Zen Internet Reviews

Tried to re-join Zen, and immediately there were issues with being unable to use the same email address as before. 'Fine', I thought, I will just use another. Everything seemed to go OK but then noticed my order wasn't moving forward - indeed with errors recorded in the status pages on the customer portal.

Despite promises of working with Openreach to figure out what was wrong (a simple migration order), nobody seemed to take ownership of the problem and I lost confidence and decided to cancel the order.

It took a week of webchats, calls, and emails to get anybody to commit to giving me my money back. Eventually I got it, but none of it was done pro-actively.

They were once awesome. Fairly shocked at this decline.

Previously Zen were great now, not so much.... avoid!

I used to be with Zen some years ago and they were an excellent ISP. Good service, reasonable price, quick for the area I was living in at the time. So when I had to change ISP when I went to FTTP because my present ISP didn't offer it, it was a no brainer - or so I thought. I'm now into 4 months with Zen now and I still haven't got a working phone line. I used to have customers - they're gone I suspect. First they made a mess of transferring the number, then we were without Internet for four weeks when a drunk hit the telephone pole in our road with his car. Not exactly Zen's fault, but they wouldn't chase up Openreach, I had to write to the MD of Openreach to get it sorted myself.
Because I use my own router they wouldn't support me. I provided my own phone adapter but they wouldn't provide the information I need to set it up until I threatened legal action. Then they wouldn't believe me when I told them their settings were incorrect as I could not ring in.
Finally, I dug out their router, connected it up and had the same result as with my phone adapter. Still no phone line and we are four months.

This lot used to be great, now they are absolute rubbish. Even the connection is unstable. Do not touch with a barge pole.

Like most people I have used a number of ISP's, except I have been using them a little longer. My first ISP was contracted to in 1984. I'm Frankly amazed by some of the reviews I have read about Zen. Of course, reviews are subjective as people's experiences will always differ. My experience is that Zen is the best provider I have ever had. I notice that a lot of people have noted the difficulty in getting hold of an agent, but also notice most of this was in times of lockdown and home working. During that time there were companies that I could never contact. Anyway back to Zen. I have always had great service from people who have bent over backward to help, without passing me on to someone else, who has no understanding of the problem. Every time I have used them they are happy to listen and don't tell you things are impossible when they know they are. I have found that when there is something they don't know, they are not only willing to do their own research, but follow leads that have been provided from the customer. This is a level of service personally I have never experienced. For this reason and for the fact they have always provided everything they say to the best of their ability, I believe I will be a customer for a good few years to come.

I recently left Zen, after being a generally happy customer for many years

I fear that being one of the few ISPs to offer CityFibre has overwhelmed their support and sales operations. I tried to ask some technical questions about a service upgrade but didn't get an answer - just an acknowledgement then silence, repeated when I followed up a couple of weeks later.

My lower "value" score I'm a little conflicted on: I'm actually spending slightly more now than I was (and than my upgraded service might have been) but part of my reason for leaving was that I was still paying the same rate for my service as when I'd signed up several years earlier. No increases is good, but discovering that the same service is now available for half the price I was paying did not impress on me that they have their customers' best interests in mind.

I moved house and realised that I could get a faster, cheaper service in my area. I tried to cancel my zen internet. Even though the service hadn't gone live yet, I was told they'd signed me up to a new contract without telling me and now have to wait 12 months to leave. Thoroughly unimpressed with the customer service.

I was with Zen some years ago, but left because of excessive phone call charges. After wandering cloudland I returned to Zen last month because they now can provide SOGEA and I can use VOIP with provider of my choice. Thought I would sign up while their 'fixed price for life' offer was still valid (As I type most of the big boys are adding a 10% price hike even to their 'fixed price' deals...)

Connection is better than with all other providers. Had an issue with billing (my browser crashed during sign up and I ended up with two accounts). Support answered within 30 seconds. Staff speak clearly and very knowledgeable. Sorted out the billing issue. Transferred me to the technical who quickly resolved the database issue.

I'm using the Fritzbox with a couple of third party DECT Cat IQ2.0 handsets. I use third party VOIP provider. The Fritzbox is a good and flexible router/answerphone base station. With a bit of configuration its possibe to 'whitelist' my contacts to avoid spam. I'm also planning to get a second Fritzbox from ebay to set up a mesh system around the house and garden.

Dont understand previous couple of reviews who complain about poor support - perhaps the call centre got hit by Covid. They are certainly way better than many of the bigger providers.

I have had a lot of trouble with Zen support trying to sort out a problem. It never seemed to be possible to talk with one person responsible for my case. Practically every time I called I had to wait whilst the new support bod read what his/her colleagues had previously written. I then had to ask them to ask the "fault manager" to ask BT Openreach to look into it. Not once could I have the detailed technical discussion which could have resolved the problem. Several times they promised to ring back, but did not do so.

And the queues on the telephone lines! I often waited 30-40 minutes. Then Zen levied £30 call charges for my calls to their help line! (They have hit on a good way of making money here!)

Hard to believe they're Which magazine's recommended provider.

AVOID! Appalling customer service, support emails go unanswered, support requests not handled correctly. AN APPALLING COMPANY BADLY RUN.

We are heavy users so opted for 1000/115 from Zen Business. We ran this alongside another full fibre connection.

We had issues with Zen from the beginning. Our activation date came and went, but nothing worked (existing ONT). Zen support couldn't sort it so an Openreach engineer was booked and got the Zen connection on-line.

The connection consistently underperformed. The best achievable throughput was never more than a third the package download speed. Initially Zen were up against Openreach and their COVID restrictions. This caused significant undue delays.

After a few confused engineer visits Openreach eventually demonstrated the physical connection was okay and the issue was with Zen. Given our other FTTP connection (from a different ISP) always worked to pretty much the full 1000Mbps download this didn't come as a surprise.

Zen support were mediocre and certainly not industry leading. Sometimes weeks between replies but polite, if at times unhelpful.

We paid a premium to an ISP who were supposed to be highly rated. We didn't receive the purchased service. Zen had a year to sort it and didn't. They consistently advised there was no issues with their network, it was a BT problem despite Openreach proving otherwise.

We migrated that connection to 1000/115 with another ISP and amazingly we're getting good speeds... on the same fibre, same ONT and same router.