Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) Reviews

After so many positive feedback I tried this isp, and guess what? After week or so got connected, then dead line. Again on and off.So no internet all weekend cos they work 5 days, like someone said nonexistent customer support. Got sms that my line is down yet no contacting me or fixing something, so I had enough and cancelled contract.Then they charged me 95£ for early termination. So I spent 110£ for line installation plus 95£ just for few hours internet? Didn't expect that, All they are good at is to write invoices and and rip you off!

ISPreview Sanctioned 'Right to Reply' (RtR) by AAISP Follows (DO NOT REMOVE)

Related Rule(s) - http://www.ispreview.co.uk/rules.shtml#3

If you want to have fast and reliable service - AAISP is the one you looking for. You will always get maximum possible speed and excellent support.
I'm with AAISP for more than year and I have to say I didn't have any long break in my service. And if there is any company is very honest with the customers by informing what is the true reason of any issues.
Definitely they have people who knows what they doing.
High price and limits are a little bit pain but I think for a good service you have to pay good money.
Any way every year they better offers.

Moved from a hopeless talktalk supply of 1 mbps or less ? Same exchange, same wires, but now getting 6 to 7 mbps from A & A. Initial setting up was dealt with calmly and efficiently. I am pleased with this move. Might 'seem' a bit more expensive, but think of the time saved, not having to phone useless call centres :)

I have been with a number of ISP's in the UK over the past 20+ years and switched to AAISP due to their focus on no filtering, no traffic shaping and UK based customer support.

The PROS: The Customer Support is very good, UK based, and I feel about as good as you will find anywhere. Compared to BT (who are India based and truly frustrating), AAISP really does get an A* for customer support. Their monitoring tools are also excellent and available to each customer which is helpful for those of us more technically inclined. The SPEED is AVERAGE and comparable to what you will get with most other providers, the limiting factor being the BT Kit from your house to the Exchange.

The CONS: This is a very Technology Guru type of company where the staff are all focused on offering the latest VOIP, ipv6 and other technologies but they tend to miss the point that the Customer is King and the Customer's Needs are First. Bandwidth is metered and I have mysteriously gone from 50GB/month to 100GB/month to 200GB/month and now after 9 months its gone up to 300GB/month -- they keep charging me for more and more so my total monthly bill is a horrendous £65/month or so. SUPER EXPENSIVE SERVICE and very annoying that I mysteriously keep running out of bandwidth. When I phoned them they just said its my problem and I they said they would be worried if they were using this much bandwidth at home! NOT HELPFUL and a bit of a caustic tekkie attitude by some of their staff. This is not a customer focused company but a technology bells and whistles focused company. I am switching to Virgin Cable as soon as my one year is up and I move into a Virgin area.

I believe this is a very fair and balanced review. In Summary, SUPER EXPENSIVE, your monthly usage mysteriously grows over time (they claim this is not them doing it), and a bit of an arrogant tekkie attititude with some of the staff who assume everything is your problem when you call. There are better ISP choices out there who are more customer focused and have UNLIMITED Bandwidth -- like Virgin. Go for Unlimited Bandwdith always - is the lesson I've learned. Something very strange with how my bandwidth mysteriously goes up by 50GB every month and they make more and more money off of me every month!! ?????? Am suspicious.....

I originally moved to AAISP because I was in favour of their anti-censorship stance and I hope they continue to fight ever increasing regulation. However, having made the change I find their service to be superb. The on-line support and diagnostics system is fantastic and I can monitor the technical parameters of my own service in detail and fix certain issues myself. When I do need to contact their support team I am immediately connected to UK based support staff who have advanced technical knowledge and provide a standard of service far superior to any I have ever experienced with other ISP. Bravo AAISP. I'm never moving!

I couldn't imagine being with anyone else but Andrews & Arnold. Their clued-up staff are a joy to deal with, when you remember how you used to have to face the sinking feeling you get when you need to deal with staff of other ISPs.

I have three IP-bonded DSL lines (ultra-long lines unfortunately). Andrews & Arnold deal with spreading the traffic of a download between the lines according to their speed capabilities. My Firebrick router deals with spreading outgoing traffic between the lines similarly. I have a good-sized block of IPv4 addresses and a huge range of IPv6 addresses.

Because A & A don't offer unlimited all-you can eat deals to all their customers (all though there is a predictable cost tariff available to business customers) the network is not completely oversold and slowed down by contention. You always get maximum performance and A & A publish congestion stats concerning this. This is one reason that the services cost a bit more than inferior “unlimited” networks.

I also have a 3G data-only SIM for my iPad from A & A which works over the Three mobile network, gives me one static IPv4 address and traffic cuts through the Three network transparently, directly into A & A.

One very nice thing is the uniquely detailed A & A control panel website where you can fiddle around with all kinds of dangerous stuff, fix problems, and get a detailed view of performance. A & A have continuous historical traffic monitoring and you can do live traffic captures so you can work out what on earth is going on.

A & A is not as cheap as some networks but you have to pay if you want the best, and this, believe me, is it.

I have been with Andrews & Arnold since May 2004.The fact that I can go on-line and see a copy of the first invoice they sent me tells you something about them. They suite my need to know what is going on completely.

Until recently, I bought their broadband service on a BT supplied phone line, ADSL, ADSL+. ADSL2 and finally FTTC. BT's approach of charging for the phone line started to resemble gouging - it just got more expensive in a "so what can you do about it" way. BT is a monopoly supplier in my area. It then dawned on me that I could get rid of them by moving my phone to VoIP. I trialled a little gadget that attached PSTN phones to a VoIP service, tested it with an A&A VoIP phone number, and decided to set the wheels in motion.

The process is not straight forward, and involved getting a new "wires only" BT line (contracted by A&A direct with BT), and then porting the existing phone number to A&A, which stopped the original line. All of this was explained to me by a very patient SALES person from A&A. Yes, Sales. Not technical support, or the support forums that other ISPs rely on to their job for them. (Thanks Michael!).

BT decided not to show up for the first appointment. Other reviewers on this site would say that is A&A's fault. Perhaps they never had to deal with BT direct? A&A shielded me from the unintelligible BT phone calls, and worked through their many failings to get everything installed. I am now a very happy VoIP user on the home phone, and best of all nobody would be any the wiser when they pick up one of our extensions to dial a number. Voice-mail to email - Sip login from my mobile, so flexible. Oh, and I'm saving close to £20/month.

All of this great service costs money. A&A do not have some mega football streaming deal against which they can offset costs. Anyway, I hate football. A&A are a ISP. Focus on your core strengths - good business practice. So they do not end up on the top of any "cheapest ISP" list. No £9.99 deals for 12 months. If that is your benchmark, you will not like them. However, if you are technically proficient, are a person who does not think "Facebook" is "The Internet", and like to control your own service from your very own control pages - well, like me you would expect to pay a bit more for that. Have you tried to get a dedicated IPv6 address range from BT?

I have not stayed with A&A for 11+ years because I have rose tinted spectacles. Disclosure: I work for a VERY large IT services company, designing service offerings. When you consider a service, you have to know what your potential supplier is capable of, and how they react in a crisis. I have stuck with A&A because of demonstrable technical prowess, and application of that prowess to provide a solid Internet Service. Solid - in IT service land that is an accolade.

Bye Bye BT, I will not miss you.

Moved homes some time ago and decided to opt for what was claimed to be the best provider.

After waiting for my line to go live, nothing happened. Called their support "team" and ended up always speaking to the same grumpy, dismissive and rude man.

Should have been connected well in time for the holiday break but they failed to do this and like other comments, insisted I email them certain information. I felt completely victimised.

4 weeks passed and I moved to another sham of a provider.

Don't believe the hype, they may be ok for most but they're certainly not customer friendly to what is a normal person with mild speech impediment.

Couldn't use any services so 0, support although answered was not helpful so a 2, didn't see any speed as it never worked so 0 and value, paid for nothing so not worth it and 0.

I was a long time subscriber to Demon going way back to the early days of using a 33k modem. I have slowly became more disenchanted with Demons level of support, technical knowledge, product mix and since the buyout by Thus and then Vodafone I believe it is getting worse.

As a then ADSL2 user I was also looking for a solution which increased my upload speed which was constraining my ability to work from home.

I was recommended AAISP by my network team and I haven't looked back since.

I migrated to the FTTC Home::1 offering, which was seamless, easy and very uneventful.(With the exception of Vodafone stinging me for a rather large amount for early termination of their contract). Regardless, it was well worth paying to get away from Demon.

In my opinion AAISP are more expensive then other ISP's but their service, support, caring for their customer and technical prowess is worth paying a little bit extra for.

This was recently demonstrated with a DDOS attack against AAISP's network which impacted all their customers including myself. Within 5 minutes they had a status report on their website stating they were aware and investigating. Fantastic considering it was 9pm. They kept us customers fully and openly informed and took actions to restore services within a very short period of time. All ISP's can experience this sort of attack but I applaud AAISP for the way they communicated with us customers AND resolved the issue in a very timely manner. I don't believe many, if any other, ISP would have been able re-act as quickly or with such open communications.

AAISP can sometimes be regarded as the ISP for the network expert because they can and do communicate in great depth using "network language" but please don't let this put you off using them; With a little reminder they are capable of speaking English too :)

I would fully recommend AAISP to anyone.

Well I chose this ISP when I moved into my new house based on the feedback here and its position within the top 10, well havent I been disappointed! Coming from Virgin cable broadband before this was almost like going back in time, the internet was slow, expensive and support was sporadic. I choose the upto 20mbs package with a phone line that included 100gb data, having children and a wife that like to watch you tube videos I found myself on many occassions sometimes even twice a month having to top up the data @ £10 per time when the 100gb ran out, this was on top of paying £35 for the service (with the line) so some months I was paying upto £55! The internet was slow, I must have been spoiled by my previous cable provider, 6mbps just isnt enough for one person never mind several with all the tablets/laptop etc around the house and of course mobile phones too. Support wont do anything over the phone they suggest you email them, well I like to be able to call my provider up and make changes to my service, having to drop everything in an email is a step back! What next do they also expect me to write them a letter. On top of that the hardware they sent barely projected the wifi signal past the room the router was situated in, half the rooms in the house couldnt pick up the signal at all even when I was only sat 5 metres away!

Overall my experience with AAISP has been a poor one, the internet service was SLOW, Expensive and limiting and the service wasnt very forthcoming either, the phone lines shut early and when you rang it they request you write them emails instead!