IDNet or ZeN? Advice Needed...

Hi all,

I am a frustrated Enta Customer... and need to use my MAC to migrate away, now I am not going to talk about the problems as enough has been said by people on that I think. But I do need advice on who to move to.

Ideally I only want to spend £20 a month, but I am willing to pay upto £25 and have singled these 2 providers out for Broadband due to them fitting the bill. Now the advantage IDNet have over ZeN is that they offer 30GB a month instead of 25GB a month... other than that they both look the same?

Are there other differences? Who would you move to, and why?

I normally use more than 25GB a month (less than 20GB sometimes) however in the last 9 months I have hit 30GB twice, although that was a freak moment(s) I feel. I have been with ZeN before and could not fault them, but value for money aswell as having a good connection is important.

I am synced at 7150 and would like to be downloading at full speed most of the time, I know its not practical to expect it all the time.

Your help is appreciated...

Well I recently moved to plusnet from Zen (purely financial and I got the 30 day notice deal) but I have to say that Zen are the best isp I have been with, no problems at all. If things get better for me I'd definately go back to zen. However it has to be a personal choice for you and I have heard good things about idnet although I haven't tried them myself

Fortunately, I do not have to move (Line One). I am already with Zen and can not fault them.
(joined in 2003 when my exchange was enabled and have never even thought about moving).

The jury is still out with my Line Two

A quick look at the IDnet forum tends to suggest speeds have been suffering of late.

Edited by deleted (Thu 26-Feb-09 00:22:04)

I have been with ID Net for just over a year now and I can honestly say that I have never had any problems with them. They're not the cheapest in town but you get what you pay for and that is 100% reliability. I can absolutely depend on getting a steady maximum speed 24/7 - after school, wet Sunday afternoons, two in the morning and at times which other ISPs would call peak hours.
Furthermore, their service is based in England and is managed by people who know what they're talking about and treat you as an individual. They are most definitely NOT script / flow-chart monkeys.
Any recent problems there have been were caused by teething problems with new kit installed to increase capacity and seem to have been sorted out.
If you do sign up to ID Net you will not regret it. BTW I don't work for them, I'm just a very satisfied customer like the other 99.9% of ID Netters.

I have been with Zen since March 2007 and have to say never had a problem. I can not comment on ID net as never used them but they do seem to also get good reviews.

Hello everyone just joined the forum.

I used to be with Zen, I found them a decent ISP, but when I started to have a big drop in speed from what I was used to, the help I received from Zen wasn't what I was expecting. All the help I got from Zen was "your speeds are within the thresholds that BT set".

In the end I decided to move to Fast.co.uk, admittedly I still had the drop in speeds but Fast were right on the case and I was gob smacked with the level of customer service from Fast. They told me to do some speed test over a 3 day period and log the results down in a text doc and after 3 days I had to email the results to Fast.

They replied back and said the results were not good enough and they then told me they would take the matter up with BT, shortly after Fast contacted me again saying that they were in the process of arranging a visit from a BT engineer, and they wanted to know the best day/time for the visit.

The engineer came and checked the wiring and done some tests, everything was OK he said, Fast contacted me the day after and asked what the engineer had said, Fast told me to do some more speedtests and log the results again, but the speed problem was still there. I notified Fast of this and they then arranged for another engineer visit, he done the same tests but he went on to say that he was going to do something/adjust something at the exchange. The result is I now never see speeds drop to what the did.

So has you can see Fast.co.uk done a HELL of a lot more than what Zen were prepared to do.

Anytime I email Fast I get a reply back within 20 minutes, sometime even 10 minutes, I can remember emailing them at 11:45pm and expecting them to read my email the following morning, I was extremely surprised to receive an email back from them 10 minutes later.

Personally I find Zen less value for money than Fast, looking on Zen's website I see that their "Zen 8000 Pro" package, which has a 50GB download limit is £34.25 with the vat.

I am on Fast's 110GB (448kbps upload speed package) and I pay £45.99, so for an extra £11 a month I get more than double the download limit with Fast. It is worth pointing out that Fast don't mention the 110GB package with the 448kbps upload speed on their website, they do mention the 110GB with the 832kbps upload speed but that is a bit more expensive. I only found out about the 110GB 448kbps upload speed package when I telephoned them to ask if they done any other packages between the 45GB and the 110GB.

Also the fastest speedtest I got with Zen was 6400 kbps, with Fast I regularly get the high 7000 kbps and even 7100 kbps which is extremely good on a 8128 connection/sync rate which equates to a BRAS/IP profile limit of 7150 kbps, 7150 been the fastest I could possible get.

I spent 2 years with IDNet - found them good but expensive. Looking at their board recently, they seem to be have what are by their former standards, mega problems.

Might be best to avoid them at the moment.

Thanks for all the replies... Lots to think about.

Spoke to Simon at IDNet and he thinks the worst is behind them and that there are currently no problems... this is good to hear and helps a bit with deciding.

Going to take the weekend to think some more and definitely make a move on Sunday.

Cheers
Darren

Just looked at fast.co.uk but they seem expensive. I would have to pay £22.51 for 20GB which would not give me enough... I need to have 25GB min which they do not do - Shame as they do seem to get good reviews.

Edited by Noonster (Thu 26-Feb-09 21:41:43)