Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) Reviews

I was a Sky customer for a number of years.
Initially I was tempted to switch to another ISP just to stop giving money to Rupert Murdoch.
But I have to say, switching to A&A has really been great so far (3 months). It's fast, the customer service is really good and I feel a lot better about not giving my money to an evil billionaire.

Some details :

I was able to get recommendations about what package to go for through the A&A irc channel, no phone call required.

After my line was installed, I was getting disconnected quite often (lost carrier). That was sorted with a couple of email. Again no hotline to another country, no time or money wasted on the phone.

The price is a bit more expensive (45£ a month) but through fiber (FTTC) whereas I was paying 38£ with Sky without any special TV package (no payed channel) and only with basic ADSL.
I haven't checked the equivalent offer with Sky, but that would probably been about the same, expect it would have taken 3 months to get it ( that's how long it took them to install the line 5 years ago).

The connection with A&A is about 4 times faster in latency and about 4 to 5 times more bandwidth (FTTC is probably doing most of the magic here).
The main difference being that once the lost carrier iasue fixed I hardly get a couple of minutes of down time a month (you get automatic notifications from A&A) whereas Sky would disconnect me for a few hours or a day on a regular basis (no explanation given)

No regrets.

Only been with A & A a short while but found IT exceptional any problems sorted out while on telephone line. Setup of FTTP just as was stated on initial order timescale was spot on 2 to 3 weeks, it would appear you get what you pay for in the end.

since I'm new there have been a few queries from my side, but I've always been answered quickly and competently by an expert - even on topics they anticipated without me asking. Wish I'd switched earlier.

Below is a recent email to aa - it sums up a brilliant provider, not just in support but in all services. It's so great to be free of BT!

Hi

I’ve just called support for help with a couple of changes to my service and an advice question. As always, the response was great. It makes such a difference to know that I can get my issues sorted quickly and politely by every member of the aa team.

Many thanks

I've been with AAISP for less than a month but the experience so far has been excellent. They're a bit more expensive than some alternatives, but the service is top-notch and I only have a 6-month fibre contract - something I couldn't get elsewhere.

I've had a few tiny disconnects of ~90 seconds or so at odd times, but it's never impacted my actual use of the service and it might be an anomaly. I'm investigating.

So far, I'm very happy. The >10x speed boost I've got from Fibre is such a game-changer!

Pros:

- Monitoring graphs & alerts give exceptional accountability - not seen in any other consumer provider.

- Reasonable minimum term length (normally 6 months on FTTC).

- Agreeable views on blocking, throttling etc. and open and honest director's blog.

- Quality, reliable connection (hardly ever an issue on their side).

Cons:

- More expensive than other providers (though the quality makes it reasonable, and, seeing BT/TalkTalk's wholesale price lists, I entirely understand).

- Support is fairly good but reluctant to help as much as I'd expected with Zyxel configuration, and unavailable officially after hours, on Sundays or on bank holidays (even if just for troubleshooting).

- Overly complicated invoice/billing system means it takes long just to print off an invoice and understand it.

- Not their fault, but in comparison to Virgin et al, the maximum download speed is lower.

Overall:

If you want quality this is probably one of the best options out there, they certainly take it seriously and don't fob you off even if they don't always help you completely. If you rely on the internet or are opposed to blocking/throttling etc. you should probably go with them.

So I spent a while deliberating about a new ISP, using the usual criteria of cost, reliability, customer service etc., and decided eventually that I was happy to pay the extra cost and go with AAISP, especially as it was only a six month contract and if I wasn't happy, it's not the end of the world. Transfer was well handled, communication was good and there were no issues.

Cons
Having previously been on an unlimited package, it takes time to get used to keeping an eye on usage. In all honesty it's easy to do (usage appears on the AAISP homepage), but having been told by my previous ISP that my monthly usage is around 60 to 80 Gig, I find that actually I may be straying more closely to the 150 Gig limit than expected. Some people (myself included) may find this monitoring annoying and burdensome. That's it, no more cons.

Pros
Contractually, you sign up to speak to people between 0900 and 1700 on a weekday - the people are knowledgeable and are reasonably contactable out of hours. They also fix things - I had an issue and was getting a variable download speed of between 10 and 20Meg, they got a BT engineer out and now I am getting 44Meg with no variation.

Observations
This is more of a techy company than the larger ISP's. The jargon can be off putting, but if you're not afraid to hold your hands up and admit "Me no understand, speak more slowly", you should be OK. I still don't understand the outstandingly ugly graphs I have access to, but I've decided I just don't care. Having to log into 2 accounts (one for billing and one for technical stuff) is a bit annoying.

Conclusion - as long as I don't stray over my 150 gig monthly allowance and have to move up to the next price point, I will be staying here a long time. Also, rather nicely, I pay for a 40Meg connection and I get 44Meg - can't complain.

Apologies for the dreadful use of Meg and Gig and Mb's and Gb's (I am sure some of you are dying inside - I don't care)

I've been with AA for a number of years and moved house recently. Their customer support during the process was absolutely superb, the information provided was timely and spot on. Everything happened as and when they said it would, even BT - and we all know that's a challenge at the best of times.

I have no hesitation in recommending AAISP, IMO, currently the best all round service provider for residential broadband in the UK at the moment.

Thanks.

Fantastic service. Superb tech support. Same copper pair but much better performance. Great monitoring and analysis tools.

After three months of performance issues and getting nowhere with my previous ISP's tech support I decided to move to AAISP.

The performance issues were still present after I migrated but within a week AAISP's technical support identified an isssue with a congested BT vlan and a few days later got BT to migrate my traffic onto an alternate vlan - problem solved. Excellent stuff. So far the line has been rock solid, and the line analysis tools provided by AAISP are excellent.