Poor Experience as a New Zen Customer

I just wanted to share my experience so far as a new Zen customer. They’re not an ISP I’ve ever been with in the past, but I chose them as I’d heard lots of good things about them, particularly about the customer service. Sadly my experience has been the complete opposite up to now.

I signed up online and chose an installation date which was a week away. They said this would be confirmed or an alternative date given once the order had been processed.

That date came and went, and I’d heard nothing since my order confirmation email. I got in touch with them via the live chat (over an hour wait). I was told they’d look into it and get back in touch with me. They said they’d do this within 8 working hours.

Three days later, no response. So I contacted the escalations department. Email was automatically acknowledged and they gave a response time of 6 working hours max.

Again, 3 days later, nothing. Order progress still showed as processing, awaiting activation date.

So I rang them up and asked what was going on. They said they’d pass it on to the right department and get back to me. I asked if their advertised response time of 8 working hours was correct, and I was told it was.

2 days later I finally got offered an Openreach engineer appointment in 4 weeks time.

If I wasn’t now outside the 2 week cooling off period I’d be cancelling my order. My advice to anyone thinking of going with Zen is don’t take any notice of their claims of good customer service and response times, as they certainly don’t live up to them.

I don't believe your experience is typical. I have been a ZEN customer for many years and have found their support to be excellent. A couple of months ago, I went through a fairly complex "reconfigure" which involved getting rid of a superfluous phone line, getting faster line speed, and going "digital voice" - the whole process happened without incident in a couple of days. When I queried my download speed a week later, I had an Openreach engineer on site within a day (on a Saturday morning !). I always recommend ZEN to friends.

Pre-installation delay: If the service has not gone live and the delay is caused by Zen or their network partners, you have grounds to cancel without penalty because they have failed to deliver the service.

Call Zen directly at 01706 582068 to request a cancellation due to the delayed installation date.