Sponsored Links

Some ISP's are out of touch with the customer?

Some are. Monkeyarms, you echoed my thoughts.

Its amazing how many ISPs seem to mess customers about. I was going to migrate from eclipse, because they seemed a tad expensive.

Now, after looking at various things and other ISPs, Im sticking with them.

Its suprising that not many (if any) dont offer a no frills package. One without VOIP, media content, email, etc etc etc. Just a connection, for a lower price.

I know loads that would snap that up.
 
Sponsored Links
I agree Old Dude, PlusNet seem to have a problem with capacity, and now mess their customers about to sort it.

I too think a no frills package would be good, i dont need or want VOIP or webspace, content message facilities etc.

All i need is a connection. stable, fast and cheap.

My ISP provides 2 out of those 3. So mostly happy :)
 
isps out of touch etc,

monkeyarms said:
I agree Old Dude, PlusNet seem to have a problem with capacity, and now mess their customers about to sort it.

I too think a no frills package would be good, i dont need or want VOIP or webspace, content message facilities etc.

All i need is a connection. stable, fast and cheap.

My ISP provides 2 out of those 3. So mostly happy :)

couldn't have put it better myself, i neither wished to be messed about by various isps, there has to be some descent suppliers around who cater for your exact needs, (tailored). pipex -demon -plusnet etc where to next?. and don,t suggest v21.
 
lol,i would say V21 are out of touch with customers needs!! In my experience cheap means crap(V21).
 
Plusnet are the ISP that seems to be playing around with their packages most out of everyone and from the latest changes it does look like they may have a problem with capacity and maybe contention on their network or why else put in place the traffic shaping and management with the idle time cut off. Do they have enough ports on their gateway(s)? or could this be hiding a bigger problem that we are not aware off?
 
Sponsored Links
Old dude said:
Its suprising that not many (if any) dont offer a no frills package. One without VOIP, media content, email, etc etc etc. Just a connection, for a lower price.

I know loads that would snap that up.
There does seem to be a worrying trend towards offering BB connections with a whole load of extra crap bolted on to make them look better than they actually are!
 
Internet access is quickly becoming an essential comodity like Gas, Electric and telephone. Because it is increasingly easy to move from one ISP to another - at least on paper (recent posts elsewhere on this forum could suggest otherwise though), Internet companies need to find ways to retain custom - and this is where bolted on extras come in. Really telephone calls should have nothing to do with Internet access, but with VOIP coming there is greater convergence; also once one ISP offers such a service, the others must also to stay competetive. Very soon Wanadoo will offer a reduction on the price of milk along with their Internet subscription and shortly after they'll all be at it.

I agree however it'd be great to see an ISP who offer Internet access and nothing else, then they can keep their eye on their core business which will be better for everyone.
 
Demon said:
Very soon Wanadoo will offer a reduction on the price of milk along with their Internet subscription and shortly after they'll all be at it.

I think you can already get money off the price of milk with Tesco - as I believe they give out their loyalty card points with their broadband service.
 
Sponsored Links
All I have ever wanted with an internet connection (Even when it was 56k dial up) was just a connection!

I'd much prefer a bog standard connection. No gimmicks I'll never use. No fancy speeches or flashy logos.

Just a good connection and a staff that have more than 3 neurons to rub together, just in case I need them.

Oh well....Hope springs eternal and all that. B-)
 
Trikky said:
All I have ever wanted with an internet connection (Even when it was 56k dial up) was just a connection!

I'd much prefer a bog standard connection. No gimmicks I'll never use. No fancy speeches or flashy logos.

Just a good connection and a staff that have more than 3 neurons to rub together, just in case I need them.

Oh well....Hope springs eternal and all that. B-)


Funnily enough, thats exactly what I get from Metronet :)
 
Moved from metronet because wanted a caped price moved to plusnet but their speed throatling traffic shaping is terible p2p restrictionsim not a heavy downloader 2 to 3 gb a month usage so when i want to download their should be no restrictions migrating back to metronet tuesday

ps plusnet messed me about with my mac key sent it incompleate and then insisted that it was compleate :confused:
 
you should keep watching the small guys...

Trikky said:
All I have ever wanted with an internet connection was just a connection!

I'd much prefer a bog standard connection. No gimmicks I'll never use. No fancy speeches or flashy logos.

Just a good connection and a staff that have more than 3 neurons to rub together, just in case I need them.

Oh well....Hope springs eternal and all that. B-)

You should be watching the smaller players then!

As ever with a 'utility' such as broadband, customers will generally buy on a 'value for money' principle which is the exact reason why larger ISPs with large funds will add these extras whilst keeping the prices relatively low.

Adding VoIP, email, webspace etc etc costs larger ISPs next to nothing to add when they are doing so in large volumes and as poster Demon states, this is needed to retain customers who might feel that they can get a better (cheaper) deal elsewhere.

The smaller guys however don't always have the luxury of being able to fund such promotions and as a result offer everything from 'no frills' upwards. The problem however is something of a vicious circle - without the extras together with low prices, most people will still vote on price, not service.

Quik Internet for example used to offer a service that we actually called 'No Frills' and it was just what it sounds like, a BB only service with absolutely nothing else.

We've now gone down a different route and offer a 'build your own package' deal for the residential market which allows you to pick just the basics, whilst adding extras such as email and extra bandwidth bumps up the price to suit.

As for the arguement about ISPs losing touch with customers, its the same in every industry. An ISP is a business like any other and wants to be successful - and this might mean annoying a few customers on the way to being a success. It stands to reason that if they annoy too many and customers leave, they'll move to correct the problem.

If shareholders are involved, I'm sure they'd want the company they invested in being a success, and success can only come with customer numbers and those numbers can only be retained if the ISP moves to grab new customers and retain existing ones.

Plusnet in particular might have a few annoyed posters in the forums at the moment, but oddly (at least from what I can see), many of these posters are not even Plusnet customers? How many customers are Plusnet continuing to please?

My point is probably this... if you are not happy with your ISP and you think they have lost touch, go somewhere else! If you want something more basic, move to something more basic, if you truly believe that you get what you pay for, pay the price that you think will get you a better service.

And no, this isn't a plug for Quik Internet. We are a great ISP, but I'll stand up and say that most of the smaller ISPs will offer a great service. After all, we have to work much harder to even get noticed and we don't offer all the bells and whistles that seem to matter so much to so many :)
 
Sponsored Links
If that wasnt a advert i dont know what is and 10 gig monthly bandwidth limit payable at 2 quid per gig over that could turn out to be costly.
 
Old dude said:
He says, including a hyperlink :P

Whats the point in adding my opinion if I don't at least represent my company ;)

veryrichguy said:
oscar winning speech above, but when the small isp gets on board a few more customers, thats when it all tumbles down.

Well, I guess thats when you move again to the next ISP. Personally, I've worked for Quik for 5 years and though we've always been a small to medium sized ISP, we've always remained customer focused. Sure, we're not perfect, but we're committed to the cause. Why make the assumption that getting more customers would make us worse? I've seen this ISP grow tremendously in the last few years and if anything, I think we're now even better.

Every now and again you'll see me appear on here to defend ISPs because I think customers are often as bad (if not worse) as the ISP. The last complaint aimed at our ISP was many many many months ago when a customer signed up to our ISDN service and gave us no opportunity to correct his connection problems before leaving us and writing our one and only bad review at ISPreview.

And that isn't an overstatement, the customer was with us a week, 5 days after joining they emailed and complained that they couldn't always get a 128k connection. We responded same day asking for various tests to be made so that we could try and help them but 2 days later, with no response from the customer, they cancelled and came here to mutter about our poor customer service.

So, if the ISPs have lost touch with customers, can it be that the opposite has also happened? Customers just might have lost touch with the ISPs?

Its not hard to see why customers don't always trust ISPs, but thats for a different day.
 
horatioh said:
...We've now gone down a different route and offer a 'build your own package' deal for the residential market which allows you to pick just the basics, whilst adding extras such as email and extra bandwidth bumps up the price to suit. ...

Just had a quick look at your site -

Did you know: 80% of Quik Internet Customers download less than 2GB of data per month and 95% download less than 10GB

Your download allowance (Standard 10GB/month) is not that great considering what you can manage with a 2Mb pipe. Do 95% of your customers download less than 10GB/month because of the package restrictions or because they don't need to download anything else ?

P.S. [Pedant Mode On]Your broadband summary page, before purchase states

Package Selected: Standard, 10gb per month allowance
Speed Selected: 2mb, download a 20mb file in 4 minutes
Email Package: None, supply your own email solution
Hardware: None, supply your own hardware

Shouldn't that be GB, Mb, and MB ... [/Pedant Mode Off]

:hrmph:
 
Top
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £25.99
145Mbps
Gift: £50 Reward Card
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £17.00
200Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Sponsored Links
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6026)
  2. BT (3639)
  3. Politics (2721)
  4. Business (2439)
  5. Openreach (2405)
  6. Building Digital UK (2330)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2146)
  8. FTTC (2083)
  9. Statistics (1901)
  10. 4G (1816)
  11. Virgin Media (1764)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1582)
  13. Fibre Optic (1467)
  14. Wireless Internet (1462)
  15. 5G (1407)
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms  ,  Privacy and Cookie Policy  ,  Links  ,  Website Rules