ISP Reviews by csking

Right, I’m going to get the usual gripes out of the way - yes, AAISP are damn expensive, especially for high-usage households, and having usage limits/metering is unusual an an “unlimited” world (T&C’s apply etc etc).

It’s very difficult for me to justify AAISP to friends and colleagues because of that, and they say I’m bonkers for paying what I pay. Some of them put up with utter nonsense from their ISP’s, just because it’s cheap, or because they got freebies for a two-year sign-up.

Nuts to that. Life’s too short for dealing with flaky internet and messing about with “help” desks that can’t actually help you.

That’s why I switched to AAISP over ten years ago when Nildram imploded, and I’ve been with them ever since.

The service has been fast and very reliable, other than occasional blips. This is where AAISP’s support prove themselves to be head-and-shoulders over the competition - ring their support number or drop them an e-mail, and you’ll get a response from a REAL person who can actually help you, not someone on another continent reading from a script. They will make sure that you’ve checked everything you can at your end, but once they’ve ruled out your equipment and wiring, they will chase BT (or TalkTalk if your service is provided on a TalkTalk connection) and they’ll keep pestering until your problem is solved.

I had a problem with excessive peak latency a couple of years back, and they took this all the way up to the top levels of OpenReach to sort it out. Even the MD got involved !

http://www.revk.uk/2015/03/some-times-bt-just-dont-understand.html

They have a secret weapon - answers to the name “Shaun”, likes BT managers, but will eat normal food if required. The rest of the support folks are pretty good at giving BT/TT a hard time too. They’ll even take on new customers with existing broadband faults and try to fix them, with a money-back guarantee if they can’t.

They also have a policy of “not being the bottleneck” in providing service - and they have delivered on that promise in the past if links appeared to be overly busy.

This is what makes them more expensive - but it’s also what makes them good.

They still get 10/10 across the board from me, even for "value" - that's because I “value” having a consistently fast, reliable service, with tech support that doesn’t treat me like an idiot.

DEC 2017 UPDATE: I've been on Home::1 1Tb for just over 18 months - don't let the fact it's provided via TalkTalk put you off, it's a MUCH better grade of service than you get with TalkTalk Retail.