Utility Warehouse (UW) Reviews

I do not own personally Utility Warehouse. I used to sell it. I would never ever ever use it after what I know its like for ppl I sold it to. My mother and stepfather who are a bit behind on technology and the like love it. Because they think the money back scheme when shopping is great. Simple things for simple people. Anyway when it comes to what they sell you for internet. They lie, cut you dry where ever possible. You get advertised one speed, you recieve about 20mbps even 30 less than you were told you will get in your house. If you complain then it comes back up. Then goes down again. And even what you DO get is terrible quality. Tonnes of packet loss. Cant even keep a 13mpbs stream fluid. if you pay £18.99 a month you reliably get 41mpbs download. Sometimes 60mpbs. But teh problem is is that the modem/router thing sucks and cant send any data out with out losing 5% of the information. Making anything modern and real time with the internet absolutely terrible. If a single connection uses more than 20mpbs the packet loss can go up to 40%. Its like saying, you can buy more food at MacDonald than at the artisan restaurant in bulk weight for the same price. While ignoring the quality between the two different products. So yeah its cheap for the amount of data it advertises, but you are buying the worst quality data as well.

Support is full of fluff too.

The line was activated at the wrong address. They kept me on the phone for one hour and half and they charged more than £50 pounds to fix the mistake.

The performance has been almost identical to that of previous BT re-sellers. Good/better than previous, to start/as a new customer, then gradually deteriorating over a 3-6month period prompting speed monitoring over a further 5months.

Using:

...windows10 pro on
surface pro3 i5-4300u 128gb RAM 4gb
Average speeds measured...

via
www.ispreview.co.uk/speed/ AND www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk
DOWNLOAD / UPLOAD
7.16mbps / 1.28mbps at 16-6-15 07:00 to 20:00
6.25 / 0.5mbps at 7-10-15
6.8 / 1.3 15-10-15
6.8 / 0.7 25-10-15

Numerous 'complete downtimes' varying between 30mins to 4+ hours.

Reports to fault desk/number produce no results with the only advice being that if modem/wirless device provided is faulty, it is not providers responsibility - but THEY provided it???
Advised also to unscrew capacitor box to check wiring. Never anything wrong with wiring and normal service resumes after 30mins-4 hours.

After several occurances, just get used to it being down and having to wait random times for it to return - waste of time and energy and enfuriating to report it.

I have never had any problems with this ISP, they are very cheap and the only time I did have a problem, it was a physical issue with the OpenReach line in our local Junction Box, which was fixed by an OpenReach engineer by lunchtime the next day (which was a Saturday I might add!).

The speed I get is the advertised at ~16Mbps, however 76Mbps is available.

Value is incredible, at only £8 per month for 16 down/1 up, and £20 per month for 76/19, plus £15.30 line rental. Also both these packages are unlimited data! Also free connection, free router are included in the cost.

They supply every service you would expect or could need from an ISP in 2015.

After much debating I switched from Zen Internet to Utility Warehouse about 2 months ago. The transition was smooth, though in all took maybe a bit longer than the industry standard (?), but they said it would take around 3 Weeks in total and this is how long it took. I subscribed to their Broadcall service (combined Broadband and phone) which is very good value for money. The speed is excellent about the same as I was getting with Zen (around 6 Kbps). I can't comment on their Technical support as I have had not had to use it (hence a mid point score of 5), but general customer service was excellent. The only negatives are that although advertised as a monthly subscription this is slightly misleading as you do pay monthly but if you do cancel within the first 12 months there is a penalty to pay. Also the router supplied with Broadcall only allows for 1 computer to be connected, so if you want to add more computers you will need to supply your own (Netgear router works fine), though if you opt for their wireless service I think you get a better grade router (would need to ask). Also hidden in the small print is that if you do cancel the service you have to return the router they supplied (so don't sell it or throw it away as you don't actually own it as such!)

I had 2meg with Utility Warehouse until October 2006 which was fine, then as soon as it was possible, I got Broadband Max which promised 8meg now, and up to 16meg when available. From then on it went down hill. I was getting nowhere near 8meg speeds, but since then it has got gradually slower.I am now getting between 0.5meg and 1.5meg. Worst of all is their customer services. To talk to them it costs YOU 75p per minute, and e-mails take 5 days. They claim that if I ever get 3meg - that is acceptable because that is \"up to 8meg\" . I have been fighting for 5 months, and it has taken 15 days so far to get a MAC code. Can\'t wait to escape.