Zen Internet Reviews

Joined Zen 2013, service now diabolical. Tech support morons ,seem to read flow charts & blame YOUR equipment, router, Ethernet cable, micro filter, computer = never their fault &despite buying new router, micro filters & Ethernet cables, they still weren't happy, 1st guy I spoke to failed to diagnose trunk outage in area affecting many residents. 2nd failed to walk me though setting up new router I was told to buy - 1st guy insisted that my router, micro filter & Ethernet cable was fault, I was asked,(despite telling the 2nd guy) that I had had a stroke & heart attack & was struggling physically, to kneel on floor to unscrew phone socket on wall to get at test socket & he had advised me to unscrew wrong one, so had to trace wiring to feed socket in garage -other side of house, he asked me to unscrew that & try phone in it, so had to go back to other side of house & get phone then I was asked to go & get router in other side of house . Struggled to plug phone/router into a live test socket hanging off garage wall & 2nd tech guy decided it’s outage in area as both phone lines & internet by this time down he books Openreach, telling me that if I don't pay £120 to get private Broadband specialist out & check internal wiring I might be asked to pay BT £140-£178 for call out, I was incensed. Called out Broadband specialist costing £120 this =on top of having to pay computer shop on as per 1st tech guy’s advice, £75.91 on router, Ethernet cable & micro filters. Broadband specialist after he’d tested internal wiring asked neighbours if they’d any connectivity, they didn't. Called PC repair guy out it was suggested by 1st Tech guy it may be my computer = cost me £50, I’m losing income from booked in clients on busiest night of working week. PC repair guy migrated away from Zen Internet as found them rip off & incompetent, he’d had same problems. I phoned to lodge complaint, 3rd tech guy was smarmy & condescending, rude & disrespectful, so really did lose my cool by this time , he tried to justify actions of other 2 tech guys, as if I was at fault. I demanded a manager called me Monday 11 am & 12 noon as I started work at 12 noon & at 12.54 pm on Monday Nick called claiming to be a Zen manager - he was only supervisor, he was equally obnoxious + unhelpful so I’ve asked for complaint to be escalated above him, he refused to reimburse for costs I incurred from Broadband specialist call out + PC repair man & only offered to pay for router claiming no tech guys recommended me calling out Broadband specialist, fact is I never knew they existed until 2nd tech guy suggested it, so they endlessly back staff, have zero respect for customers. Support= diabolical amateur & useless, no 24/7 tech support either. I pay £67.67 per month for 1 phone line + broadband on & 1 without, no more than 5.85 mbps download speed & 0.84 mbps upload , diabolical customer service ,they know I ‘m self-employed & if I ‘m late paying bill their billing Rottweiler spams me with nasty threatening emails. Threaten to leave Zen & in smarmy voice they rudely tell you, you’ll never find as good a deal. I am done with Zen Internet they’re a disgrace, my advice - steer clear utter rip off utter rubbish, rude unpleasant.

Zen is the best ISP I've used, however pricey.
I've heard good things about AAISP, but I just can't accept their bandwidth caps.

Zen have given me fantastic support when I've needed it, and have fully supported me with issues Openreach caused. They activated my line when Plusnet wouldn't. Beyond activation I've had no issues with my line.

I'm glad plusnet couldn't activate my line because I love the great features Zen offer, including a native static IPv6 /48 prefix and a /29 subnet without having to fill out a RIPE form, unlike plusnet. I just wish I could delegate authority for PTR records.

I signed up to Zen a long time ago. At the time they were a great ISP, I never really had to make use of their customer service but thought it was always good.

Unfortunately after I believe a few years of service with them I must say farewell after my contract term is over. I've gone to another ISP on a second line who I've just posted a highly positive review about today.

Zen, last time I used my first line a few weeks ago, I was suffering with slow single threaded download speeds and intermittent packet loss blips. This was resolved at one point but then it returned to happening around peak times instead of all day long. I also had a problem with my FTTC service where on fastpath I was getting an excessive number of error seconds on the downstream. This remained unresolved, they booked me a voice engineer who found no fault. I should've had an SFI engineer (which the ISP I'm now with for the second line did, four times, until the problem looks to be cleared on the second line now).

I hate to say goodbye but later next year it will be officially goodbye from me, just waiting for my contract term to finish as it makes no sense paying an early termination charge for the full remainder contract value. I'm keeping the first line as an emergency backup for now.

2 years of problems. Lovely staff who all promise to help but they can't fix the issues which started when they tried to take over my neighbour's broadband instead of mine, then *insisted* I had a new line put in despite there being nothing wrong with the line I had and ever since then, nothing but drop outs, speeds less than 1Mbps. Every time you phone tech' support, they say "it's your router that's at fault". Here I am, 2 years and 6 routers later and I'm migrating to another provider and the minute they got notified, I've had no internet.
Phoned tech support, they were very busy and promised to call me back twice and never did.
I'm only online now because I bought a day's worth of internet from BTfon.
I could never recommend Zen. They are more expensive than other providers, but the service is dreadful.

I had an ADSL line with Zen for a short time and found the network to be exceptionally good. However, I am not sure why Zen's customer service is so highly rated as my experiences were that they can be a bit slow to reply to questions, and in my case they didn't spend the effort to answer my question about ADSL to FTTC upgrades (which another ISP was willing to investigate with Openreach, so got my business). Overall, very good in the important area of having a quality network - and IPV6 too!

I have been using Zen for more years than I can remember. I only briefly changed provider once to reduce costs. It was a big mistake, you get what you pay for with Zen. I now use Zen for Broadband and Landline.

I live in a rural area where we currently have to rely on BT's copper infrastructure which is very poor. We will shortly be getting the opportunity to move to a Wireless ethernet solution, including broadband and voip. It would be great if Zen negotiated contracts with these new players to provide communications across their infrastructure. We will not miss BT/Openreach.

Not what they used to be. Became like many others before totally useless and unprofessional.

Still waiting for a response to an email sent on the 22nd of November.

I don`t think it`s coming..

Good internet is like good coffee.

Reasons I use zen:
* static IPs and decent latency/ping. I host servers
* IPv6 is available (when you ask them for it)
* decent overall service with high uptime, without much congestion (ideally none) during different times of day
* no censorship. they don't block sites/ports. they allow traffic to flow.
* a very freedom/privacy friendly AUP

Most ISPs are like your typical instant coffee. It's 60-70% purity, and they
don't care about you. They only want their money, and they make it as cheap
and shit as possible to cut costs and compete with others.

A&A is more like pure, squeezed coffee. It's 99.8% pure, and it's black. They
charge 10x as much, but you get what you pay for, and you get the best possible
customer service. They even give you the squeezer and all the tools, and help
you learn how to use them.

Zen is still almost pure. They're still very good, better than most, 2nd only
to a&a. Theirs is 96% pure. It's good enough for almost everyone, unless you're
a snob, and it's much cheaper to buy (while still being a bit more
expensive than everything else).

I drink coffee all day, while writing code and pushing
code to git repositories using my Zen internet connection, while chatting on
IRC. I host the website for one of my projects on a Zen VDSL line.

I was previously using a&a, which I still think is the best ISP. However, Zen
now provides IPv6 (if you ask for it) and always provided static IPs and subnets
like a&a. Their customer service is still decent, and they provide more or less
the same features, while also providing unlimited download usage and being a
bit cheaper.

One thing I have noticed is that Zen does sometimes drop in speed, but not by
much. This is one of the reasons why a&a costs more (they buy more lines and
aggressively weed out all congestion, when possible).

Overall, I'm happy with Zen. It's not the best, but it's reasonably priced
and better than almost everything else, now with IPv6 capability. I'm using
a router on it that I set up myself with libreCMC, instead of the router that
Zen provided.

I also switched the ISP at my parents house over to Zen, and they're happy with it.

The service that I use is "unlimited fibre 1" (40/10 VDSL). If you're in one of the few good areas of the UK, they also provide FTTP but I can't get that.

They're not the cheapest but I wouldn't change to another ISP without really thinking hard about it. We had the phone line severed by a fallen branch some time back. My next door neighbour, a TalkTalk customer, called on a Friday to get things fixed - BT Openreach were due out the following Thursday. I rang Zen on Monday and Openreach were out the next day! I also had a problem with bandwidth recently but they were good enough to talk me through everything required to troubleshoot and fix. Compare this with ICUK, who I was using from 2011-2012. I lost my broadband with them after a) an upgrade to the exchange and b) their have an incorrect validation phone number on their database. 19 days without internet, all the way through the Olympic Games! Despite their best efforts, I had to change - to Zen - and haven't looked back since.

As a network engineer what a breath of fresh air it was to have an ISP with a real tech support team that is actually technical and bonus they are in the UK!! My previous ISP Virgin Media were useless and just read a script when there was a fault.

No traffic shaping or censorship and a really detailed customer portal with real technical information in.

If only more ISPs were like Zen.