if I’ve ever had a problem they sort it straight away. Also its a lot easier to deal with a uk call centre unlike the one BT have which is such hard work.

I’ve been with virgin for over 5 years, Internet has dropped once in that time.

Probably not the easiest to deal with over the phone, but I’ve not had to do that much.

Virgin for last 10 years, not one single problem, fast too

Zen.

End of thread.

Been with Plusnet for over 12 years. Had half a handful of problems in that time, and all been sorted very quickly. Not even considered going elsewhere yet. Started with dial-up, and now on FTTC.

Zen

I had a nightmare with VM and they were not easy to communicate with.

Never a problem with the Virgin connection but the router we have is rubbish, wifi strength is piss poor, think thats right anyway

Virgin too, sometimes I wish something would go wrong so I could complain about them

Zen.
The only time I will ever use this phrase:

‘Thread closed’

Virgin – basic service is 30mb. I have a super hub, hasn’t missed a beat in a year now. Always get a constant 33mb, even at peak times. Always good to deal with on the phone IMO.

Question for the ‘Zen’ fanboys, why so great? Just looked on-line and service isn’t the cheapest, speed no different to others and capped downloads (albeit quite high). About the only thing that looks useful is a static IP address but most users wouldn’t find this much use. Not knocking Zen just curious why you guys are so pleased with them.

Personally I’m with Sky, the service has been more or less faultless, it’s £7.50 a month and I get to speak to English speaking service personnel. Was with BT before and I will never, ever buy services from them again – well, never say never but it would take one hell of a product…

No cable no virgin! For that reason we can’t!

Just signed up with plusnet – very impressed so far. Good communication about when the engineer would turn up to install the line, when the service would be activated and so on. And the speed is around what they said it would be – around 15 Mbps. Uncapped service for half price for 9 months too.

Only been activated for a week though – no problems yet, but time will tell…

Question for the ‘Zen’ fanboys, why so great?

After the plus-net debacle (where there was a user group formed to complain and the MD had to do a public apology) I swapped to zen and the couple of times there has been a problem I have picked the phone up and spoken to some bloke (who despite having a norther accent i have no trouble conversing with) who sorts it out or goes through the problem if its been at my end. Usually it’s the BT exchange but they seem to be able to speak directly with the local engineer and sort it. No call centres in India, no waiting on hold for ages.

Expensive but I’m not going for the cheap option ever again, last time that ended up with 3 weeks of downtime and costing me money and time.

We where with talk talk , which where ok just a little bit difficault to deal with the non english call centers . Decided to switch to bt to give them ago , big mistake . We had no phone or bradband for 2 weeks , i was phoning cutomer services twice a day and can honestly say i have never been more frustrated or angry in my life .

One phone call to sky and we had erverything sorted in a few days , should have phoned them a lot sooner !!!

Iam now still having to deal with bt as they are refusing to give me back the money i paid up front for the line rental . I will never use bt again !

chris

My experience of VM would seem to me that if their stuff works for you, good, no problems. But their help & support forum shows an awful lot of upset and angry customers with long-term poor service, in a post-code lottery. The lesson I took from it was run away, don’t wait for them to fix their over-used system. Do so in the first month.

It seemed like pure chance, I had a poor service, ten megs frequently dropping to zero*, my neighbour had no problems.

*That’s zero, not even connecting to speedtest.

Never ever use BT they are utter crap at every level.

Plusnet

Another vote for Plus Net,never had any problems with service they’ve provided.

£73 cashback thru Top Cash Back too boot atm.

I’ve never had any issues with BT, and I find BT Infinity and Youview pretty damn good. Free BT Sport too.

Re Zen fanboys, they have probably the best customer service in the industry. Have only had reason to call them 3-4 times and on each occasion it’s been BT or something in the house that’s been at fault. They once called me back on the mobile and spent 45 minutres trying to resolve an issue that wasn’t their responsibility. Always speak to an English speaking Englander in Englandville. And always get through within seconds.

Joined Plusnet years ago as they were the only company who said they could provide me with broadband at the time. Just painlessly upgraded to a fibre optic service. Never had a problem contacting customer service & all problems sorted quickly. Speeds reasonable but can vary a bit.

Going slightly off here but aren’t Plusnet owned by BT, so outside of the customer service the equipment being used at the exchange will probably be BT’s own?

What’s worrying is how little choice there now is compared to a few years ago. all of the smaller providers havbe been swallowed up by the big brands. The’s a distinct lack of real competition.

I would have like to have gone with Tesco but it’s not available on our exchange so I’m afraid it’s Sky – who have been pretty good so far.

Re Zen fanboys, they have probably the best customer service in the industry. Have only had reason to call them 3-4 times and on each occasion it’s been BT or something in the house that’s been at fault. They once called me back on the mobile and spent 45 minutres trying to resolve an issue that wasn’t their responsibility. Always speak to an English speaking Englander in Englandville. And always get through within seconds.

same here, and when I did think about leaving they gave me a massive discount to stay.

Plusnet are good for custoemr service, but I’ve been told ther backbone is a bit rubbish.

Lots of people here use Andrews & Arnold as a reliable, good provider, but they are not cheap. You get what you pay for though.

Please under no circumstances choose Talk Talk, absolute rubbish service. i could literally spend the rest of the day telling you the horror stories but to summarise…

We moved house about six weeks ago and it took three and a half hours worth of phone calls just to get our broadband moved over. They were absolutely incompetent. I kicked up a massive fus with their complaints department and they gave me my fibre optic broadband half price for the next 12 months with free installation. They then charged me for the installation 😕

Trying to decide whether I’ve got the energy and will to live to call them back and complain again.

Plusnet for me, wouldn’t even consider leaving unless I had to. Good honest customer service, upfront about issues, minimum waffle.

+1 for Zen, been with them for 10 years. Happens very rarely but when I have to pick up the phone to them, service is best I’ve ever had from any company. Two of us working from home, got to have broadband up and running. So I can comment on threads like this at 11.20am when I should be working 🙂

Was with BT for a year or two at the start of broadband roll-out – never again.

I’ve been with Sky ADSL and now on their Fibre product. Never had a problem with them, their online support team are pretty good at answering questions via chat as well.

Stay away from talk talk though, had all sorts of issues with them in the past.

Another Zen user here, pricey but very good CS. I’ve only had to call them twice in over 10 years though (although whether that means their service is very stable or broadband in the area in general is very stable and I’m paying over the odds for good CS I don’t use I’m not sure :p ).

Gone from Virgin to BT. Virgin really annoyed me with their crap customer service took them 10 years though but then the penny pinching really became clear.

Word is BT are likely to be just as bad, however so far they have been good and the hardware, bandwidth(fibre optic) are both way better than virgin could muster.

Also really like the controls on the hub which mean I can set access times for the various ipads, pc, laptops etc makes managing kids access to the web much less stressful.

I’m with primus, who are part of talk talk. Have had no problems with them, call centres are british and they are very very cheap!