I love my ISP, but I have to find another one

Hi All,

I am currently with ADSL24 (recently re-branded as coms.com) and have been with them for a number of years, through ADSL, LLU and now FTTC. I have NO PROBLEMS with their speed or level of service, which has been exemplary. However....

I work on a cruise ship and I am away from home for 4-5 months at a time. When I do get back to the UK, it's only for 5-6 weeks, and then I'm back on another cruise ship. But, amazingly, it is cheaper for me to keep my FTTP contract going for the whole year, even though I only really use it for 3 months a year. This is due to disconnection and re-connection rates, which are ludicrous!

Here's an explanation from coms.co, which I got by way of their support ticketing system:

"Firstly, I am afraid that if you did cease/downgrade and then re-order/upgrade, you would have to pay the set up fee again for Fibre. However... Upon some research I have noticed that you are paying £29.90 for your Fibre 500 package currently, so to avoid having to pay the set up fee for Fibre again, you could downgrade to our cheapest Fibre package and leave it running.
Downgrading or upgrading, however, would mean you would enter a new contract with Coms and be under Coms' terms and conditions, including pricing, and our cheapest Fibre package is £28.00 per month for 30GB... And upon upgrading again in August, you would have to pay Coms price for Fibre 500 which is £49.00 per month..."

As you can see, this is a bit ludicrous, especially as I'd have to pay £49 per month for a service that I wasn't using (and nobody else uses the internet at my home, so it's literally a waste of money!)

I'd love to hear from anyone who can recommend an ISP that will allow a 'dip in and out' contract, ideally with a fast FTTC connection as I tend to download a lot of media when I'm home (legally, I might add!) which I then use when I'm on a ship.

Or should I wait to see if the new government plans for cheaper migrations and shorter contract lengths comes to anything? (see here)

Your thoughts would be most welcome

Regards,

miles_muso
Musician, Somewhere near St Petersburg

I don't think you'll find anything fibre related on anything less than a 12 month contract unfortunately.

As an aside, it's not often you see the words 'love' and 'Coms' together on this forum, though you do share a similarity with many Coms forum members here in as much as you are at sea much of the time

Edited by deleted (Tue 27-May-14 14:15:13)

Why are you paying nearly £30 per month for a product with usage cap. ? zen maybe cheaper, or one of the bigger isp's , but all have 12 or 18mths contracts for FTTC , though there are supposed to be some changes being introduced according to ofcom (reduction)on migration charges for FTTC customers who have had an active service for 12mths or more, so switching between suppliers should become cheaper maybe free even,
But whether or not we will start to see rolling monthly contracts too is another matter, but i hope we do

So for now it maybe a better option to migrate to a cheaper isp and cut the cost of your line rental by choosing one that offers lower line rental, that way you ain't paying through the nose for something you ain't using most of the time, failing that just get a mobile data dongle , and don't have telephone & bb from a fixed line, which could possibly be your cheapest option, granted it wouldn't be fttc speeds ect but there's little point in paying for something that you hardly use

Edited by tommy45 (Tue 27-May-14 14:44:00)