Fast.co.uk

I have been a Fast.co.uk customer for several years and when things work they work well - great speeds and low ping times day and night. But when things go wrong... well, they go wrong.

A speed issue I had in 2008 took six months to fix (on their website they state that BT aim to fix faults within 40 hours). In December last year the speed and quality of my connection started to deteriorate again. This week it has got to the point where it's almost unusable (dropped from 6.7 meg to under 200 kbps).

I cannot fault Fast's support, they respond quickly to emails and answer the phone almost immediately. The problem is they don't seem to be able to get BT to fix things in a timely manner. I don't deny that dealing with BT must be a nightmare, but that doesn't help me when I'm trying to work with an increasingly slow net connection.

I'm pulling my hair out at the moment. I'm sceptical that Fast will be able to get BT to fix this problem in days (biggest fear is a repeat of 2008's episode: months). I'm within a whisker of switching to an ISP that has a great reputation for getting BT to fix problems.

Note about my ratings: I've given a 5 for speed because on average, given my experiences in the last 18 months, this is accurate. I'm paying £34 a month so value is also impacted by the speed problems I have had and am having.

I will update this review accordingly if Fast can fix my speed problem in relatively short time and my speed remains stable for a while.

UPDATE

BT fixed the issue that was affecting my and many other households' net connections in this area around 6:30 p.m. today, Sunday 21st February. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my connection's speed remains stable for a while.

I've amended my, to be fair, premature ratings accordingly.

UPDATE

I've amended my ratings again to reflect the lengths Fast are going to to get this BT issue fixed once and for all. They do their utmost to help but are dealing with the behemoth that is British Telecom, and as we all know BT can be incompetent at the best of times.

I have been with Fast for just over 3 years, and in the main things have been pretty good. I have had a couple of run ins with support, when I felt (rightly or wrongly) that I was being patronised and fobbed off. Having said that, issues were resolved.

I am now looking to migrate away, the main reason being cost. The service details are published and usage allowances are extendable. However, I have been regularly exceeding my limit (3 teenagers downloading, gaming etc), and was having my speed choked most months (excessively in my view, although within their terms).

The costs of extra usage was taking my monthly spend to in excess of £30 and I am pretty sure I can get the same performance and 24 hour UK support for around £25 per month.

Edit to add that I am now running at 22KBPS and have not received any notification of the fact.

Was previously with Orange - always had good service & good speed from those guys, but had to switch because they refused to provide a VAT invoice (I work from home a lot, so claim back my broadband expenses through work).

So, did a lot of desk research and found lots of really good reports about Fast. The switch across was very straightforward and it was pretty easy to set up to be fair.

Speed was slow-ish to begin with, but then settled down to about the same speed I was getting with Orange.

BUT then the speed today was reallllllllllllllllllly slow. Turns out I'd gone over my 5 gig limit and they choked it right down to 24bps at one point......that's the slowest connection speed I've ever had, even slower than dial-up ! That is ludicrous.

At first I naively assumed it was a technical problem, so I spoke to one of their technical guys tonight and he was downright rude to me !!(never mind being incredibly patronising at the same time) All he tried to do was upgrade me to a higher package, and made no apology for choking off the speed. When I complained about the lack of notification, he couldn't care one bit.

Very poor service, and very annoyed, given the previously good reputuation, which is false, imho.

******* UPDATE as at 12TH February *******

Further to my post from 2 days ago, I subsequently received more than one phone call from one of the Directors from Fast, offering profuse (and sincere) apologies for the poor support. He listened to my complaints and explained what had happened.....

It transpires the information given by their Tech support guy was totally incorrect - Fast normally send out an email warning the user when they hit 80% of their monthly download limit. I never received this email, Fast are now investigating why not (it was not in my spam box). They have subsequently removed the cap for the rest of this month and have advised how to check my usage rate online (which I wasn't aware of earlier). My speed has now returned to normal.

This is a good example of how to resolve a customer complaint and is perhaps more reflective of the "normal" levels of customer service. In light of this development, I have now revised my ratings from their initial low scores.

Amazing tech support. Brilliant speed and reliability. This costs a lot more than many services but if you need reliable services then it's easily worth it. We've been with them for 15 months now and not once have we had a problem that they haven't sorted out immediately.

The customer support call you back to save you money, and they increased our download cap at no extra cost part way through our contract, and have now removed it completely.

I've been with fast now 6 months and this is by far the best ISP I've been with over a 6yr period, I was with toucan which gave me a constant 1-2 megs average, but where bought out by pipex and everthing slowed down to 500k; who then where bought out by Talk Talk and apparently it's even slower now 200k. With fast it's ramped up to 5.25meg(of a max of 5.5meg), awesome speed, fast ping, you defo get what you pay for.. And also for an extra £5 a month you can have a static IP for VPN's etc if you wish to.
I Can't fault this service at ALL, I wish every other ISP would take note of fast's book instead of ripping you off with the upto 8meg service which you'll never get near and also the money/contention greed and rubbish support in India, this is why you should choose fast. Top Top service, let it continue :).