Posted: 06th Apr, 2007 By: MarkJ
Thinkbroadband has published a table of UK broadband ISP's and their respective customer service quality ratings (based on visitor votes over the past 12 months). Not unlike other surveys, including a simple one done by us last month (
here), the results indicate a clear decline:
The ratings seem to reflect a growth in the amount of discontent within the broadband community in the last year or so, particularly since the widespread introduction of rate adaptive up to 8Mbps products. While we are aware that any ratings system is likely to attract the disgruntled more than the happy users, a drop from 58.1% on average to 49.5% seems significant. Hopefully by sending out rating reminder emails to registered users each month we will attract a good cross section of broadband users, rather than just those having problems.
The monthly averages over this period are:
February 2006: 58.1%, sample size 63,092
August 2006: 50.7%, sample size 76,974
February 2007: 49.5%, sample size 56,824
Interestingly Be, IDNET, Madasafish, Mistral and Newnet have improved their customer service experience. Meanwhile Biscit, Eclipse, Namesco,
Nildram,
Pipex, and Virgin's ADSL services all showed large drops.
Typically Biscit no longer exists and the inclusion of Namesco,
Nildram and Eclipse is of concern. Those providers were once regarded quite highly and appear to have had a steady fall from grace.
Nildram has certainly been a problem for a few of us too.