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Which ISP

Hello folks

After troubled times with Pipex I've finally decided to jump ISP. After quite a lot of research, I think I've narrowed it down to two -Fast and Zen.

Anyone have any thoughts on the best one to go for? Both seem pretty good but I understand that Fast don't included any webspace with the package so that may swing it towards Zen.

Any thoughts/experiences lads and lasses?

Kind regards

YC
 
:D
Well..........after Pipex anythingwould seem better.:rolleyes:

I have no experience of Zen myself so can't help there BUT have just joined Fast.co.uk and well yes it is FAST........all day.Best connection I have ever had and the customer service is truly superb,nothing is too much trouble for them,
other ISPs could learn a lot from these people.
 
fast are a netservices reseller..
remember biscit and v21....

id avoid any resellers - make sure isp has its own pipes!!!
 
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Re:

Thanks guys. At the moment, I'm swinging towards Zen: webspace available with package; 20GB cap as opposed to Fast's 15GB, although both seem pretty good.

Had a real mare of a time with Pipex. Probably not all entirely their fault and to be fair, their customer service has improved drastically of late and their people have been quite helpful. The days at the back end of last year when you literally would sit in a queue for an hour before you could get through to someone, thankfully seem to be over. BUT ....

I have some kind of inherent problem where 3 times in the last year my 8MB ADSLMax has plummetted down to 256K download speeds. The best I get is 4MB tops but normally it's around the 3.5MB mark. Then for no apparent reason the thing just plummets and that means a painful process of calling pipex, who call BT then an engineer comes out and says my connection's fine, then he buggers off and a tweak is made at the exchange and everything's hunky dory for about three months when it happens again.

Something affects my profile speed periodically and when that happens I drop right down to 256K.

Naturally I'm pissed off with this but no-one - pipex or BT can explain why this happens, so I'm taking drastic measures. To eliminate the possibility of it being my internal house wiring, I've had an additional phone line installed and I'm gonna use that exclusively for broadband. For the £11 line rental a month, it's worth it. Then, I'm going to change ISP. I want someone without cumbersome yearly tie-in contracts which is why zen look good because theirs is only a month. Fast is 3 months which is also good.

The downside is that my year with pipex is not up until September so I'll have to pay the balance under their terms and conditions, but again it's worth it. Typical of pipex, I asked that if I transferred my service to this other line, would this be included in my year's contract, ie. would it still run out in september? Well guess what? A new line would mean another year's contract starting from when the service began on the new line. No thanks!

Kind regards

YC
 
fast are a netservices reseller..
remember biscit and v21....

id avoid any resellers - make sure isp has its own pipes!!!

Lighterboy you are panicing where none is needed, V21 wasn't paying bills hence the large debt.

Biscit wasn't a reseller they had their own pipes with BT but wasn't paying the bills so were cut off.

E7even had their own pipes need I go on..

You cannot tar all ISPs with the same brush we have not had any bad reports from Fast.co.uk, no complaints of speed loss, no complaints for lack of support also no complaints of not being able to get your MAC if you wanted if even before it was compulsary.


Judge each ISP in their own right on their own record with present customers not on judgement from members who have never used the connection.

IF an ISP has issues and ends up like biscit.v21 its normally they haven't paid all the bills just as any ISP would be after the bills get to a certain level.
 
You cannot tar all ISPs with the same brush we have not had any bad reports from Fast.co.uk, no complaints of speed loss, no complaints for lack of support also no complaints of not being able to get your MAC if you wanted if even before it was compulsary.


Fast.co.uk were signatories to Ofcoms migration Code of practice when it was voluntary, as were Zen.
 
Hi Kits

Unfortunately for V21 it was Biscit that didn't pay the bills, and that ultimately caused v21's downfall as well as their own.

However, Kits your point is entirely valid, all you can do is look what current customers are saying about an ISP and then you have to make your own mind up. Unfortunately their isn't a totally problem free ISP because that's the nature of the beast. There will always be an upset customer out there somewhere no matter who the ISP is, but as long as they learn and change with the times that's always worth taking into account.
 
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I can definitely recommend Zen (even though I've heard good things about Fast).
Depends on your needs, I suppose. I hope you'll be happy with your choice. :smilet:
 
Hi Kits

Unfortunately for V21 it was Biscit that didn't pay the bills, and that ultimately caused v21's downfall as well as their own.

I recall reading complaints on this site dating back prior to V21's sale about some customers having difficulty/ long delays in obtaining macs.

According to this artice:- http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39284979-1,00.htm

"The amount of bandwidth that was being used by V21 was significantly in excess of the level to which they were paying."


V21 had outstanding debts to Netservices covering the period back to December 2005.

for "burst bandwidth" invoice for more than £200k of unpaid charges.

And "outstanding bills for tails and central pipe rentals" as amounting to "significantly more than this burst bandwidth invoice"

Of course, as you say, Biscit failed to pay off V21's debts after it acquired the company.

Both V21 & Biscit were on my "ISPs I wouldn't touch with a bargepole" list, even before the sale was announced.
 
Last edited:
Interesting Yellowcake has had those problems with Pipex. I have had the same with Nildram who are part of Pipex. Last December I had very little Internet after an “outage” at my exchange. My speed dropped from 3.5M to below 100K. This went on for 2 months. Nildram support were very helpful, 2 BT Engineers came round. My wiring was fine, my equipment was fine, BT say their exchange was fine, Nildram say they were fine. Nildram was very helpful, but absolutely nothing happened. Nobody was remotely interested in the coincidence of the “outage” and my loss of service. BT & Nildram just dismissed it. Then for no reason it all came back.
Again last month it all went again. I went through the same things, BT Engineer was sent etc, etc.
My exchange is “congested”, but it’s been that way for as long as I can remember. Then my exchange had another “outage” and magically whatever they did to repair it also fixed my problem.
The worrying thing about all this is that Nildram and other ISP’s seem to have no muscle at all when it comes to BT. BT will either fix it or not depending on a wim. There seems no way to force the issue with them, even though it cost BT 3 engineer visits to say my wiring was 100%. Interesting to note that the BT engineer knew very little about Broadband as BT would not send him on a course!
 
Re:

Yep it certainly is strange but the sad thing is, I'm none the wiser as to why it happens. I also think that different ISPs seem to have differing amounts of clout and capability when it comes to sorting these problems out. All pipex seem to be able to do when you call them is test the speed of the line.

I may be totally wrong here, but when my Dad, who's with Global Internet had problems, they seemed to be able to do a lot more, in terms of line tests etc. than pipex could.

All the BT guy does is plugs his laptop into the socket and checks the sync speed. Once he sees it's OK, he buggers off. It seems he has no contact with the arm of BT that does the line conditioning at the exchange end. His words were: "I can't do anything about that, it's a different division within BT. You'll have to go back to your ISP."

The odd thing is that after a week of low speeds, the minute I unplugged the engineer's cable from my phone socket and replaced it with my normal splitter, the speed came back up miraculously.

What's that all about then?

YC
 
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Hi,

Just to confirm that Fast.co.uk are not part of the sale of wholesale customers to 186k, and that we continue our long standing relationship with Netservices. I hope this may answer any concerns you have.

Regards,

Mark
http://www.fast.co.uk
 
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