Broadband Users Left Upset or Confused After Speaking to their ISP
A new Attest survey of 1,000 UK broadband bill payers, which was commissioned by full fibre ISP Hyperoptic and conducted between 25th to 29th August 2023, has claimed that 25% of broadband customers feel furious, upset or confused after speaking to their internet provider, yet just 5% are in the process of switching.
The study also found that the thought of speaking to their broadband provider left 29.9% of respondents either feeling ‘dread’, or ‘frustration’ at how difficult it is to get in touch with a real person. Similarly, 38.5% believe that UK ISPs offer the worst customer service of any industry, although the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) does tend to rank telecoms higher than other utilities, as well as transport and the public sector.
However, despite 60% saying that bad customer service would make them change their broadband provider, some 23% have never switched, and 30% say they want to but find it either too time consuming or too much hassle. Elsewhere, 22% said they would switch, but they know their current provider would make it hard for them to leave and 30% believe their provider doesn’t care about them.
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Finally, 39.5% of those unhappy with the service from their current provider say it’s difficult to get through to a real person, while 39.3% say they are passed around to different people. Naturally, Hyperoptic has a vested interest in these findings, not least because they tend to have a better reputation and have just relaunched with a “renewed focus on its customer commitments.”
Hyperoptic says they’re responding to these challenges by offering 24/7 access to their customer service team, 365 days a year, allowing customers to leave with no charges if they don’t love their service within 30 days and simplifying the switching journey with a dedicated Hypercare rep to manage their switch. The brand is also committed to promising a competitor price match guarantee for new joiners, and ensuring existing customers always get access to the same prices as new customers on renewal.
Hyperoptic’s Founder and CEO, Dana Tobak, said:
“The customer experience offered by most broadband providers is mediocre at best and extremely poor at worst, and people are just putting up with it. Nearly a third of the people we spoke to said their broadband provider doesn’t care about them, yet they continue to put up with it.”
Hyperoptic’s own gigabit-capable full fibre (FTTP/B) network currently covers over 1.2 million homes (275,000+ customers), albeit primarily in dense UK urban areas and MDUs (large apartment blocks). The operator currently expects to cover 2 million premises with their network by some point in 2024 (the previous target was for the end of 2023).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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If only people switched away from these rubbish large ISPs and on to the likes of AAISP, IDNET, Aquiss and a few others, they wouldn’t be upset or confused anymore. The solutions are right there for the taking! It’s galling how the large ISPs keep raking in the customers despite their crap customer service.
Whilst that may be true, I have personally never seen an AAAISP, IDN or Aquiss advert on any social media, radio or TV.
It’s very likely those same people you say should switch probably don’t know any suppliers outside Virgin, BT, TalkTalk, Plusnet and Vodafone.
Not to mention that smaller suppliers tend to look worse compared to the the big ISPs new customer pricing. Despite the fact that a broadband contract is in the £800-1,500 range, most people do no adequate research on their options beyond trusting a price comparison website, they respond to glitzy marketing and heavily discounted offers, they put misplaced trust in well known brands, and at the point of decision they put zero value on customer service. They then get exactly what they contracted for.
I’m with Aquiss and have no complaints, but the hoi polloi would rather churn between large ISPs, without stopping to wonder why their experience is a perennial disappointment.
And a final thought, it’s exceptionally difficult to be big and good. When you’re a large company with rigid systems, huge databases and wage slave staff following orders, good customer service plays second fiddle to rubbish performance measures like average call handling time, or cost per customer. In the wider world there’s a tiny handful of large companies manage good service, but no large telco has ever managed this.
“Not to mention that smaller suppliers tend to look worse compared to the the big ISPs new customer pricing.”
Worth pointing out that this picture has become more complex in recent years, particularly when you include the 100+ full fibre AltNets. Many of these are connected to smaller ISPs, which are often aggressively priced and frequently beat the biggest players in that respect.
the customer service experience with smaller ISPs is not always better – and that’s assuming they don’t have their own issues that the big ISPs avoid (better routing/CDN, better capacity management, etc).
Speaking of capacity – don’t A&A still do data caps? lol what year is it
Yeah folks should spend £80/m on a ‘premium’ ISP and sod putting a roof over their family and heating bills.
They’re not always perfect though, in the case of Aquiss I didn’t receive my WAN password until after the switchover.
Would have been an issue if I didn’t have my smartphone.
I haven’t otherwise had any issues so far though, so I can’t comment on their CS.
@Stupid Raptor
With Aquiss it’s £55 for their 900/100 package with 6 months half price and no mid-term price rises on a 12 month contract.
Granted this doesn’t include a landline but alternatives exist which are still cheaper than £80.
I just went aquiss and cant even check availability without putting details in. Rather than just getting an automated result like any good checker, I got an email sent within 1 day, which I wont receive since I do not want to give them my email
Theres a reason why these companies are small when they cant even get something so basic right
I have no choice other than bt open reach or sky because I live in Cornwall the service is flaky and connection for gaming is really not good even if you open the specific port the game uses the 80mb connection bandwidth isn’t great
“Nearly a third of the people we spoke to said their broadband provider doesn’t care about them, yet they continue to put up with it.”
If only they could move to a different one eh? Unfortunately like the big 6 for power in the UK we have a similar monopoly for broadband so people can’t. They’re generally stuck with who they have, so remain furious or because they’re stuck with that provider.
@tech3475
I would like to investigate your case, as something seems a bit odd.
We send config information, just moments after the order is committed, along with a further reminder 48 hours before it goes live at PONR. Your login details are also fully available from the point of order, within our portals and remain so during the life of the service.
Either our emails have gone into your spam controls or we have not had KCI triggers from Openreach to trigger such events, but we also manually jump in a push communications before service provision.
All in all, something seems a miss here. Can you raise a ticket with our support desk, mark for my attention, as I would like to study our logs and the order flow in detail.
@Abdullah
Basics right or we are more proactive?
I’ve said this many times on here and I will repeat the message again. The source availability data of FTTP is terrible. We are currently running at 9% of our orders, where availability checkers said “no”, but by simple studying of local properties and network builds, that database corrections were needed. Those are orders that we have won, where “automatic” providers said no. They can thank us later.
So feel free to offer critic, I’m all for it, but lets do so when you have all the information to work with. Our customers tell us they like customer service the way it use to be, hands on, personal and know we are their when they need us. The way we do things is part of experience.
@Martin – Aquiss
It will be a few days before I can create a detailed ticket.
From what I can recall/gather though, prior to the activation date I only received the username information, with the password being redacted “Password: (Password Suppressed for Security)”.
I did just do a search for the password and nothing appeared other than the one email on the morning of going live.
One thing I have noticed though which may have lead to a potential error on my part. I use pfsense so IIRC I used a guide for a different router since I was after the settings e.g. PPPoE, etc.. Looking at one or two just now, they just mention “Enter the username and password as supplied by Aquiss to connect to your broadband service.”, however, the openwrt guide specifically mentions the “circuit information” page.
Prior to this I thought that “additional information” was where the password should have been located because the broadband username was here, baring in mind I was also still expecting the email.
Looking on the Wayback Machine, it seems that the OpenWRT instructions didn’t exist at the time though.
@martin – Aquiss
Same issue as in I never received my username and password. Activation was about 2 weeks ago, but I just got home and I can’t connect to the internet on Saturday…..
@giorgi
Presuming you can log on to Aquiss’s website, try the following:
go to services>my services>select ‘product’> circuit information’
I only found this out due to ‘new’ instructions for wrt.
@Martin
Sorry for the delay in the ticket, been busy.
How many would switch but have no viable alternative? The cavalry is coming, every day I see CityFibre get closer to my street to save us from Virgin Media, but will they make it here before the plug is pulled as in so many other towns?
I would switch from Virgin Media in a heartbeat, their customer service is horrendous and the way they handle billing is criminal. But nobody in my area offers broadband above 50mb so I’m stuck unless I downgrade.
And that is the crux of the problem Neil.