ISP Reviews by notloyal

I have previously been with Virgin Media, and only switched my internet to BT as, at the time, my work required me to have a BT line, and I was wasting a lot of money having 2 phone lines, the Virgin Media and the BT. I was generally happy enough, even though signal-to-noise faults happened quite regularly until they replaced my old, damaged coax cable.

After BT announced their April 2017 price rises I spoke to them to try to negotiate a deal so that my price wouldn't increase. They flat-out refused, as I was still in my minimum term (even though I could have, and then actually did, leave).

I went back to Virgin Media, and the whole transfer process was unnecessarily complicated and lengthened by Virgin's and BT's incompetence and arbitrary timescales, not to mention the fact that Virgin's activation system was down when I was installed, and they gave me a broken router first of all!

Once I was online, I started noticing issues with the connection. I have a VoIP FritzBox! for calling overseas relatives, and it worked fine on BT, but not at all on Virgin Media. The pings were also ridiculously high and variable (see https://i.imgur.com/yHn7WXcl.jpg), which was making SSH, gaming and WhatsApp/Skype calls difficult or impossible.

I reported the fault as soon as I noticed it, and to be fair to them, they sent out a first engineer very quickly. But that engineer claimed to have fixed it, when they hadn't really. I had to ask for another engineer, for which I had to wait a while. The same happened again (it was even the same engineer!). I was then told that an Area Manager had to come out and look at it, as it was beyond the normal technician's abilities.

Three times I was promised the attendance of an Area Manager. Three times the same normal engineer as before turned up, and once even in the morning when I'd arranged for the evening.

When I started making noises around 3 or 4 appointments in, they weren't taking it seriously - they were just giving me loss of service credits for the time the fault was there. After 5 appointments I was graciously allocated a telephone appointment with a certain high-up Steven, who was supposedly a master problem-fixer with an amazing track-record.

The problem was, this was nearly 2 months since installation, and I was still struggling to use the internet service for basic things like SSH and VoIP. And the earliest appointment available with Steve was nearly 2 weeks off.

I finally called in to submit a formal complaint, as it was getting ridiculous by this point. Instead of letting it go all the way, the agent I spoke with recognised that I was a problem customer and agreed to let me cancel free of charge.

Now I've just got to fight over the billing, to get a total refund of everything I've paid - I'm not paying for a service as awful as the one they provided.

Let's not forget their technician's hollow promise of a free TiVo V6 box, as the huge Samsung 500GB box they tried to install wouldn't fit. Nope, £120 + £5/month. Ha!

I'm also going to have to spend a very long time trying to understand how the hell that bodge, also known as my extension phone wiring, was done. The very definition of s**t.

The good:

-The infrastructure and core internet network is actually pretty good, and they fix backhaul capacity issues far quicker than, for example, Virgin Media. If you have a very simple fault (eg cut copper pair) their 24/7 automated fault reporting phone service is surprisingly good.

-Speeds are rock-solid stable (and at the maximum 80/20 cap for me) and pings only around 10ms to London, again totally rock-solid. Just a shame they decide to artificially cap speeds (especially upload), there should be a package with totally uncapped speeds IMO

-The Smart Hub (HH6) has excellent WiFi range for a mainstream-ISP-provided modem/router. I'm a little miffed they wanted £120 for it as I recontracted just before it became available.

The bad:

-Their call centres are useless, like everyone knows. It's not even that they're rude or overseas, they've mostly fixed those problems now. They're just incompetent. Ask their automated menu system to get a new service or upgrade an existing one - i.e. PAY THEM MORE - and you get passed through around 5 or 6 departments before getting through to the right one. Of course, no-one knows what you've just said so you have to explain yourself again every time.

-The fault fixing department is very much script-based. No room for "I'm an advanced user, I know what the problem is, just fix it"

-Unless you're in the first year and you've got a good deal with introductory discounts, prepaid card and cashback, they're extortionately expensive. I'm aware that Ofcom mandates high price minimums, but you're not really getting value for money. There's also no excuse for call costs rising 3 times every 2 years, and certainly not for increases as steep as have happened, considering wholesale costs have plummeted. Ofcom certainly hasn't mandated that. Broadband increases are high, but I can understand a little more, as they sell mostly "unlimited" data and people use more data each year, but it's clear that most of the increases like line rental are simply funding cheap sport for football/rugby fans.

Conclusion:

If you're stuck on a Market A exchange with only 20CN, you don't have much choice if you need hundreds of gigabytes or more for a palatable price. If you're not in that situation, it makes little sense unless you have specific reasons for being with them, eg you're a football/rugby fan (BT Sport is cheap for what you get), or you have to have it because of compatibility or you have a stubborn relative etc. who insists on BT.

If you're with them, haggle all the way once you're outside the minimum term or when there's a price rise.

Pros:

- Monitoring graphs & alerts give exceptional accountability - not seen in any other consumer provider.

- Reasonable minimum term length (normally 6 months on FTTC).

- Agreeable views on blocking, throttling etc. and open and honest director's blog.

- Quality, reliable connection (hardly ever an issue on their side).

Cons:

- More expensive than other providers (though the quality makes it reasonable, and, seeing BT/TalkTalk's wholesale price lists, I entirely understand).

- Support is fairly good but reluctant to help as much as I'd expected with Zyxel configuration, and unavailable officially after hours, on Sundays or on bank holidays (even if just for troubleshooting).

- Overly complicated invoice/billing system means it takes long just to print off an invoice and understand it.

- Not their fault, but in comparison to Virgin et al, the maximum download speed is lower.

Overall:

If you want quality this is probably one of the best options out there, they certainly take it seriously and don't fob you off even if they don't always help you completely. If you rely on the internet or are opposed to blocking/throttling etc. you should probably go with them.