Utility Warehouse and Zen Named Which? Recommended Broadband ISPs

Consumer magazine Which? has today published the results of their latest biannual reader survey of broadband ISP satisfaction, which ended up handing their top ‘Recommended Provider’ status to Utility Warehouse, Zen Internet and John Lewis. By comparison most of the markets largest providers were pushed to the bottom.

The consumer survey, which was conducted with around 2,000 readers during July 2014, quizzed respondents about service aspects including connection speed, support, connection reliability, value for money and customer service in order to produce a general customer score of satisfaction.

The results revealed that Utility Warehouse came top with 85%, followed by Zen Internet on 80% and John Lewis on 78%. However PlusNet and Tesco deserve a special mention for scoring 74% and 73% respectively, which put them just outside of Which?’s recommended provider status.

Which? Broadband Awards – H2 2014
1. Utility Warehouse (85%)
2. Zen Internet (80%)
3. John Lewis Broadband (78%)
4. PlusNet (74%)
5. Tesco Broadband (73%)
6. Eclipse Internet (67%)
7. Post Office (60%)
8. Virgin Media (53%)
10. Sky Broadband (50%)
11. TalkTalk (50%)
12. EE (49%)
13. BT (49%)

Curiously Which?’s article claims that Eclipse Internet “no longer sells domestic broadband packages” (though apparently they did at the time of this survey), but a quick check of Eclipse’s website clearly still lists a variety of home broadband options and bundles as still being available to order.

As for the ISPs at the bottom, BT’s lowest aspect of service was in the ‘Value for Money’ area where they only scored 2 stars out of 5. Clearly not everybody finds value in the free BTSport TV content that they’ve been busy bundling alongside broadband for the past year. Oddly, despite being at the bottom, EE and TalkTalk actually had more 2 star ratings.

In fact EE got 2 stars for Speed, Reliability and Technical Support, which was mirrored by TalkTalk’s result. But TalkTalk managed to avoid being second to last by virtue of securing 4 stars out of 5 in the ‘Value for Money’ rating. Otherwise it was also surprising to see Virgin Media and Sky Broadband doing so poorly as they tend to fair better than that in other studies.