ISP Reviews by EliasQFuntybunt

Honestly cannot fault O2 one bit. Speed is great, reliability is excellent. Price is a little bit dearer than competitors, but if you have an O2 mobile it brings the cost down, and they have a policy of giving existing customers the same deal as new customer would if they re-sign their contract, which is incredibly fair (I'm now paying £15.25 a month for unlimited broadband and evening and weekend calls, including line rental.)

Customer service is where they shine though. I can honestly say I've never had a single gripe with their staff, either on the broadband side or the mobile side. Everyone is knowledgeable, efficient and willing to do the right thing for the customer. Certainly a lot better than the Kafkaesque nightmare of BT.

Highly, highly recommended.

Keeping this under 600 words was a struggle.

BT are quite simply the worst company I have ever dealt with, and their customer service (such as it is) genuinely inspired within me a psychotic rage. I would rather insert parts of my body into a salami slicer than ever have any sort of dealings with this organisation ever again.

Where to start? From the online line checker which gave me wrong information (which BT then blamed me for) which led to my order being cancelled the day before installation without any form of notification? How about when they rearranged the setup, repeatedly confirmed that I would be getting broadband installed on that day, and then waited until it was exactly too late to tell me they had only installed a phone line and not provisioned broadband? Or even the time when they were offering an Amazon voucher if you signed up online, then went back on it because the order they placed to replace the online one they cancelled wasn't placed online?

How about when I (thankfully, sweet lord) managed to get out of my contract with them, and they then terminated the phone line after it and the broadband had been switched but continued billing me for a broadband service they could not physically provide? What about when they then claimed that this was my fault because I didn't supply O2 with a MAC code, even though a) I did supply O2 with a MAC code and b) it was irrelevant because both the phone and the broadband were being switched and therefore I didn't actually need one?

The cherry on the cake was that my final bill should have showed a credit balance to be returned to me (as I had paid for services in advance). They SAID they'd refund any incorrect charges and return the remaining credit balance to me with a bit on top for my trouble. Instead, the Twitter support team very kindly just zeroed the balance on the account. No extra bit on top, but more importantly no money that was ACTUALLY MINE. I pressed for this and was told I would get this money back but no more, as a "gesture of goodwill", with no "bit on top". That BT consider the return of funds legitimately owed to a customer "a gesture of goodwill" is probably the neatest example possible of what a moronic company this is.

For what it's worth, the broadband was COMPETENT. That is the nicest thing I can say about it. The BT Home Hub is pretty, but breaks Windows 7's home networking. Immediately after I switched, line speeds jumped a full megabit on the same line, with no changes other than to use O2's router and service. This simply made the fact that I'm currently paying O2 less than half the money I was paying BT for a superior level of service sting just that little bit more.

In case you haven't guessed, my suggestion is to please, for the love of Christ, do not go with BT. The fact they own the lines is irrelevant, because they still have to go through Openreach like everyone else anyway, only you have to deal with BT's utterly idiotic front-line support in the mean-time.