Having been a Zen customer for a good 6+ years, I can say that I have received a not particularly special service from them lately compared to previous years.

I recently ordered an extra line at home including a broadband connection from them. Anyway, they sent me a Thomson TG585 v8 wireless modem router which I now know to be notorious failing often. When I noticed the connection was flaky I thought I would run through the obvious first (test socket, microfilters, different wireless channels, etc). I work full time so the process of elimination to quite a while especially when I though each time that I had solved the problem.

I work in technical support myself and didn’t want to call them until I had tried everything knowing they would just say “Well have you tried this…?” So after six weeks I called them and explained the problem which was now a real issue because I needed to work from home. They scratched their heads for three days and then suggested updating the firmware in the router which just left it unresponsive. I ran out of time and patience so went to Currys and purchased a Belkin modem router which I had up and running with a solid connection in under 20 minutes.

I put a call in to Zen the next day and requested a refund on the now redundant pre-configured router option that I went for when I placed the order only to be told that it was not possible as more than 14 days had passed. As a loyal customer with several active services I thought this was a bit of a cheek so then requested to raise a complaint only to be told that there was no point because I would be told the same thing.

So the moral of the story is don’t take the peace of mind easy life option that Zen offer because unlike other ISP’s they supply you with the cheapest nastiest crap hardware and then don’t give a hoot about customer satisfaction. They used to be great, now just average.