Sadly looking for new provider

I�ve been with AAISP for almost five years. I can�t rate them too highly. Simply the best�! It�s therefore with a heavy heart that I have to look for a new provider.

At the moment, I�m paying £25 per month for 100 gigs on ADSL 2+. Over the last couple of years, my Internet use has changed. I use more bandwidth in general. I also download data that takes ages on DSL. The new offering from AA is a steal for £60 per month http://aa.net.uk/news-2016-terabyte.html but there�s no way I can afford it. To upgrade my 100 gig allowance to 80/20 fibre with AA would cost £40 per month. It�s steep and in these dodgy financial times I need something slightly cheaper with more bandwidth for my pound.

I�m thinking about the Unlimited Fibre 2 option from Zen�minus phone line�at £35.40:
https://www.zen.co.uk/home-office/broadband/fibre-op...

Opinions on this service would be most welcome but I�m open to ideas.

My only �must have� is a UK call-centre.

Thanks for any tips

Does that £25 include line rental? If not, who is it with?

Have you picked up that the Zen package you are thinking of is £35.40pm if you have line rental elsewhere? With most phone suppliers that ends you up well over £50pm.

What speed is your ADSL? I'm wondering if the AAISP Home::1 40/10 would suit - i.e. would that be a big jump from ADSL or only less than double? What is your FTTC speed estimate anyway?

How close to breaking the 100GB are you, as the AAISP £40 is still that. The 40/10 gives a few quid to play with to take it to 200GB.

Do you need landline PSTN phone service? Bear in mind the AAISP 1TB inludes the line, but no phone service. (VOIP available from them or anyone on it at low cost).

Other suppliers - Pulse8broadband is becoming popular on these forums at £44 unlimited 80/20 including line rental and PSTN service. No call package but calls are ridiculously cheap.

Others to look at, though depending on the package you choose from them they may be unlimited or week-daytime allowance and overnight unlimited are (alphabetically): Aquiss; uno; vivaciti. All with low cost line rental and calls like Pulse8broadband.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 15-Jan-16 11:19:13)

My £25 does not include line rental. I rent from BT. My mother co-owns our home and will not shift elsewhere. It�s a big factor when I look at the providers you list. Many thanks.

The Zen package I looked at for £35.40 was without the phone line.

My ADSL sync is about 17 M. I ought to get near 80/20 in my patch of the woods.

Yes, the 40 mbps offering from ADSL is only £35 but I�m currently using 60-75 gigs, which doesn�t leave much room for heftier downloads. I don�t have a few extra quid to play around with and would not be keen to pay for additional bandwidth on what is now a slow fibre package.

If the 80/20 from AA was just a little cheaper or gave a few more gigs I wouldn�t consider looking elsewhere.

Edited by ARD (Fri 15-Jan-16 11:54:13)

In reply to a post by ARD:

My £25 does not include line rental. I rent from BT. My mother co-owns our home and will not shift elsewhere.

BT Infinity would be the obvious choice.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by ARD:

My £25 does not include line rental. I rent from BT. My mother co-owns our home and will not shift elsewhere.

BT Infinity would be the obvious choice.

Doesn't meet the only requirement given:

My only �must have� is a UK call-centre.

They do on the number I use

You may also want to consider going direct with TalkTalk Business. They're currently offering half price on their ADSL2+ offering and they use a Warrington call centre, with many of their support staff being ex-Zen. You should be able to keep your BT line but you need to speak to them to over the phone though chances are they won't offer you the same bb price if you took line rental from them as well.

If "cheapness" is a prime consideration, followed by a UK call centre, then Plusnet ought to come into consideration.

They'll do an unlimited 80/20 package for £22.50 when you don't also get the phone service through them. And provided you live in an Ofcom "market A " area.

Of course, it comes with something of a penalty, in that you'll have to put up with delays when using their support phone service. Issues there have been long-standing, and can be seen in the PN forum on this site. I have no problems with them operationally - but when I need support, I usually prefer to go via their own forum.

The extra £££ you spend on other services, such as AA, Zen etc, goes to make support better. If cheapness becomes a critical factor for you, then it might just be better to take a hit on support, and accept the extra pain only if and when you need it.

If you did change to PN, the the "route of least pain" that I'd recommend would be that you migrate first to their ADSL broadband-only service, then upgrade to the unlimited-fibre service. You could step via the intermediate 40/2 (not 40/10) service for £17.50 to see if that fit your needs.

In reply to a post by ARD:

My only �must have� is a UK call-centre.

You pays your money and takes your choices... are you expecting problems? Otherwise BT is an obvious choice - works for me.

You say increased usage is your main concern. Then why not leave your line where it is to keep Mum happy, then just stick to ADSL2+, but with someone unlimited. Pulse8 XL home unlimited ADSL2+ is £19 (Cheaper than Zen). You would save £6, go up to unlimited, would not be tied-in to a contract (Unlike Plusnet) and would gain good customer service.

Edited by professor973 (Fri 15-Jan-16 13:11:33)

I manage nine separate Zen Unlimited Fibre 2 xonnections and on the very few occasions there was a problem, technical support was fast and effective. I think Zen would be a good choice if you are leaving AAISP.

BT Internet/ Openworld /Yahoo was my first broadband provider. They were OK for three years. Once support left the UK it was appalling. Synch loss blamed on MS Outlook was a classic

I'll certainly be leaving my line with BT to keep Mum happy. Would I dare do otherwise....!

I need fibre speed as well as gigs but I'll see what Pulse8 have to offer. Thanks.

Thanks Zen still seems the most likely place I'd go without a Lotto win... but perhaps your management of 9 connections has something to do with the quality of tech support you've enjoyed...?

In reply to a post by ARD:

Synch loss blamed on MS Outlook was a classic

Thank goodness I never installed MS Outlook

Another classic was when a PC shipped without the promised drive rails. A driver rail is a ruler-length slice of steel.This was circa 2000 when systems with a CD drive but without a DVD. I phoned the company. Advice: download them from the website. There are limits to what even 80/20 fibre from AAISP can achieve

Zen seems to me to be one of the most technically competent ISPs out there and having UK support staff is defintely useful.

The connections just work as they should. They aren't the cheapest and you do get what you pay for.

I think this is a useful summary. Zen and AAISP are head and shoulders abouve the rest.

In reply to a post by ARD:

There are limits to what even 80/20 fibre from AAISP can achieve

...but couple it with a 3D printer and there's your problem solved .

It's not so much "cheapness" as more for a little less. I'm happy enough to pay £25 for ADSL 2+. It's the moving on that's financially difficult if I want a decent provider. I've looked at PlusNet and been tempted, particularly because they maintain a UK call centre. But I've heard that tech support is very poor now....and not only from the TB PN forum. I think I'll have to opt for Zen.

Well they are happy to do SMPF leaving the line with BTW on ADSL2+. Their FTTC rate usually includes line rental, but they may be able to do the same on FTTC for a little less than the £38 that inclused line.

Thanks for that. I would get a got more from Zen for a little less than I'd pay AA. I was with Zen ten years ago until I was lured somewhere "better" only to be disappointed by their tech team. Zen tech support was good but can't be compared with AA. However, a return trip seems on the cards.

You are so right... !

Sky have their call centres in the UK. They are competitively priced and have recently been highlighted for having a low level of complaints.

...and they're still way below Zen and AAISP in ratings from TBB users

In reply to a post by ARD:

My only �must have� is a UK call-centre.

Meh. Most of them these days don't do anything except pass your request/complaint onto the back-office guys anyway and they only work during office hours. Unless you have a pathological hatred of foreigners it seems a silly sticking point.

My experience of off-shore support staff is that they are more helpful and more patient than their UK counterparts. If I'm going to be fobbed off by frontline/triage staff I'd rather it be a pleasant experience.

In fact several years ago with (Barclays/Woolwich) it was only the off-shore staff who fixed the problem. I called three times over a two month period during the week to try and get them to calculate the mortgage correctly. Three times I was given a simple 'sorry' and assured it would be fixed. Either nothing happened or else it got reset during the week. So at the end of my tether one Saturday I called and got their Indian call centre. The chap I spoke to was very apologetic, admitted it was a ridiculous state of affairs and told me he'd take it up immediately. An hour later he called me back to confirm that the changes had been made ("I've done it properly for you unlike the last few attempts"). Early the next week he called again to verify that their regular 'account cleaning' hadn't reset things.

Oh and the only call centre staff I've ever had problems understanding are the Sky TV people who are (or were) based in Scotland.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 15-Jan-16 14:28:21)

Sky have their own backhaul thus avoiding BTW and TT

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

...and they're still way below Zen and AAISP in ratings from TBB users

If there are so many unhappy customers on Sky it's a shame they don't post their experiences here on the forum, I'd be interested to know why they are unhappy. In my experience Sky have been excellent.

So the TBB user ratings would be even lower if they didn't have their own backhaul?

The user ratings are merely opinon and are not comparative. You can't use them to compare one ISP with another.
They don't ask "how do you rate Provider A, Provider B and Provider C".

What they certainly do tell you is the proportion of customers satisfied with their particular ISP. Are you suggesting that customer satisfaction isn't important and companies don't need to worry about it?

No, I'm saying this isn't a measure of it.

We all know the majority of satisfied customers don't post the fact on fora, the minute one does they are shot down by anoraks. So that leaves the dissatisfied customers that post, mainly asking for help to judge the level of problems, along with Ofcom tables of course.

Edited by professor973 (Fri 15-Jan-16 14:55:37)

Also, mass market ISPs will attract ratings from "less informed" customers, who think that e.g. Sky is rubbish because their iPad won't work in the kitchen on the opposite end of the house to the router, or that Sky is rubbish because their broadband keeps dropping on a telephone extension that has been chewed by the dog.

So the ratings can be affected by the quality of the customer, as much as the quality of the ISP.

or because Rupert Murdoch got engaged to Jerry Hall

Whoops. I made a fundamental boo-boo in this bit, that's worth correcting...

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

They'll do an unlimited 80/20 package for £22.50 when you don't also get the phone service through them. And provided you live in an Ofcom "market A " area.

To get the cheapest prices, you need to be living in Plusnet's "low-cost area" which maps, of course, to Ofcom's Market B area.

https://www.plus.net/home-broadband/faqs/general/#price

Take a look at Pulse8. I moved to them about 3 months ago on their Home Fibre XL package.

I am paying around £47 per month for 80/20 unlimited fibre with a static IP address.

Support is excellent from Sam and Adam.

Their £44 package on FTTC is MPF on TalkTalk Business, including line rental. Which the OP cannot do.

As has suggested he can see if they will do it on SMPF but I have grave doubts.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

Also, mass market ISPs will attract ratings from "less informed" customers, who think that e.g. Sky is rubbish because their iPad won't work in the kitchen on the opposite end of the house to the router, or that Sky is rubbish because their broadband keeps dropping on a telephone extension that has been chewed by the dog.

So the ratings can be affected by the quality of the customer, as much as the quality of the ISP.

Very true of many surveys and ratings. In statistical terms the "populations" are not matched or similar therefore stats are flawed.
IMHO "the more knowledgeable the population the more likely to complain when the performance is substandard especially if paying a premium for it " - now that can really mess up any comparison.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Their £44 package on FTTC is MPF on TalkTalk Business, including line rental. Which the OP cannot do.

As has suggested he can see if they will do it on SMPF but I have grave doubts.

I read it as will not rather than cannot

Yeah not sure they will do SMPF but a quick call to Sam or Adam will clear that up.

They definitely do SMPF for ADSL2+ and as they do not tie you in to a long contract even for FTTC, I would have tought it worth seeing what they can do.

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

What they certainly do tell you is the proportion of customers satisfied with their particular ISP. Are you suggesting that customer satisfaction isn't important and companies don't need to worry about it?

What they certainly do tell you is to exercise 'caution' and 'extreme caution' for Zen and AA respectively when you hover over the results because of the very low sample sizes.

I chose Zen for similar reasons to you. I wanted a "proper" ISP that I could contact and get support on the broadband connection, not one that was simply going to fob me off with contacting a moderator on a forum in an effort to get help (a process that can take days/weeks to get anywhere).

In my experience of the big telephone companies (BT and TalkTalk), telephone support for broadband is almost at the point of being unavailable with their broadband service provided on a best endeavours basis i.e. As long as your phone works and the broadband works at all, there seems to be a reluctance to investigate broadband problems.

A word of caution though ... although I have found the majority of the Zen tech support guys good to deal with, Zen are not a LLU provider in my area and their service is provided via BT Wholesale. Since my Zen connection was installed several weeks ago, my throughput speed in evenings between 1930 and 2300 drops off massively (65Mb drops off to ~6Mb) and this has been attributed to congestion and this still hasn't been resolved because Zen are not fully in control of the delivery and getting BT Wholesale to accept there is a capacity issue seems to involve jumping through lots and lots of hoops!

To be honest most fibre packages are around £50 a month when including line rental and with Zen being the alternative to AAISP and currently on my not recommended list, I would suggest opting for the AAISP £60 option!

Uno is only £35.99 for 80/20 fibre 500GB package with no charge for the off peak periods of 8.00pm to 8.00am weekdays and 8.00pm Friday to 8.00am Monday.

Smaller packages available.

No stupid charges for not moving line rental from current supplier.

And has UK support .

Like all ISPs, even Zen have some at the end of their tether!
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/e8c2d4008cf...

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

To be honest most fibre packages are around £50 a month when including line rental and with Zen being the alternative to AAISP and currently on my not recommended list, I would suggest opting for the AAISP £60 option!

In reply to a post by ARD:

My £25 does not include line rental. I rent from BT. My mother co-owns our home and will not shift elsewhere. It�s a big factor when I look at the providers you list. Many thanks.

As that AAISP package doesn't provide a PSTN service, only VOIP at a higher cost, I doubt if his mother would be happy with it.

In reply to a post by AdrianPH:

Uno is only £35.99 for 80/20 fibre 500GB package with no charge for the off peak periods of 8.00pm to 8.00am weekdays and 8.00pm Friday to 8.00am Monday.

Can that be with BT Retail phone service?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by AdrianPH:

Uno is only £35.99 for 80/20 fibre 500GB package with no charge for the off peak periods of 8.00pm to 8.00am weekdays and 8.00pm Friday to 8.00am Monday.

Can that be with BT Retail phone service?

Yes. That is what I said. That is what I have. At present Uno only offer fibre via BTW.

https://www.uno.net.uk/packages/fibre-broadband/

Provided using the BT Wholesale network, our Fibre+ packages are available to all exchanges that are enabled for FTTC services.

An assured rate of 15Mb is provided with the service (where the line rate is higher).

Static IP as standard.

Monthly usage is within peak hours only which are Monday to Friday, 8am-8pm. All other times are off-peak.

Service is based on a 12 month term at the installation address and will require an engineer visit. Suitable for lines capable of no more than 80Mb (20Mb upstream).

In reply to a post by AdrianPH:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by AdrianPH:

Uno is only £35.99 for 80/20 fibre 500GB package with no charge for the off peak periods of 8.00pm to 8.00am weekdays and 8.00pm Friday to 8.00am Monday.

Can that be with BT Retail phone service?

Yes. That is what I said. That is what I have. At present Uno only offer fibre via BTW.

Did the price drop? Uno website shows £29.99 for me (500GB 80/20).

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

Did the price drop? Uno website shows £29.99 for me (500GB 80/20).

I was going to ask the same until I noticed that they quote their prices ex-VAT which is a bit cheeky imho

In reply to a post by gt94sss2:

I was going to ask the same until I noticed that they quote their prices ex-VAT which is a bit cheeky imho

Bah, of course! Thanks.

The justification for ex vat I suppose is that their website pitches to SOHO and business customers.

Edited by Oliver341 (Sat 16-Jan-16 14:51:30)

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

Sky have their call centres in the UK. They are competitively priced and have recently been highlighted for having a low level of complaints.

But they will not provide FTTC only, no SMPF unless they of course don't have their newer LLU kit installed in your exchange , and even then they would want to take over the line ,because they want the lucrative line rental and calls part of it, which i would think will be by now a very small number of exchanges,And there isn't any way of knowing which llu kit they have in each exchange as they wont publish a publicly available list

Edited by tommy45 (Sat 16-Jan-16 16:07:22)

i usually read many posts with interest..
The major problem to me as a layman is the PENALTY imposed on subscribers when they wish to move provider.
There claim of speed is always 'UP TO'.
If you sign a contract, the conditions should be a stated minimum speed.
Their failure to provide same, should be grounds to move without penalty.
I believe their excuse of congestion is their GET OUT CLAUSE.
The consumer is taken for a ride by ALL OF THEM, a very cosy 'boys club' agreement.
Before I get shot down, I admit I am a Layman in these matters and may have a very
simplistic view.

The claims are estimates of the connection speed. Estimates of throughput speeds from ISPs are few and far between at the consumer product level. I don't know about true business connection leased lines.

I'm not saying you're right or wrong re the "steep" but, but remember at the moment you're comparing the £25 and ignoring line rental, and the £60 WITH line rental, or in other words, the gap isn't as big as it seems.

Whether the overall proposition is expensive is another matter entirely.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

...and they're still way below Zen and AAISP in ratings from TBB users

If there are so many unhappy customers on Sky it's a shame they don't post their experiences here on the forum, I'd be interested to know why they are unhappy. In my experience Sky have been excellent.

I'll second that, Sky has amazed me consistently, and my FTTC which syncs at the full 80/20 gets the full 80/20 every single day, anytime I want. It has always just worked.

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

What they certainly do tell you is the proportion of customers satisfied with their particular ISP. Are you suggesting that customer satisfaction isn't important and companies don't need to worry about it?

Good Point. Customer Satisfaction rates Sky best...

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2016/01/sky-bro...

So your point was?

In reply to a post by tommy45:

But they will not provide FTTC only, no SMPF unless they of course don't have their newer LLU kit installed in your exchange

I missed that requirement of the OP's since I replied to the first post. I stand by my general recommendation of Sky though, be it via MPF or otherwise.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Others to look at, though depending on the package you choose from them they may be unlimited or week-daytime allowance and overnight unlimited are (alphabetically): Aquiss; uno; vivaciti. All with low cost line rental and calls like Pulse8broadband.

With what we've seen recently I'd remove Vivaciti from that list!

In reply to a post by jelv:

With what we've seen recently I'd remove Vivaciti from that list!

Seems like a bit of a cheap dig at Vivaciti to add this comment to a stale thread. But it did get me to check the ISP Unhappiness thread which I suppose was your intention.

As it happens, I think Vivaciti did their best to resolve the matter, they initially passed on the Openreach activation charges on the new line to the customer without making a profit (about £100) and later offered to reduce it to £8 because that's what the order confirmation quoted. So they accepted making a £92 loss on this charge. The cease fee was not redacted for the old line because Vivaciti's T&C highlighted these charges and they technically do not belong to the charges for the new order and so did not show on the order confirmation.

OP on the other hand cancelled their Direct Debit and complained their broadband was suspended. All ISPs would do this in the event of a bill non-payment. The OP additionally rejected the £8 offer even though that was what they were quoted in their order confirmation. They also refused to pay the cease fee on the old connection despite this charge being present in Vivaciti's T&C.

On balance, I side with Vivaciti on this one.

In the end I formed the opinion that the OP of that thread was rather expertly invoking an online version of a flash mob. The usual anti-small ISP gang were happy to oblige, though in this case a couple of crass posts by vivaciti gave them ammunition.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

though in this case a couple of crass posts by vivaciti gave them ammunition.

I didn't see any crass posts. Vivaciti saying they don't know why the email was not received by the OP because they do not manage the OP's mailbox was a fair comment IMO. They said they have SMTP logs showing the email was received by the OP's mail server, which is the best evidence one can have. Any reason for non-receipt after that could not be attributed to Vivaciti.

Edited by Oliver341 (Tue 26-Jan-16 15:13:19)

I would better describe the posts as "terse" than "crass", unfortunately leaving plenty of room for speculation and aggravation.

Yep. It was probably over-strong of me to say that. But some did seem rather ill-considered rather than peace and reconciliation-making. Just bad PR. As now seen.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I would better describe the posts as "terse" than "crass", unfortunately leaving plenty of room for speculation and aggravation.

But then equally they were criticised for sharing to much data which some people considered should be "private". Vivaciti couldn't really win there, nor do I think an ISP should be bullied into waiving charges which are correctly due and payable because a customer chooses to rant about them in a public forum. It's not fair on the other customers who are aware of the cease charges and pay them without fuss.

Haven't we rather hijacked a completely unrelated thread?

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 26-Jan-16 22:49:10)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Haven't we rather hijacked a completely unelated thread?

I suppose so, but the thread was 10 days idle when jelv posted anyway so I don't think we're obstructing an ongoing discussion here.

This is because of the Physics of using a basic, aged, Infrastructure generally intended to handle a frequency range of 40 Hz (aged Cycles per Second) to 4,000 Hz (4.0 KHz), ie a low spread of audio frequencies which can be up to around 16 KHz; compared with the various DSL frequencies from about 1,000,000 Hz (1 MHz) up to about 17 MHz.

------------

It has some similarities to the increasing lengths of trucks.

It is legal to run 44 foot long trucks; but the manufacturers/suppliers can't guarantee that they will be usable on every public road in the UK or anywhere else.

Given that MrS closed the last one because Vivaciti weren't in a position to respond to any comments in a realistic way (Ie people would have a go at them for posting data) I would suggest this thread could be closed pretty soon as well because it is digging up the details of the old thread.

I wouldn't recommend Zen, they didn't really perform much better than other suppliers and in fact had a few issues and for the last 2 months of my service from them I suffered consistent packet loss that would soon escalate to the point where Zen would restart a router on their network to resolve the issue.

Suffered congestion issues even though I was supplied via there own LLU network and not via BT's...

and mis-selling the service from the start has lead to a very abrupt ending.... also don't move home for goodness sakes, it will costs 100's and you will then be expected to start a new contract and pay for the new line / activation again!!