KCOM Reviews

I have had full fibre Lightstream 75mps internet access for a long time now and have not been disappointed with the speed of the internet connection. I have a Samknows White box fitted to my Lightstream Modem which confirms that the advertised download speed of 75Mps has not only been the norm but has usually been a little higher.

There have been the occasional internet dropouts of a few seconds normally, some of a minute or so but never more than two or three occasions per quarter. Admittedly this last month there was a break in the service of just over an hour but this is the only internet loss of this magnitude that I have experienced.

The service in all therefore, in my experience leaves little to complain about.

Cost however, may be a different issue as I am sure that were there more competition in the area we may see some cheaper prices.

I've been with Eclipse more years than I care to mention, since dial up, then ISDN (was a gamer back then), so say 15 years anyway.

In the past few years I've continually upgraded my package with them and I'm currently on unlimited ADSL with local evening and weekend calls, this costs £46.48 per month. It was only recently that my street was given fibre.

Anyway, as stated I upgraded to unlimited, mainly due to the usage of Netflix and NowTV etc. I'm also a heavy downloader so unlimited was the only option if I didn't want any surprise bills.

Once fibre was available I queried the prices with Eclipse and really wanted fibre with a 100 meg limit as I was prepared to restrict my downloading etc to weekends and late evenings which is free. Bearing in mind Eclipse's fibre is pretty slow compared to the rest of the big boys and has a weedy basic 2 mb upload with another £10 fleeced from the gullible for a 10 meg upload. I also wasn't happy with my speeds that were deteriorating over the past few months, previously I was getting a reasonable and pretty reliable 13 meg down and about 1.5 meg up, average really. People mention the Eclipse portal. It's a joke. Why would anyone specifically need to tweak connection speeds for web browsing, email, FTP, VPN, gaming or downloads? Perhaps it's because the connection is so mediocre?

Apparently Eclipse cant do 100 meg fibre as a bundle, only 50 meg and unlimited. No reason why. So the options were really only unlimited fibre at £59 per month (or £69 with the 10 meg upload), which I find really expensive bearing in mind this is for the internet and nothing more. They also want to stiff you for a £108 setup cost if you don't opt for a 24 month contract, another reason to dislike the way they operate.

So OK, I speak to sales and tell them I want 100 meg fibre, they say no, only 50 meg or unlimited. I say OK I'm leaving give me a MAC code. They cant, you need to request it online in your account management page, which was fine. I look at requesting a MAC code and notice ' so your leaving us, please contact XXX number and see if a loyalty bonus might apply', I do this and the conversation was short, no we cant offer you a loyalty on any of our products, no reasons, so negotiation even after being a customer since methuselah was a child!!!!

Well, I went with TalkTalk, what a bargain, totally unlimited fibre, 56 meg down and 13 meg up (tested), unlimited evening and weekend calls, PlusTV box (worth £299 apparently)and pretty nifty homesafe software, PlusTV with 7 free Sky Entertainment channels (free with the package I chose anyway, all for less that £40 a month!!!

Eclipse, I can think of better ways of spending the £800 + a year you seem to think customers will pay for what is in reality the most basic and slowest of fibre services.

I don't think you will be in business for very much longer, once you lose your loyal customer base (the oldies like me!!) most of whom perhaps don't see or need the amazing added value and speeds offered by the other providers, yet.................




*** UPDATE - Another petty fail from ECLIPSE, Since cancelling my contract they totally throttled back my connection, now getting about 1mps down and .5 up, consistently since cancellation AVOID THESE PETTY LITTLE PEOPLE AT ALL COSTS...............

My brother and I have both been with Eclipse for many years, me since 2007. I have to be honest and admit I have had no issues in that time, though I rarely need to contact them. Recently however after a personal tragedy and ill health my brother was left in debt and with no income. I have been trying to help him out by negotiating with creditors to reduce the extra fees (late payment, early termination etc) then I pay off the outstanding debt for him. This has swallowed all my savings now. Every company and authority we have contacted have been very helpful and supportive and waived fees, even the bank waived all the outstanding fees! Eclipse unfortunately are the one exception showing their true colours now.

18 months ago my brother upgraded his broadband to fibre, a change which eclipse push a 24 month contract on. Now with 6 months left on that, Eclipse demand over £200 to close the account, £30 disconnection fee and the rest as a termination fee. They are not willing to negotiate at all, even though the reason we are forced to close the account is because he cannot even afford the monthly charge in his current state, so there is no way he can pay and I can't afford that much now either.

As a result of this I am also leaving them, I will not stay with a company that is going to do this to my brother and I.

BEWARE OF ECLIPSE! IF you choose to use Eclipse, they push you into extra long (2 year) contracts and should anything happen during that time they will squeeze you for every penny they can, whatever your situation. I never thought I'd say this about any company, but they are just as bad as car park clampers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not disputing the legality, I'm sure if you can find the small print they will be entitled to charge this much, I'm just saying that every other company has had compassion and decency in the situation but Eclipse just want their pound of flesh.

Beware.

After reading Nigel Hunts review of Eclipse i felt i had to tell the other side of the story. Firstly i have been with just about every major provider in exsistance in my rural location, including BT, Sky, Virgin etc we were stuck with <1mb from around 2001-2007. I spent hours (over the period of 12months) on the phone with BT trying to get the speed up but i was told that was as good as it would get. For the price i paid it was virtually useless at that speed.
So i went to Eclipse, as soon as we were connected we went up to over 1mb but then i spoke to one of the guys in the tech department and he recommended a filtered faceplate and directed me to the BT website (no less!!). £11 later and i have a consistant speed of over 6mb. I'm sorry but i will never forgive any of the other untrained muppet providers for not pointing out this quick fix. I mean seriously for my new provider to point me to the solution on my older providers website is a joke! Best of all there was no contract if i paid a tiny £12 up front, i was not penalised for NOT paying by direct debit like BT (which is unforgivable). I can pay online all by myself, their online portal is awesome, detailed usage, payment screen and the abilty to upgrade etc as Nigel has mentioned. Properly advanced stuff! I understand Nigels concerns but then anyone who gets suckered into the Direct Debit scheme is a little naive anyway, and why didn't he just cancel his direct debit if he wanted to leave- they would get the message then. I have had much worse than that from just about every other provider on the planet- including Sky trying to make me see out my contract with a speed less than 0.1mb (no typo). I think Nigel needs to sample some of the competition before slamming Eclipse TBH. Blame Capitalism if you want to blame anything, whatever they are still by far the best broadband provider and they provide business or home too. This kinda proves that for me: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/compare.html?isp_7=1&isp_12=1&isp_21=1&isp_22=1&isp_84=1&commit=Compare

DON'T USE THEM. I was using Eclipse Internet for many years. A regular direct debit paying customer from 2006 till 2013. I had multiple services. Everything was OK UNTIL I wanted to cease having one of the services. They made it impossible. They have a very sophisticated control panel which you can do quite a lot of advanced stuff, including buying new services and upgrading, but strangely not to cease a service. Also they will not accept a support ticket or email to cease a service. By calling a premium phone number you are supposedly able to cancel a service, and the auto-answering system is quick to answer the call but you are left hanging on, wasting your time & money. To speak to someone took me 8 months. And this someone has a strategy to argue endlessly to keep you on the line, probably since the premium number is how he earns his salary.

Actually the reason I was ceasing one of my internet connections was because it had stopped working and they could not fix it at the exchange. Additionally I was moving in 2 months time. I sent emails to all the support, sales & billing email addresses informing them of my wish to close the internet service & requested a credit for the period the connection was down. They wrote back telling me I had to cancel the service over the phone or by post I tried both. They never actioned my calls or the letter & continued to take my money bu=y direct debit. Eventually, 8 months later when I did manage to speak to a real person he did admit quite plainly "we don't want to make it too easy for people to cancel services".

It really isn't good use of my time to fight the Eclipse system & write this negative review. I have much better things to do. But I want others to be duly warned. And I don't want Eclipse or other ISPs to think they can get away scot-free with this cynical torture mechanism to squeeze every last penny out of every client.

They made me pay.. Please do me a favour.. and make them pay. Please boycott this ISP.

Service is reliable, speeds are good, tech support is there and pretty good (way above average for an ISP) if you need it.

Not the cheapest ISP, but the overnight unlimited is nice to have.

The plot continues!
Here is a copy of an email sent to me from Eclipse as a result of my remarks on this site.

START
"Hi Joseph

We’re sorry that you appear to have had issues with your Eclipse account. We would like the opportunity to investigate these further.

So we can look into this matter in more detail, would you please be kind enough to provide us with your account details. You can either reply to this message or contact me via email - CustomerRelations@eclipse.net.uk

Once we have received this information, one of our management team will get in touch with you to discuss things further.

Many thanks"

ENDS

I am not going to reply to this since when I did ask for an explanation I was cut off and my bill sent to debt collectors. I have fully paid the bill, to the debt collectors, and the damage has already been done to my credit reference. Even if Eclipse refunded me double it would not repair my credit rating would it!
The only reason Eclipse want to talk now is because I have put my review on this site. Clearly they monitor and value what ISPreview publishes. I would repeat to all readers that I was in communication with Eclipse regarding my final bill when I recieved a letter from debt collectors. No warning from Eclipse at all. This after 8 years. Avoid Eclipse.

Original posting below:



I too had more than my fair share of trouble when I tried to leave Eclipse Internet having been a customer for over 8 years!
Like others I had to write a letter and obtain a MAC code. However, soon after I left I received a bill for just under £99. I queried this bill several times and never received a full and satisfactory answer.
I understood, sort of, that £50 was due but I could not for the life of me figure where the rest of the charges came from?
In the middle of my discussions, emails and phone calls to Eclipse I received a letter from a debt collection agency! No warning no discussion nothing; just a threatening letter out of the blue demanding full payment within 10 days etc. etc.
I paid the bill in full since I did not want a bad credit rating over such an amount.
I must say I am totally disgusted with Eclipse. Their service was average at best but did begin to go downhill for the last few years.
I moved over to Sky broadband (not a decision I took easily I can tell you) to whom I pay less than half of what I was paying Eclipse and have unlimited downloads. With Eclipse there was a cape of 50 gigs a month (this was actually more than enough for me but unlimited is better!)
I would not recommend anyone to use Eclipse. As other reviewers have stated. They are average to good at best but seem to slip in unknown charges when you leave. And for goodness sake don’t bother to query anything otherwise the bill is swiftly sent off to a debt collection agency. Shocking.

I switched to Eclipse following a strong recommendation from a personal friend who runs an IT business. I wasn't disappointed. Good value for money and reliable service. But it's the support they give that really stands out - it's excellent. All too often, companies' "support" services are unhelpful. They keep you on hold for an age on a premium rate line and then are mostly concerned with blaming whatever technical problems you may have on someone/something else to get you off their back (eg it's your operating system, your hardware, your firewall, your 'phone line, you need to speak to the people who installed the network, etc) or else try to sell you a paid support package. Not so here. Eclipse are professional, courteous and immensely helpful. I don't write reviews normally, but they were so good I felt compelled to - it is genuinely rare to experience excellent customer service and I was really delighted to find it here. 10/10

I have been with Eclipse for 13 years now (with a couple of breaks to look elsewhere, but I always came back). The speed is good, customer support excellent - helpful and seem to know exactly what I need - and tech support is great too! They are not the cheapest but worth the extra - you get what you pay for and you certainly get your moneys worth with Eclipse.

We moved to Eclipse just under 4 years ago from another company called Enta, we got the same package for half the price from Eclipse.

We also have hosted exchange with Eclipse which has saved us a massive amount of time and money as we no longer have to manage a server with Exchange on it.

Aside from the great uptime and stability we have experienced, perhaps the most important thing an ISP can provide is customer support and it's in this field that Eclipse really outshine every other provider we have ever used for internet based services and there have been a few over the last 11 years.

Earlier this year BT did the 21cn upgrade on our local excahnge, our connection went wild, on - off fast, slow it was crazy, we worked with Eclipse and BT to resolve this and the connection has been solid ever since.

If we were asked to recommend a broadband supplier we would have no hesitation in saying got to Eclipse.

All the best

Dave Austin