Broadband = the modern football

In reply to a post by Matchstick:

........... they seem to engender far more loyalty than your electricity or gas supplier.

May be that compared to the Elec/Gas suppliers a lot of the ISPs are (relatively) small and are able to offer what seems to be a more personal service, with a real person on the end of the phone and not a script monkey on the other side of the world. Not always true (eg O2), but the smaller, less impersonal ISPs (EG AAISP, Zen, NewNet, iDNet) appear to be the ones with the best rep, although recently some of that seems to be wearing off.

The fave tends to go in 3 or 6 month cycles and has done for years.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The fave tends to go in 3 or 6 month cycles and has done for years.

I think that's probably right. Bloggs ISP gets a good rep, people post here saying they're great and there's suddenly a massive influx of new customers to Bloggs. Even if support numbers are ramped up, there will always be a lag while support are unable to cope in the same timely manner. Throw in one or two major problems which prove difficult to solve most likely connected with BTs ageing infrastructure and, suddenly Bloggs are no longer flavour of the week.

As a result posters on TB start to slag off Bloggs, (a) because support can no longer cope and (b) due to wholly unrealistic expectations, particularly if Bloggs is a BT reseller.

In practice Bloggs are probably no better and no worse than they used to be, simply the victims of their own success.

What?

Overpaid primadonnas thinking that what they do actually matters in the bigger scheme of things! It's only entertainment after all.

I deliberately didn't say anything about these symptoms applying to any specific ISP.

You made the post in a thread titled TalkTalk on Watchdog .

I am kind of curious how you "know" I've never been a Talk talk customer though ? smile

the dead give away is in what you posted , because if you where a TalkTalk customer you would know that serious congestion has not been a major problem in the last two years , their is some Exchange congestion that can be checked on by using the TalkTalk exchange status checker page .

-Edit- This does lead into an interesting question that's been bothering me for a while though, why do some people feel so protective about their ISP (I'll be the first to admit that I've done this) ?
It's just one company out of many that you buy a service from but they seem to engender far more loyalty than your electricity or gas supplier.

Its not so much being protective , if you where being factual in your slating of TalkTalk , i would off joined in but misinformation needs challenging for obvious reasons .

I'm in a fortunate position where i have a work line and a personal line into my house and can make comparisons between my UKonline LLU connection and my TalkTalk LLU connection and have felt that allot of what's posted about TalkTalk is justified but also allot that is not .

Because this is so prevalent it actual stops allot of people signing with TalkTalk and saving them selves money and getting a better connection than the equivalent resold BT .

Im the first to admit TalkTalk have some very large short falls in there services that would not suit some users and do my best when given the opportunity to warn perspective customers of those pitfalls , but others have found allot that is posted about TalkTalk does not marry true after they connect to there network .

And one of those things is the long held belief that there network is Laggy , Congested and erratic . They have had long enough to refine there traffic management that congestion is only a problem on Exchanges waiting for upgrades ( as in check there exchange status page )

The thread had drifted topic away from being purely about Talk Talk before I posted but I'm guessing that you didn't notice that.

But your line

They have had long enough to refine there traffic management that congestion is only a problem on Exchanges waiting for upgrades

actually ties back into my original point though.

Clearly this indicates that you believe that some TT do experience congestion problems under certain circumstances. So my question still stands: are all these customers aware that there is actually a problem or do some customers think that this is how ADSL is supposed to be ?

And maybe, just maybe, some ISPs actual prefer customers to have lowered expectations as it means they can get away with providing a shoddier service.

Without anything to compare it to how can a customer know what they could/should be getting ?

Its fair to say most car buys who buy a base model Fiat Panda know it is not going to have the same equipment levels and other handling aspects as a £25,000 car. With cars it is fairly easy to spot, mpg figures, 0 to 60 and ease of review

Broadband as a service with lots of variable is harder, and you'll be surprised how many of the emails we get moaning about speed turn out to be filter/extension/ring wire type issues that one would hope an ISP would resolve, but do not.

Service providers can always do better, TalkTalk is having a rough time due to attempts to streamline all the brands it has under its umbrella.

Broadband as a service with lots of variable is harder, and you'll be surprised how many of the emails we get moaning about speed turn out to be filter/extension/ring wire type issues that one would hope an ISP would resolve, but do not.

That's a good point, education of the user would seem to be a key here but I can't see a viable way to achieve this.

But the cheaper car can reach the speed limit eventually.

My cheap O2 connection is currently unlimited and 99% of the time runs at 6.7Mb/s.(84% of sync). Previously I was with Eclipse still on the same speed but limited to 2GB and that was £6 more expensive.