How often do you switch ISPs?

I was just thinking - I signed-up to my first "home" ISP (dial-up in those days) in June 1997, and since then I've only actually switched provider three times, and have been with my current provider for 8 years.

Is that unusual? How long do others stay with their ISP?

Are you really on Home 500?

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Are you really on Home 500?

Yes, and I have no plans to upgrade.

I've been with the same ISP but under 3 names by takeover for 11 years.

For home use I started with dial up to virgin.net, even when we moved to our present home in 2002 I kept that going. In 2003, based on personal recommendation, I went broadband with Eclipse. And am still with them, although I've changed packages 2 or 3 times.

See no reason to change.

3 different ISP's in 10 years.
1st AOL (dial up) then upgraded to AOL BB
2nd at the same house O2 BB taking advantage of their O2 mobile customer offer and LLU service (was excellent)
3rd Moved house and no choice but BT for the last 3 years (still excellent but costs more than O2)
Will be staying with BT until something better is available but that might be when Hell freezes over where I live

In reply to a post by Trellis:

Yes, and I have no plans to upgrade.

Which probably explains why you don't move very often.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by Trellis:

Yes, and I have no plans to upgrade.

Which probably explains why you don't move very often.

So how many ISPs do you get through then?

Just two since I can't remember when. Pipex for many happy years until they fell prey to Tiscali, and Be since then. Pipex did me a great favour by becoming so awful.

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

For home use I started with dial up to virgin.net, even when we moved to our present home in 2002 I kept that going. In 2003, based on personal recommendation, I went broadband with Eclipse. And am still with them, although I've changed packages 2 or 3 times.

See no reason to change.

I started out on Virgin.net dial-up as well! It was really good in the early days when you had to pay about £12 a month for it, but when it went "free" I started having real problems just getting through, and would have to retry about 10 times to get a free line. Sometimes it was just busy all evening and I couldn't get on at all.

But sitting listening to the modem endlessly redialling for half an hour just to check your e-mails was part of the fun

In reply to a post by Trellis:

So how many ISPs do you get through then?

Why do you care?

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by Trellis:

So how many ISPs do you get through then?

Why do you care?

Blimey. Sorry I spoke.

I don't care, I'm just interested. Feel free not to reply to a thread if you have no interest in it. The option is there for everyone.

In reply to a post by Trellis:

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by Trellis:

So how many ISPs do you get through then?

Why do you care?

Blimey. Sorry I spoke.

I don't care, I'm just interested.

It's not the number, it's reasons why you switch. I switch when the ISP I'm with don't meet my requirements and another ISP does.

Whenever i get booted off for using too much on "unlimited" broadband.

Homecall > AOL > Merula > O2 > Entanet via Vivaciti

(I admit that the Entanet is metered during peak hours, but you can cane it off peak!)

Switch to Be. Then you won't have to change again.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by Trellis:

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

... nested quotes trimmed ...

Why do you care?

Blimey. Sorry I spoke.

I don't care, I'm just interested.

It's not the number, it's reasons why you switch. I switch when the ISP I'm with don't meet my requirements and another ISP does.

Well, yes, I suppose that's the same for all of us. No-one would bother switching unless there was a specific reason to do so. I guess I'm just interested to know how often that happens for most people.

The most awful ISP I've ever been with was Screaming.net - anyone remember them?

Wish I had a choice but that's life, at least BT where I am is excellent otherwise I would be pulling my hair out.

In reply to a post by dilus:

Wish I had a choice but that's life, at least BT where I am is excellent otherwise I would be pulling my hair out.

If you mean BT Broadband then there's only a very few exchanges in remote parts of Scotland and the like where that is true.

In nearly every exchange in the country you can choose nearly every ISP in the country.

True, they use BT Wholesale, just like BT Broadband do. But the performance and price differences are huge. Usually in favour of the non-BT Broadband, though I have to admit for some people it is fine.

In reply to a post by Trellis:

The most awful ISP I've ever been with was Screaming.net - anyone remember them?

Was that the one on dial-up that hijacked the top of your screen for adverts but, in exchange, was free for part of the day? If so, I used them a bit amongst other dial-up ones,

In reply to a post by Trellis:

How long do others stay with their ISP?

I've had 3 ISP's in the 9 years I've been online.

AOL, Zen and currently with O2 (LLU)

I've had quite a few. There were a number on dialup too but I don't remember all of them so I'll start on the ADSL ones from late 2003 when first available on my exchange..

F2S. They didn't cover themselves with glory despite having a good reputation - took a week for them to work out they'd given me the wrong login then an upgrade from 512 to 1Mbps didn't actually take place and it took another week or more for them to believe me. Left based on lower price.

Eclipse 1Mbps left for lower 2Mbps price.

UKOnline (IPstream) 2Mbps. I missed the bit about it being a 12month contract. Their prices dropped during the year and mine didn't so I left as soon as the year was up.

Eclipse ADSLMax. They made a complete dogs breakfast of their traffic management - downloads would run full tilt but browsing was nigh on impossible. Left during the one month free trial. Took well over 3 months and the threat of legal action to get the £80+ they took from my credit card in an incomprehensible dribble of bills.

AOL. Was put on fastpath for some reason which didn't suit my line. Umpteen calls to offshore idiots didn't result in it being put back to interleave so I quit inside 3 months.

UKFSN (Entanet reseller) left when LLU became available although by then performance had started to deteriorate.

UKOnline LLU. Despite earlier ripoff. A month after signup O2 became available. Tried to wangle early exit because their IWF proxy regularly screwed up file hosting site access but they weren't having any of it. Ran the MJ12 project web crawler flat out 24x7 in an attempt to get chucked out but they tolerated close to 3TB a month download for 3 months without comment.

O2 LLU. First class

==== Moved house

O2 LLU. Dodgy phone line (almost certainly an HR Dis). Still unfixed after 5 callouts to BT. Last engineer spotted noise went if router was turned off and said call O2. O2 messed me around changing profiles which destroyed speeds and obviously had no impact on audible noise. When they finally sent a replacement router to the old address I lost it and cancelled. The cancellation charge was more than offset by the cashback money I got for joining...

VM Cable 20Mbps.

Unless VM really screwup bigtime and BT Infinity becomes available to me I think I'll be with them for quite a while as that dodgy phone line won't be fixing itself.

Edited by kwikbreaks (Wed 08-Sep-10 08:59:02)

Might as well add to this.

Didn't do dial-up as couldn't be bothered and had internet at work. I think 2001 I got BT Openworld (which became BT Yahoo).
Moved to Pipex for a more technical approach rather than consumer.
Left Pipex as they went downhill and moved to plusnet (another techie ISP at the time).
Left plusnet when they started moving people to Tiscali wholesale (and glad I did leave) and moved to Zen.
Left Zen as Sky launched LLU and so saved money.
Left Sky as they wouldn't give me ADSL2+ so went to Be who would.

And still with Be even after a housemove. So, in 9 years I make that 6 ISPs. No plans to move unless the Be service declines or someone decent offers FTTC/FTTP in my area (I doubt either are likely in the next couple of years).

Was with Zen from 2001 to 2005 in one house. Then with Plusnet after a house move. I consider my options every once in a while, weighing up the pros and cons, and in general find there's little reason to move. I didn't pick Zen due to their pricing. Had a few moans about Plusnet over the years, but in general they have pulled their socks up on most things.

Edited by camieabz (Wed 08-Sep-10 10:11:48)

Ah.. I have similar happy memories of Callnet0800..... engaged lines and some mystery incompatibility that led to me being kicked every few minutes (didn't happen with freenetname back up service)

Did they get swallowed by Worldonline?

Too many dial up ISP's to mention. First ADSL was Pipex around 2003(?) upgraded thru 1 meg to 2 meg, but then they were sold (possibly GX - this was pre Tiscali sale) and the 3.30pm slow down started. I checked everything and concluded it was Throttling which Pipex vehemently denied right up to the day I obtained a MAC - when they tried to claim I was in contract on an 8 meg service (had never upgraded from 2 meg) and it was only then after a heated discussion with supervisor that she admitted that they were responsible for my speed dropping off a cliff face each day

Moved to an Enta reseller early 2007, and am making the best of a bad job in terms of the service both in terms of technical quality and customer service isnt as good as when I joined, but given that BTw keep withdrawing RFS dates for WBC (probably too busy chasing crumbs in areas with LLU to keep to the dates published for the exchanges where they have a captive audience) I see nowhere to move to. Certainly wont be Sky after their line checker lied about exchanges being part of a forthcoming LLU roll out - as did their customer service reps on several occasions - I wonder how many they conned into migrating on that basis?

I have had 4 ISPs in 16 years.

I was going to reply that I had never switched, but then I remembered that I did briefly go with Tiscali once, years and years ago (I think it's when I still had dial-up).

What a mistake!

Apart from that, I've been with Plusnet the whole time, right back to when it was still Free-Online. I was recommended it by the IT guy at uni in about 2000, and have basically stuck with what I know.

Generally speaking, I don't switch utility companies (any utility company) unless I have a particular problem. I'm not on a neverending quest for the lowest price and ultimate performance. As long as I get acceptable performance at a price that's affordable for me, I don't really mind that I might be able to get something a tad faster or cheaper elsewhere. Such is the way of the world. I really can't be bothered switching every five minutes, just because somebody else has brought a new deal out.

In reply to a post by TLM:

Generally speaking, I don't switch utility companies (any utility company) unless I have a particular problem. I'm not on a neverending quest for the lowest price and ultimate performance. As long as I get acceptable performance at a price that's affordable for me, I don't really mind that I might be able to get something a tad faster or cheaper elsewhere. Such is the way of the world. I really can't be bothered switching every five minutes, just because somebody else has brought a new deal out.

Way off topic in a brodband forum I know but you are probably paying several hundred pounds a year over the odds by sticking on an old utility tariff not to mention missing out on big cashbacks. It pays to switch at least once a year - takes about half an hour maximum and even if the tariff is no different you'll likely pick up £50-£100 in cashback. Of course you maybe value your free time in excess of £200 an hour....

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by Trellis:

The most awful ISP I've ever been with was Screaming.net - anyone remember them?

Was that the one on dial-up that hijacked the top of your screen for adverts but, in exchange, was free for part of the day? If so, I used them a bit amongst other dial-up ones,

No on-screen adverts during my brief period of usage, but if you also took phone service from an outfit called LocalTel, you got free evening and weekend Internet calls.
I joined up when it was brand new. It may have transmogrified into an ad-supported service after I left, though.

In reply to a post by TLM:

Generally speaking, I don't switch utility companies (any utility company) unless I have a particular problem. I'm not on a neverending quest for the lowest price and ultimate performance. As long as I get acceptable performance at a price that's affordable for me, I don't really mind that I might be able to get something a tad faster or cheaper elsewhere. Such is the way of the world. I really can't be bothered switching every five minutes, just because somebody else has brought a new deal out.

I feel similarly over car insurance. Should the worst happen and I actually need to make a claim (touch wood, it hasn't happened yet) then I want a company that's going to make the process easy and pay the claim without months of trying to wriggle out of it. Premium cost is a secondary consideration for me.

Prodigynet 3 years but would have switched sooner if could have got hold of them for my MAC code, in the end had to phone BT Openreach and blag it
Orange - 1year
BT - 1 year
SKY 1 year
AAISP - 3 months
O2 - 10 months

The one i remember was called Xstream.

In nearly every exchange in the country you can choose nearly every ISP in the country.

Well I must admit I never realised that RobertoS. I probably should have added that there is no LLU service from other ISP's in my exchange and not likely to be in the near future. So I mistakenly thought I was stuck with BT Broadband but I am more than happy with the service and speed over the last 3 years and won't risk moving just to save a few quid.

My parents are still with Eclipse which was connected shortly after the 60dB limit was removed in 2004. In 2005 when MaxADSL was introduced they upgraded to Evolution option 1. (Which I have no incentive to upgrade again as it is cheaper than anything else available now). Next they will be on FTTH either this year or early next.

I on the other hand was with Sky in 2007, O2 in 2008-to-date (minus three months with plus.net while waiting for O2 to fix/upgrade their network before switching back)

Too many to recall but the last 4 years it's been either VM or Plusnet