Should I change ISP?

My DSL ceased to sync on April 15th. It took until April 23rd to persuade my ISP to contact BT for an appointment to visit my premises and check things out at my local exchange; apparently they were worried by being hit with an �150 charge if no fault had been found at my exchange/premises. BT came out on April 24th and swapped out a dodgy line and things have been fine since. I have been with my ISP for 5 years, paying them �25.99 a month for an up-to-8Mb-line with a 50Gb limit and have never previously contacted them for help.

So I was without my broadband line for most of 9 days. Is this a reasonable level of service? Is this the kind of service others experience? Personally I feel somewhat miffed to be without a service for 9 days, but am I being unreasonable? Would I get a better service by moving my ISP to be KeConnect or IDnet (say).

Ulimately it is down to BT to fix things and they aren't always the quickest. I can understand why your current ISP waited to get an engineer; they wanted to be sure there wasn't an equipment or wiring issue in your house because if no line fault was found at the BT master socket you would have been landed with a bill for �188 and I guess that you would not have been too happy with that.

Would you get a better service by moving to the likes of IDNet? Possibly, but you don't sound like you're too unhappy with your current ISP. For 50GB you'll have to pay IDNet more than �26 but you might find that there are other ISPs that will give a good service with higher limits for less money than you're paying your current ISP.

Regards,
Steve

We can offer an up to 8mbs connection with a usage of 330GB all for �19.99 per month with no charges should you choose to leave after our low 30 day minimum contract.

If you are happy with your current provider and there is not throttling or other restrictions on your connection then you may as well stay with them. Only if things deteriorate should you consider other providers.

Idenet are worth considering if that's the decision you come to.

You are not being unreasonable, but your ISP is right to be cautious as many people get a problem and get an engineer sent out and it is a problem at the user end, so chargeable to the ISP by BT, and most ISPs pass the charge on to the user, which is fair enough if the ISP has taken them through all the possible user-end problems.

But 8 days to get an engineer appointment is not reasonable - unless an awful lot went on between you and the ISP in that time.

It is very hard for us to comment without knowing who the ISP is - we could give an opinion like - "strange, they are a good ISP", or "typical of that rubbish ISP".

The same applies to whether you should move. Without knowing where you are we cannot really form a view. But the earlier posters have covered that aspect.

Thanks for the replies, folks. I haven't complained to my ISP (Nildram); I was just wondering whether the delay in getting BT to come out was standard and whether I would do better with a different ISP.

>> You are not being unreasonable, but your ISP is right to be cautious as many people get a problem and get an engineer sent out and it is a problem at the user end, so chargeable to the ISP by BT, and most ISPs pass the charge on to the user, which is fair enough if the ISP has taken them through all the possible user-end problems.<<

Yes, I understand that. But 9 days is too long. The internet is fundamental to the way we live nowadays and there were lots of things I missed out on in that period.

>> But 8 days to get an engineer appointment is not reasonable - unless an awful lot went on between you and the ISP in that time.<<

I rang them every day and got either "we're running tests" or "BT are running tests".

>>It is very hard for us to comment without knowing who the ISP is - we could give an opinion like - "strange, they are a good ISP", or "typical of that rubbish ISP".<<

Nildram used to be very good. I understand however that they got bought out by Tiscali :-(

>>The same applies to whether you should move. Without knowing where you are we cannot really form a view.<<

Whitefield, north Manchester.

Sorry, by "where you are" I meant which ISP . But the Whitefield does help, it seems you can get O2/Be on your exchange and that's a far better idea than Nildram/Tiscali, specially the O2 one at the moment.

Comparisons.