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Moving from Virgin to OR FTTP

RachT123

Regular Member
Hi,

I’m moving from VM to an OR FTTP provider due to the awful latency and reliability that DOCSIS has but wanted to ask some questions

I know that the OR providers all use the same infrastructure, but I care about customer service after my poor experience with Virgin. Which providers are the best for customer service?

Also, I’ve heard that the ISP provided routers are a nightmare (my VM Hub 3 certainly has) - would you suggest I use the ISP router or another one? I’m terrible with routers as I’ve never had to buy one so would appreciate a model name/link. Budget is around £100-150 if it would be useful to have a better router.

A family member has asked to have a landline - so would appreciate some suggestions for VOiP providers/phones also.

Thanks.
 
Zen, IDNet, A&A all got amazing support teams, i been with Zen for nearly a year and no down times and when I had to talk to someone is was fast and very helpful.

Mind you these ISP's are expensive compared to likes of Vodafone but then Vodafone has terrible team and bad routing issues.
 
I’ve heard very good things about IDNet, and plan to move to them myself at the end of my current contract. They also intend to offer the new > 1Gbps Openreach tiers in future.

As for a router, I have a couple of the Asus XT8’s which have been pretty good. An Asus XD6 is around £120, although if you have a larger property it would be better looking at a mesh network or multiple wired AP’s.
 
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From suggestions above, Zen has gone downhill lately and their customer service is nothing special anymore. If choosing them for CS I probably wouldn’t bother with them anymore.

IDNet and A&A I can recommend both from personal experience however. IDNet Especially. Great connection. Great service.

Of the more mainstream brands I would say BT/EE/Plusnet (All the same company now, pick the cheapest on a comparison site) as CS is decent and all UK based too. Router they give out isn’t the latest and greatest but is entirely usable unlike Virgin’s hub 3.

For landline, A&A have £1.44 a month line rental and very cheap pay as you go rates if you aren’t going to be falling out with it too much. You can get this even if you don’t get your internet from them.

As for a router, get your hands on a TP-Link VX230V or EX230V. Places like CeX and eBay tend to have them pretty cheap. They support WiFi 6, are very stable even with lots of devices connected, have good wireless range, and have VoIP support built in so you can plug your landline phone straight into the back of it rather than needing to buy new or additional equipment for your telephone service too.
 
Another vote for Andrews and Arnold, I have been a customer since 2018 and am very happy to at least continue to use their L2TP service in the absence of any copper/FTTP. However, FTTP recently became available and I went straight for the 1Gbps AAISP option.

Have had some very technical e-mails back and forth in the past which you'd never dream of discussing with any other provider, especially not the "big brands". Bear in mind though, we're a more savvy lot on this forum, and we'd probably only recommend the more niche ISPs.

AAISP are not cheap, however I'd not go anywhere else for internet anymore. (Except I do have Starlink.. but only to get over FTTC speed :))
 
From suggestions above, Zen has gone downhill lately and their customer service is nothing special anymore. If choosing them for CS I probably wouldn’t bother with them anymore.

IDNet and A&A I can recommend both from personal experience however. IDNet Especially. Great connection. Great service.

Of the more mainstream brands I would say BT/EE/Plusnet (All the same company now, pick the cheapest on a comparison site) as CS is decent and all UK based too. Router they give out isn’t the latest and greatest but is entirely usable unlike Virgin’s hub 3.

For landline, A&A have £1.44 a month line rental and very cheap pay as you go rates if you aren’t going to be falling out with it too much. You can get this even if you don’t get your internet from them.

As for a router, get your hands on a TP-Link VX230V or EX230V. Places like CeX and eBay tend to have them pretty cheap. They support WiFi 6, are very stable even with lots of devices connected, have good wireless range, and have VoIP support built in so you can plug your landline phone straight into the back of it rather than needing to buy new or additional equipment for your telephone service too.
Zen for me are good as before so no idea where your getting this information from
 
Good responsive support from Aquiss. You also get a 12 month contract (half price for first 6 months), with no price rises in contract or when the contract ends. You do have to supply your own router though.

I use Mikrotik routers as they are extremely powerful and flexible, but I'm a technical user and that level of control may not be to everyone's taste. Aquiss themselves recommend TP-Link routers which I think are pretty well regarded, and also have a longer list of known compatible routers. It'll be easier for them to resolve problems with you if you have hardware they're familiar with.
 
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Only yesterday was my colleague grumbling about the quality of Zen support when he had to ring them in the last few days.
A line that doesn't have dial tone which should have dial tone and also had slow DSL because of the same fault was being refused to be escalated to open reach as a fault! Considering this is the kind of thing we support all the time (and yes, tested in the test socket etc) the waste of time caused by then refusing to report it to openreach as a fault was very unwelcome.
It sounded like they've got some rigid support process/scripts now with no skill.
 
Zen for me are good as before so no idea where your getting this information from
The reply above this one is a perfect example of how things are going with Zen now. It's just turning into any other ISP where they read scripts and follow set procedures. A lot of the staff don't have the technical knowledge themselves nor do they notice when a customer calling them has the knowledge either.

While reviews are still generally positive they are definitely getting lower ratings on average than they have in previous years. And this is a similar situation I found when helping an older family friend who went with them for the good ratings and customer service that was supposed to be easy to work with.

There was a great deal of reluctance to escalate anything or to deviate from scripts. It took them sending out not one but two replacement routers before they would acknowledge that their might be something wrong with the line, but kept insisting and trying to talk us out of booking an Openreach engineer suggesting that it's probably our fault or that we don't understand how to connect a router or know what a master socket was.
 
IDNet and A&A I can recommend both from personal experience however. IDNet Especially. Great connection. Great service.

Another vote for Idnet. Their idea of customer support is a polite, friendly, technically-minded individual who answers the telephone after a few rings. No convoluted menus or scripts. It's like chatting to another geeky friend.
 
Thanks for all your help guys - I’ll have a look into Alexander&Arnold and Aquiss.


I’m quite surprised to hear about Zen - I’d heard good things about their tech support, but it sounds like they’ve become more of a “regular” ISP recently
 
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before they would acknowledge that their might be something wrong with the line, but kept insisting and trying to talk us out of booking an Openreach engineer suggesting that it's probably our fault or that we don't understand how to connect a router or know what a master socket was.
That's exactly what my colleague was experiencing.
 
My experience of Zen over a number of years has been that the CS seem to have no way of communicating with one another. If you call them once and get a person, and they're able to fix your problem, great. If you call them and the person isn't able to sort it there and then, you will never be able to reach them again (they're always "in a meeting" etc) and anyone else you reach won't be able to help, and won't have any notes on your issue, so you have to explain it from scratch, and so it goes round in circles. It's like they have no ticketing system and no way for different CS staff to pass ongoing cases to each other.

They also have significant issues responding to emails - I'd much rather send an email than make a phone call, but if you do send an email you either don't get a response, or it takes literally weeks. So you end up having to make phone calls, just to get through to someone, and then you end up with the above "he's in a meeting" issue.

The connection is excellent, and I like that they have a POP in Manchester which means not everything goes down to London, as a user in northern England I value that to some extent, it reduces my ping to Manchester-based CDNs in particular, it's just a nice-to-have. If I hadn't been with them for years, I'm not sure I'd go with them again now, but it's fine as things stand as I have no technical issues.

If I move again, and by some miracle find that I'm still in a CityFibre area when I've moved, I will strongly consider IDnet.
 
Only thing about A&A is that the install fee for their BB is £100 (wouldn't mind up to £50 - but £100 does seem a lot!)

Would you say that despite this, they are a good choice?
 
I wouldn't go anywhere else for internet. Indeed, it is not cheap, but I can guarantee you will not be disappointed if you decide to take their services.
 
A&A also has data caps so if you do download / upload a lot, probably wouldn't join them.
 
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I've posted on one or perhaps two other threads but this one has some relevancy to myself and my experience with one of the ISPs referred to here.

I spotted the reference to AAISP (Andrews and Arnold) being too expensive ( I had a look and realised they were too expensive for me anyway, but thank you.by RachT123) ... but I've checked, quite carefully, how comparison between Idnet, AAISP and Zen shapes up for my own circumstances and, for me, I can say with reasonable confidence that AAISP are cheaper than Idnet,

If I compare Idnet's basic FTTP broadband on a 12 month contract and include their UBOSS Voip plan (with no calls included) then compare it to AAISP's basic FTTP on a 12 month contract and include their VOIP plan (with no calls included ... but, as it happens, with very reasonably priced phone calls available) .... then it turns out that AAISP's monthly fee is £6.50 per month cheaper than Idnet. It gets a bit complicated if you compare installation costs and router costs and availability and I won't attempt to detail that here ... but it's worth looking carefully to see what fits the bill best.

I did wonder about Zen and they're not significantly different from the above mentioned figures - but - I've taken note of some derogatory reports, most of which suggest they were once at the top of the tree but have fallen back in more recent times.

I'm increasingly close to moving to AAISP (after 16 years with Idnet). AAISP will be a bit cheaper, their VOIP plan suits me nicely as a low user and having called AAISP a couple of times I'm impressed by both their sales and their tech response.

Rightly or wrongly Idnet made no attempt to persuade me to stay when I rang to ask if I could keep my Idnet email address if I left them (I can keep it for £18 a year and that offers something like 250mb of email storage ... ( not a lot ! )

But, speaking personally, as regards Idnet's customer service and reliable connection it has been excellent and someone answers the phone quickly as a rule. So no notes of disapproval from me.
 
I decided to go with EE in the end, but I respect your opinion - although even EE’s customer service is miles better than VM’s. (And AAISP’s VOIP is very reasonably priced too, considering how rarely the landline gets used!)
 
Thanks for prompt update.

As it happens I have a mobile phone contract with EE and it's been fine. I starteed it paying just £9.50 a month for calls, texts and 25GB and it went up to £10.25 a month or two ago. I have a fairly local EE shop and they've been fine in there and would obviously like me to take broadband with them and would, presumably, offer some support in times of need.

Dare I ask what your broadband costs you? I guess you still use AAISP for the phone rather than use any EE VOIP plan that may or may not be offered?
 
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