Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) Reviews

I moved to AAISP because I needed a package that allowed me larger FTTC download limits than my former provider, and because I wanted to use an ISP known for great customer service. AAISP and The Home::1 tariff allows you to subscribe to either 100GB or 200GB or 300GB per month as a download limit (which is more than enough for the majority of home users). You pay more than you would for BT or Sky or Virgin but the ability to speak to a technically competent person the first time you call with a problem is a big selling point for me as I do not have time to waste speaking to call centre staff in another part of the world. My order form for AAISP went smoothly: I received regular communications via text and email at each step of the process; I received a welcome pack with my free router outlining the relevant details of my service and the connection details. The modem that you get for free is not the best with respect to quality; however, it is pre-configured with connection and login settings to allow automatic connection when it is installed. It also is pre-loaded by AAISP with an applet that allows them to more-easily monitor and diagnose issues with your service. I have decided not to use the free router they provide and have had no issues as yet with setup or operation of my own router on their network (I will keep their free router and plug it in in case I do need to get their help in diagnosing an issue). The customer service account that is set up for customers and is accessed via their website is great in that it has good summary info as well as detailed technical and usage info. So far, I have had a good first impression of AAISP's customer service and I have been very happy with the internet connection and speed that I get from them.

I've just moved into a house in a rural area (that only has ADSL service) and so we've had to give up the Virginmedia cable that we've been using for more than 10 years. An additional service that we had from Be Internet was great before it was taken over by Sky - a rapid descent downhill. What to do? During those last 10 years I've had occasion to use BT's service directly both as a private user and as a business owner. All I can say is that I never want to go through that again. So, after a bit research, AAISP seemed like the answer. Happily I can say that we made the right choice. We have also chosen to use their VOIP service as our primary landline therefore we don't have to interact with BT at all. My scores are of course subjective so you need to figure out whether AAISP would be right for you but the lack of long contracts and friendly telephone help make this pretty easy to do.

To sum up; I'm really happy with AAISP and would recommend them.

I have just moved from Plusnet (who used to be good several years ago) to A&A.
Plusnet were useless.
The changeover to A&A was OK. The help desk not especially helpful, telling me that my BT HomeHub3 would work and it didn't. Luckily the Plusnet Technicolour was the same as the A&A and did work.
Broadband experience is much better, pages load more quickly and my hosted VoIP line sounds much clearer both at my end and the other end.
Also the problem that Plusnet had with the line disconnecting 10 times a day has miraculously disappeared.
Waiting to see how we progress but a good start.

Does one have to rate an ISP highly just for doing what they are contracted to do? Based on recent experience with other ISPs the answer is "yes, actually this is quite unusual, so it warrants a high score".

I moved from BT to AAISP a couple of weeks ago (please don't ask why). The order process involved speaking to real people. The process was smooth, although the wireless modem router failed to arrive in the post, so I phoned them, spoke to a real person within 30 seconds of dialling, and arranged a new delivery which arrived OK and in time for the connection date.

One problem so far: failure to connect. I phoned them, spoke to a real person within 30 seconds of dialling, and fixed the problem by following their advice to move the modem further from the telephone base station.

Some comments on my scoring:

Services: They provide all the services I need so I give them 10. This does not mean that they provide all the services that YOU may need.

Support: The support staff sometimes struggle to move away from geek speak (they do use rather a lot of impenetrable acronyms) but, so long as you are firm with them, and kind, full communication is achieved and problems resolved. The phone is answered by people who appear to know what they are talking about. Again, 10.

Speed: My connection is faster than it was on the same line using BT, so 10. I have no idea how fast it is compared with other ISPs, which is information I would need to answer this question fully.

Value: "How much does the ISP cost in comparison to SIMILAR OFFERS from other providers?" Well, my experience with other ISPs (Talktalk and BT) has been pretty dire, so I would say that although they OFFER the same thing they don't DELIVER it. So again, a difficult question to answer, but I have to give AAISP 10 for the time being.

I recently moved into a flat of my own after years at home with bigger, more well-known ISPs for ADSL and more recently fibre connection. Chose AAISP for the flat based on recommendations from friends. The signup page was a little technical, but once I knew what all the different terms meant it was easy to make the right choice for me. I ended up going for a broadband-only line, an option that was clearly marked (like all the options on the order page) and well explained.

The service was scheduled for the following Friday, but the equipment arrived a day early, and the connection worked flawlessly straight away with no manual intervention. Communication from the ISP throughout the setup week was timely, friendly, easy to understand and precise. I was confident that I was being looked after by someone competent with my needs in mind.

I've been using the service for a couple of weeks now, and there haven't been any problems at all. No outages, no equipment failures, no slow connections of any kind and for my needs, an entirely reasonable price for the service. Thoroughly recommended.

Like many people these days, I am often astonished by the poor level of customer service you get from large institutions; banks, telecoms companies, utility companies etc. and so I can't say how delighted I am that I finally found Andrews & Arnold.

I may not be like other people in that I don't really care how much I'm paying for services, as long as I'm getting good service. (Within reason!)

And I know A&A are not the cheapest. But you know what, I don't care about that - their customer service is out of this world.

They get stuff done, they work over email and by text which fits in with my work patterns, and they always go the extra mile.

Very happy. Keep it up. And they don't waste any of their budget on advertising, they spend it all on the existing customer, not the acquisition of new ones.

A great way to operate a business, long may they rule the ISP world...

Can't rate AAISP highly enough. Have got 20+ lines with them all over the country, all running perfectly. The sales team (especially Victoria) all very efficient and knowledgeable and have helped through some frustrating BT issues and gone beyond the call of duty to make sure things run smoothly. The support team are second to none, no messing about and always willing to help. Thanks

We originally placed an order for a FTTC ADSL service because we wanted it as a backup to a private circuit between our offices and our London facility and needed the L2TP service that A&A provide.
Our private circuit provider let us down severely during the office move so we had to get the ADSL in and configured on very short notice. We had the ADSL installed on Thursday and perform some of our initial configuration that afternoon. The following day A&A helped us out getting it all working including duplicating our setup in a lab to work though a couple of issues. The end result was it all working perfectly by the end of the day!

It's not often that I will go out of my way to create an account and review something, but in the case of AAISP I feel I really had to.

I've now been a customer for over a year and I must say, they have been absolutely flawless. A quick, hassle free install, friendly supportive staff with #clue who are always on the end of the phone and a superb control panel with all the information you could ever need.

Recently I had an issue with my line, long story short, everything was dealt with quickly and efficiently on IRC, with a few jokes thrown in to boot.

I cannot recommend this ISP enough to anyone reading, you will not be disappointed.

Great attitude

A&A's staff are competent and clearly enthusiastic about every detail of their network, and often put things in a light-hearted or overtly geeky way (a nod, I would say, to the kind of people who have naturally gravitated towards their services). They're honest about what things cost, plain-speaking when there's a fault, and infallible in solving the sort of questions that big label consumer ISPs wouldn't grasp. These are qualities I have come to really appreciate.

Highly configurable

A&A is a power user's ISP. For example, you probably wouldn't want an inexperienced user toying with the control panel (known as 'Clueless'), as it gives you access to carrier controls over your line, such as noise margins, IPV6 subnets and the like. It's perfectly simple to ignore these, and with the supplied router you'll actually have no mandatory configuration to do (even for IPV6) but if you decide to dive in, every last detail is open for tinkering.

Fast

Low latency, no contention, and A&A are always looking for ways to get you onto the best service for your exchange. For example, when I signed up I was on an old BT '20C' exchange, and very shortly after moving to A&A I was invited to move (free) to TalkTalk's 21C service. My line speed tripled! I recently moved to the 80Mb FTTC service, and A&A made the switch over without any downtime at all.

If you *are* keen to have full control over your broadband, and you'd like no-compromise, uncontended bandwidth right to the limits of your exchange, it's A&A time! Simply the best you can get.

Price is worth it

With the Home::1 package the premium in price is far less than the huge gains you'll get in terms of stability, low latency, lack of contention and general goodwill from the team. Other ISPs might offer you the same sort of connectivity, but their network will almost certainly not be as carefully curated as Andrews and Arnold's.