By: MarkJ - 24 August, 2009 (12:48 PM) - Score: 1790 - Fixed Line Broadband

Popular broadband ISP Zen Internet has come top in the Which? magazines "Best Buy" survey with a customer satisfaction score of 87%. Zen was followed by O2 in second place, receiving a respectable 85% satisfaction. The Utility Warehouse came 3rd with 81% and Be Broadband, which is owned and shares the same network as O2, was treated separately to come in 4th place on 80%.

Zen Internet has topped Which?'s satisfaction tables for the past 4 years and this was its 8th Best Buy gong. The broadband ISP managed to gain 5 stars for customer service, speed and support but only got 3 for value due to its higher price. However other ISPs failed to do as well, in fact the gulf between the top 4 and the rest appeared to be considerable:

(Customer Satisfaction) - ISP Name
(87%) - Zen Internet .
(85%) - O2 .
(81%) - Utility Warehouse .
(80%) - Be Broadband .
(68%) - PlusNet .
(68%) - Waitrose .
(67%) - Greenbee .
(64%) - Nildram .
(63%) - Eclipse Internet .
(60%) - Madasafish .
(59%) - Sky Broadband .
(56%) - ClaraNet .
(54%) - Demon Internet .
(52%) - UK Online .
(51%) - Virgin Media .
(49%) - TalkTalk .
(48%) - BT .
(48%) - Tesco .
(46%) - Freedom2Surf .
(39%) - Tiscali .
(38%) - Karoo .
(36%) - Pipex .
(32%) - Orange .
(31%) - AOL UK .

It's worth pointing out that Pipex (Tiscali) does not offer residential packages anymore and should not really have been included. Meanwhile Nildram and Freedom2Surf are also part of Tiscali and share many similarities, albeit with some degree of product separation. We note that AOL UK comes bottom in a lot of other speed testing benchmarks, definitely an ISP to avoid.

Unsurprisingly Which? awarded its "Don't Buy" gongs to AOL, Karoo, Orange, Pipex and Tiscali. No Don’t Buy ISP scored more than 3 stars for any rating, with AOL, Orange, Pipex and Tiscali all getting just 1 star for customer service (oh dear).