Because everything we do is political. Yes, I obtained a lower price. Under the semi-socialist policies offered by Labour in 2019, we wouldn't need to do any of this and could spend our time doing more pleasurable things than waiting in a phone queue. Labour would have provided a simple, high-speed broadband service from a publicly-owned provider which - like the NHS -would be free at the point of delivery. Your claim that it would be somehow less efficient is merely your opinion. How do you know what a publicly-owned broadband provider in the UK would be like?

Perhaps the simpler solution is ban all introductory offers and promotions.

In reply to a post by Airlane:

Because everything we do is political. Yes, I obtained a lower price. Under the semi-socialist policies offered by Labour in 2019, we wouldn't need to do any of this and could spend our time doing more pleasurable things than waiting in a phone queue. Labour would have provided a simple, high-speed broadband service from a publicly-owned provider which - like the NHS -would be free at the point of delivery. Your claim that it would be somehow less efficient is merely your opinion. How do you know what a publicly-owned broadband provider in the UK would be like?

No, people like you chose to make things political and there is simply no need (certainly not on a forum like this).

If you think that a government can run a technology service efficenctly and in the best interests of the consumer then you are misguided. We have real world examples in this country thus you already have evidence, as I said look at the GPO.

You do realise that re-nationalistion would have to be paid for. You would have to buy up every ISP company not just BT/Openreach or at the very minimum offer them heavy compensation for the companieis that you would decimate. From here you as a consumer might get a "free" service (bear in mind it isn't free it's just paid for invisibly by taxes, so you could be paying 10 times more and you'd never know).

As a captive customer you will not get any form of customer service from this government entity, they will not invest, as it's a cost centre, and they will not keep up with technological advancements as it wouldn't be something any bureaucrat or govenment beancounter would understand, and ultimately would not provide anything other than basic service.

This has been shown to be the case across many countries for many decades and is thus the reason why an effectively regulated private industry is (for the heavy majority of business) always going to be more efficient, more re-active, and provide a better service than any government run entity.

Edited by gary333 (Sun 23-Aug-20 10:49:58)

Personally I would stick to TalkTalk, unless you weren't happy with the service or you found a significantly better ISP with a similar price.

The thing is with Shell Energy Broadband is that it is not tested, there aren't that many reviews and most of them are indeed negative. Sometimes small ISPs give special offers like these to try and capture as many customers as possible and by then you are trapped in a contract and if you are not happy you can't quit penalty free.

One thing I found out is that Shell supply the Thomson Technicolor TG588V V2 ADSL VDSL router which is a very cheap quality router with only 300Mbps LAN port capability vs Gigabit Ethernet ports for the TalkTalk Sagemcom F@ST 5364 and Huawei Router DG8041W-2.T5.

The router quality is one of the first things you should look at before switching ISP unless either you have your own router or are getting a significantly cheaper deal to sacrifice on quality.

I'm on a 24 month contract with TalkTalk FTTC so far 6 months in and aside from the frequent firmware updates, I have been generally happy with the service. Getting 80/20 Mbps and it is much better of a service than ADSL of-course.

If I quit TalkTalk at the end of my 24 month contract, I wouldn't switch to an ISP like Shell Energy, Direct Save Telecom, Origin or Onestream. From reading the reviews and routers that I've seen, these are some of the worst ISPs I've read on.

I would only risk the switch to a lesser known ISP if it was FTTP and if I get upgraded to FTTP. But for FTTC, while the Openreach infrastructure may be the same. Router quality of the ISPs can make a huge difference on performance.

For example I had once Thomson Technicolor router with Be Unlimited and it wasn't letting me port forward!! I had to buy a new router because Games for Windows Live at that time wasn't letting me join or host online games due to NAT strict. I also had Tiscali many years ago and the modem was overheating causing connection drops.

Your entire experience can be ruined by poor quality supplied router and then you have to spend money on a better quality router and ultimately you haven't saved any money with your new ISP switch despite paying a few pounds less a month...

There are too many misconceptions in your reply to answer here. I'll look only at one:

As a captive customer you will not get any form of customer service

So you think customer service is inherently better in the private sector? Nothing in my experience tells me that's true. I've no good reason to believe that a publicly-owned (not government-run) broadband provider would be worse for service than one run to make profit for a few owners. There are so many examples just in the sector of broadband providers of appalling service that your argument is invalidated. I suggest you and other sceptics read the free ebook about this: Rigged by Dean Baker.

Airlane says:

This absurd, time-wasting process is a prime example of how the market is less efficient and customer-friendly than socialism. The media mocked Jeremy Corbyn for offering a publicly-funded broadband system

Indeed we had such a system. It was called Post Office Telephones and was rooted in the GPO. One could wait three years to have a phone line installed unless you were considered an emergency. In 1965 when my dad became very ill with heart failure he had only seven months to wait for his emergency line), how's that for speedy State socialist service?
And don't start me reminiscing about British Railways ... or British Leyland ...

In reply to a post by Airlane:

There are too many misconceptions in your reply to answer here. I'll look only at one:

As a captive customer you will not get any form of customer service

So you think customer service is inherently better in the private sector? Nothing in my experience tells me that's true. I've no good reason to believe that a publicly-owned (not government-run) broadband provider would be worse for service than one run to make profit for a few owners. There are so many examples just in the sector of broadband providers of appalling service that your argument is invalidated. I suggest you and other sceptics read the free ebook about this: Rigged by Dean Baker.

Nah, there isn't, you are just happy to ignore that the market is full of widely varying ISP's when it comes to the quality of service. Seeing things as black and white is simply naive. In the regulated market we currently have you the customer has a free choice to pay more for great customer service like that of ISP's such as A&A. Like many who think their own experiences are defacto you have chosen the bottom of the bucket providers and then extrapalate your experience to equal the whole market and then say it's disfunctional.

Most people like yourself want the cheapest price, the cheapest price is going to equal the poorest customer services as the cost of customer service is a significant contributing cost to the overall provision of the technology. In the current market if you don't like something you can move to someone better. If enough people place a tangible value on customer services then the companies with poor service would be run out of the market.

When a government run a service you are at the behest of what they see as good enough. It is very clear, and proven by decades of data, that government are not very good at running 'businesses'. As it is no longer an open market you are now restricted by whatever the government of the day deem 'good enough'. You have also then made a situation where manipulation of the infrastructure could be even more prevelant and thus the unintented consequences are totally possible that would never have been envisaged.

Of course customer services is going better in the private sector where the customer choses to pay for it, as there is a reason for companies to provide the better service. As i mentioned above there isn't a free lunch. If you want that better exeprience you have to pay more for it than that of the bottom of the barrell providers. Where the government run a service it's quite simply never going to offer anything other than mediocre at best, as what would be the point, the end user (us) are stuck with their monopoly regardless. In your example we have also ramped up massive amount of debt for little benefit, so the service would almost certainly get even worse than it is now. Even one of the few governement departments that are a profit centre (the HMRC) you will see a service that is shameful, again this is an area of government that ulitmately benefits from the people yet they are treated with distain with a service so frustrating that many don't even know what to do, yet they can't complain as no-one is really accountable or enabled to do anything.

Edited by gary333 (Sun 23-Aug-20 12:59:04)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

There was a change I recall that an offer was allowed at the time of the sorry you are leaving notification for broadband

I also recall that, and you are correct! In fact I found out when someone corrected me a while ago when I quoted GC22.

Using Ofcom's website it is clear that GC22 is now only directly accessible in the archive of previous conditions.

It was replaced on 1 October 2018 by Condition GC7, where the relevant clauses are C7.10-C7.12.

Annexes 1 and 2 are also relevant, again similar to the equivalents in GC22.

There is now no explicit ban on the losing provider trying to persuade the customer to cancel the migration. Though the notification should be in "neutral terms". To me that suggests a single retention offer or similar in the letter/email along with the main required information which looks to be the same as in the old GC22. What happens if the customer then contacts the losing provider to discuss the retention is of course out of the scope of the regulation.

How do you know what a publicly-owned broadband provider in the UK would be like?

Being I suspect somewhat older than yourself in a word "experience". The majority of state owned services became overblown and lazy knowing there was no competition or need for efficiency when they had a captive market.

Be as idealistic as floats your boat but temper it with reality and the experience and knowledge of others. A great example being the phone service. Nothing like waiting for six months to have a phone installed and then finding it shared a line with another subscriber. Where was this? Central London!

In reply to a post by Airlane:

Because everything we do is political. Yes, I obtained a lower price. Under the semi-socialist policies offered by Labour in 2019, we wouldn't need to do any of this and could spend our time doing more pleasurable things than waiting in a phone queue. Labour would have provided a simple, high-speed broadband service from a publicly-owned provider which - like the NHS -would be free at the point of delivery. Your claim that it would be somehow less efficient is merely your opinion. How do you know what a publicly-owned broadband provider in the UK would be like?

Well you only have to look at how the rest of the UK was set to free marketplace and how users in Hull were stuck with one company who were still in the dark ages. as they could not afford to upgrade.