Your Coop Reviews

Changed provider to Your Coop this week.
Terrible connection compared to previous provider.
Connection regularly drops.
Connection slow
Unable to watch TV or work.
Support very unhelpful.
Advised to buy a booster - which we have never needed before and told we can’t end contract.
Incredible dissatisfied.
Clearly would have changed service if we’d been told we would get a poorer service.
No sure how we’ll sort it out due availability of fibre cables in area.

I had been with The Phone Co-op for a number of years (having switched from BT) until a few months ago when I made the switch to Pulse8 (see my other review!). I had gone to the Phone Co-op initially because I like the idea of a company owned by its members, but it never felt like it was. The fundamental problem, of course, is that they just piggyback TalkTalk, so to get the most out of that you would need to get better speed priority and have fantastic customer service and tech support. Pulse8 does that well, the Phone Co-op doesn't to the extent that I wondered why I should use them and not go straight to TalkTalk.

Stability was poor for much of the time. Speeds slow, and a number of times I was bumped down to ADSL from ADSL2 (I am near enough to the exchange to benefit from ADSL2). Getting Phone Co-Op tech support to resolve this and rest the line profile was painful as they were often dismissive and condescending.

Moving a few months ago to Pulse8 (and continuing to use my same Billion 7800dxl modem//router) has been a revelation and I realise now how bad Phone Co-op (using I suspect the lowest level of TalkTalk bundling) was. My stability and speed have increased massively since I left and support is also massively better.

It's sad, because I still like the idea of the cooperative mutual ideal, it's just a shame that in its current form the Phone Co-op isn't it.

Good value for money and expected speed of ~2Mbps.
Contract was canceled, account was paid in full.
Then some months later they unlawfully started billing me monthly. I told them I was no longer a customer and asked for an explanation. They sent none.
When I didn't pay they sent unlawful threats of debt collection action.
The unlawfully billing continued for 6 months.
No apology, no explanation.
For a Co Operative, they appear to have ethical standards lower than the average commercial business.

We were customers of the Phone Co op for 6 years. Following a fault that an Openreach engineer fixed at our local green cabinet we were left with an intermittent service which dropped out regularly at inconvenient times but the Phone Co op failed to improve the service. So, 4 months after the fault was fixed we switched away to another provider where we enjoyed faster broadband at a cheaper price on a shorter contract. Unfortunately 2 weeks after we switched our final bill from the Phone co op included a £150+ charge we didn't owe for the engineer call out which I failed to get removed via their complaints process. They advertise ethical broadband with fair pricing and no hidden charges. I fail to see what is ethical about their use of the same phone line equipment as Talk Talk and most other providers. Their pricing is pricey. However, they Do employ hidden charges. On the phone they say you will only be charged for an engineer call out if your own equipment is found to be at fault. However you will find that the customer has to pay for engineer call out charge if the customer is found to be not at fault. They don't advertise that. I fail to see what is ethical, fair or not hidden about that.

Right to Reply (RtR) Response by The Phone Coop (DO NOT REMOVE)
Related Rule(s) - http://www.ispreview.co.uk/rules.shtml#3

A pleasure doing business with the Phone Coop,great speeds no dropouts and top speeds on an evening also.Bit of a mess signing up but once that is over everything pretty straight forward.TTB connection so no trouble to install on my own router.5 stars unlike some of the so called big boys.Hope everything remains like this for the rest of the 12 Month contract

Right to Reply (RtR) Response by The Phone Coop (DO NOT REMOVE)
Related Rule(s) - http://www.ispreview.co.uk/rules.shtml#3

I have been with The Phone Coop for over four years, and I have been very pleased with their service and value for money. (I have had the basic ADSL package throughout this time.)

Speeds are reliable (I live fairly close to the exchange and get a solid 17 Mbps), and on the odd occasion where something technical has needed sorting out, the technical support team have been very helpful and shown impressive technical knowledge. Waiting times when calling are usually very short. (Both the customer services and technical support telephone teams are based in the UK.)

I have recommended The Phone Coop to various friends and family members as a result of my experience.

PS. I note a couple of reviews asserting that The Phone Coop uses Talk Talk's network; as far as I am aware, this is not the case (they use Daisy's network.)

Impressions of the company are declining levels of ability and customer service.

Whilst they're a reseller of TalkTalk business, I signed into this company on the recommendation of a colleague in the industry on the basis of sound technical and managerial ability - which was demonstrated well for a while.

More recently it's clear that customer "support" are utterly clueless and even the techs are being forced to work through checklists _and not deviate_ from them, even when the areas they insist be tested have already been eliminated as a problem - and every iteration of a problem is being restarted from scratch.

Here's a clue: If you start being as useless as Talktalk's helpdesk, then there's no advantage in using the company. A declining DSL speed and intermittent line noise during wet weather is not going to be fixed by repeatedly rebooting my router (In fact, thanks to DLM it will make the problem WORSE)


Edit:

Feb 22 2017 - I'm going to mark the Phone Coop down even further, having had my broadband down for 5 days and counting - with a hard PPPoE failure (no response to PPPoE discovery packets) following on from weeks of PPPoE dropouts.

The problem is (of course) inside TalkTalk's network (TalkTalk have apparently blamed spanning tree problems inside their networks).

To cap it off, PPPoE authentication and handling is contracted out by TalkTalk to a 3rd party which the Phone.coop is unable to talk to, resulting in multiple layers of obfuscation to get through when things break in this way.


The Phone.Coop are completely unable to make any headway with getting this fixed.

THERE IS NO POINT IN BEING WITH AN ISP WHICH CANNOT MANAGE ITS SUPPLIERS.

For: co-operative ethos, transparent pricing, UK-based customer service.
Against: buying in services from Talk Talk.

I write this review reluctantly but, having endured 12 months of often dire Internet connectivity at home, feel the need to share.

We joined The Phone Co-op (TPC) last year, attracted by a fair price and the chance to support a co-operatively run provider. Before joining TPC we had been with Plusnet for years (long enough that we joined Force9 which later became part of Plusnet) and had no quibbles with the Plusnet service.

The changeover process from Plusnet was smooth, with good communications from TPC and initial performance was excellent. But then the issues started. At times the speed is great, the best we've ever had on our ADSL connection, but too often it can be dreadful. Dial-up/ISDN dreadful.

I won't bore you with the various attempts to resolve the problem. TPC's helpdesk have tried their best, but as far as I can see there's a limit to what they can do. It seems that TPC buy in Internet services from Talk Talk. If I'd known this to begin with then I wouldn't have touched TPC with a barge pole. I should have done my research before I signed up.

Having great customer service is one thing, but when you're buying in connectivity from one of the worst regarded providers in the country then I can't help but see a conflict.

To think I put up with TalkTalk for more years than I care to remember, big mistake switch now and get the benefit of an excellent customer service team all in the UK. The following is just one example of the difference;

TalkTalk; I needed to know if a telephone number was free to me or not.
Result after 40 minutes an uncertain ‘it should be’

Phone Coop; My internet was dropping out, within minutes of phoning I was speaking to an assistant who said they would check the line and get back to me, which they did. It transpired that it was the fault of an old TalkTalk router, I couldn't even find a firmware update for it. I purchased a new router and although everything seems to working well for me, I have just received a call from them telling me that it did drop out through the night. They are going to investigate and get back to me.

I quit TalkTalk in March of this year and every month since I have received an email demanding payment from 50p to £11 then October I am in credit by £1.42. I have phoned, chatted online all to no avail. If I get a bill this month it is going to the ombudsman.

Edit: Phone Coop now known as The Co-operative Phone & Broadband...

Similar to another member's comments, Namesco migrated all their broadband customers over to Phone Coop a few years ago so my joining was by default. Connection was OK to begin with but then for months, speeds would plummet to dial up speed at times! It took a lot of painstaking effort before they finally investigated, acknowledged a wholesale fault and resolved it. Their status page didn't even report any issues. I even asked them why they haven't updated their status page to inform other customers, but they didn't seem to think it was an issue.

After only a couple of months of stability, things have taken a turn yet again and both speed and stability have returned to dire! There are dropouts on a daily basis and reconnection often results in no DNS servers assigned, speeds dropping again in the evening and high ping latencies, even in BT test socket. Routerstats trace was up and down every day, all evening and for months, there was never a clean trace.

After attempting to request Support for the second time, they responded with the usual checklist spiel. The same spiel that they tried during the first fault that ended up being a fault at the wholesaler.

Granted it helps to rule out points of contact, but not everyone has a constant supply of modems, filters and cables whenever there's a connectivity problem. Phone Coop don't supply any modems whatsoever for troubleshooting, but apparently their wholesalers do, not that they once considered asking. Nor do they offer any assistance with BT engineer costs to help troubleshoot. At least Namesco (and some ISPs) used to send replacement modem to troubleshoot and cover BT engineer charges out of goodwill. Phone Coop did not budge at all. When they start asking you if you're willing to accept BT engineer visit charges, it's exasperating and you know you have reached a deadlock.

Much to my surprise, just before Christmas - two months later from when I told them there was a problem, they finally reported on their status page that they were aware of a problem and that it has been resolved. Ever since that fix, the connection has been stable and consistent again. So much for the spiel about issues at my premises and REIN or SHINE!

Rather than waste further time and expense, I will be migrating away to an ISP that takes troubleshooting seriously and one that has a technical online support portal! Both times, it felt like I knew about impending network faults before they did.

You may be thinking, if it is fixed and working fine, why leave? All I can say is I have no faith in Support. Two fairly major connectivity and performance faults not down to issues at my premises completely disregarded. I would have ended up with buying spare hardware unnecessarily. No apologies or recompense for the inconvenience.

Phone Coop has a caption on their broadband page. It says "For people who give a damn"... Do you?