Madasafish

We were with Madasafish for about 10 years. Initially on dial-up PAYG, then unlimited dial-up, and finally upgraded to broadband. Having my domain name hosted by them for free (originally the service was called FreeNetName) I was reluctant to move ISP. However I was hitting the 5GB included bandwidth too often, and the price had always been a little more than other equivalent services. Hence I did not consider the service to be great value for money.

The support existed, but was hard to get straight answers from. Replies often ignored the question asked. Nor did I like the assumed "the customer must be wrong" attitude, particularly when their technical explanations did not make sense by comparison with trusted expert websites. (And BTW I consider myself a bit of a geek.) In one particular support case, they messed around for ages with different settings and then waiting. I then had to press them to pursue BT, and finally they found ants at the exchange shorting my line and causes my connection speed to drop to 160kbs. I then had to argue to get interleaving removed from the line after they left that on as one of the experiments.

Finally, on leaving I found them unhelpful. Not surprising really, they no longer needed to try and keep me. The support ticket had about 5 different account termination dates. And after I had confirmation of account termination, I was then asked to request account termination. I also got some worrying emails abut change of invoice date. At no point could then categorically confirm I was not going to get any additional charges, instead they used a code "we've moved your next invoice date to XX/XX/XX", the date after account termination. So I quickly cancelled the direct debit payment. When I suggested I was due for a refund for part of the month after account termination, they simply evaded the question and refused to answer at all on the ticket. So I promised them an on-line review here!

Started well, but.....

Went swiftly downhill. Sucked in by the low price & above average customer service it sure was a welcomed changed from the living hell of dealing with Orange. As a handy note NEVER ever use Orange for broadband.
All went well with m.a.f for about 6 months then errors started happening with monthly invoices & my speed dropped to almost nothing. Getting in touch is not the hard part, getting an intelligent response is. They do try & do have knowledgeable persons within their ranks but until you get contact with one of these well informed folk the customer service can be VERY frustrating (a bit hit & miss).

I eventually forgave them only for m.a.f to slip up again early this year throwing credit charges left right & centre when i had not used a credit card to pay.
Over time i am realizing that there support is getting poorer & poorer & there charges for extra bandwidth are more than double most other ISP's @ £2 per GB.

As a heavy user 5GB per month was never gona be enough for my house hold & you can definitely get better value else where.
Overall m.a.f are far better than the dreaded Orange & if your only a light-med user you could do a lot worse.
But for medium - heavy use (gamers included) I cannot recommend them as they do not represent good value for me (anyways).

I have been with MADASAFISH for sometime now (previously Freenetname). On 20 March 2009 they made changes to their systems. As a consequence I stopped receiving all my emails for an extended period. The staff at the call centre (based in India) were very poor at listening, reading previous 'tickets' and sharing information with each other. I was caught in a thankless loop of jumping through hoops, for over a month, as they did not seem to be able to sort the problem out..paying to listen to banal music whilst waiting for them to answer or transfer the phone....in fact it was implied that I was wrong several times and that it must be my fault that email were not coming through. I was advised much later that there were circa 250 emails (many of which were confidential and from reputable sources) on their server, therefore I must have them in my inbox.....these emails were not even on my webmail, in Outlook or on my Iphone. They even accessed my account, without my permission, then sent, received emails then deleted them. Eventually I cut and run by transferring my ISP directly with Nominet ( I didn't have to pay MADASAFISH then!) and paid my last bill (which they could not even agree on!) in 30+ cheques to the value of £1 each....it costs alot more to bank them then the bill was worth (about £5 per cheque). Case is now with Watchdog, OFCOM and my solicitor!!!! Do not use MADASAFISH.
Good news is that all the things that MADASAFISH are have been sorted by my new ISP...goodbye MADASAFISH you were the worst customer service experience that I have ever had...world-wide!!

I have nothing but praise for these guys. I have been with them since the old dial-up days when they were Globalnet. Tech support is good and connection is always fast and reliable. The main company they trade under is Plusnet if I am not mistaken.

I've just renewed my broadband for another year with Madasafish, and have been very happy with the service.

Connections are reliable - only had difficult connecting one time in a year, and after I queried them via support this was resolved pretty quickly. The connection speed is fine, cannot expect to get faster connection given where I live. The speed we get is what the initial test results indicated we would get.

Getting started was actually much quicker than I expected. After signing up we received the free router etc, and got an email with an estimated connection date (about 10 days I think). We were actually connected and up and running in a matter of days.

They have a range of packages based on three levels of monthly usage, but the thing I liked most was that if you go over your monthly limit the charge per extra GB download was much lower than most providers, so you don't get heavily penalised for heavier use. Also you can set up email alerts to let you know when you're approaching your monthly limit - that way you know in advance about any charges for extra usage, which I found really useful.

At the moment they offer a 6-month discount of their broadband, and this is available to existing customers as well (I just renewed after our first full year, and am on the discounted rate for the next 6 months). You have to commit to a 12-month contract to get the discount period.

Support responses via email are fairly quick. The only issues I've had are to do with billing, and this is the only area they could do with improving. In terms of the technical side they are great, but I had a couple of annoying minor issues with billing (had to re-enter my bank details after a few months). Emails to support soon got the billing stuff resolved though.

Overall, very pleased with the service - reliable, flexible and good value. Would be happy to recommend to others.