zen and other "niche" isp's

Can anybody gimme some reasons why i should stay with zen for adsl & phone -vs- some of the other "niche" isp's out there Gradwell, aaisp, etc?

From an employee's point of view, we work on a lot of calls per day, but as a rule in support we follow one main rule, Fix it First time. If we can't fix it, then we will raise it to our suppliers to have it fixed.

Other ISP's are good, but I have been with Zen as a customer for 4yrs and as a staff member for 4yrs. I would not change. Every company will make mistakes, but as someone else on these forums, 'its what they do after they have made them, that will sperate them from the rest.'

Kindest Regards,

yes i agree zen's tech support is simply great, BUT what about offering services over the be network????

as an example?

erm, do these count ?

"You dont have to abreviate their company name when posting about them."

"Their company name is really easy to spell"

I honestly can't comment on whether or not we have looked in that direction. I understand that over the B.E network you do not have to worry about BTW's network issues, or common faults associated with this, however I can say that we (Zen) are working with BTW on a daily basis to help them find and remove issues, not only on thier network but with the process that allow us to comunicate with them.

This is not by any means a quick fix, however if we dont raise the issues and ask if these issues can be looked at in the same way you would raise a fault to us, then what kind of ISP would we be?

Kindest Regards,

In reply to a post by wayneandleanne:

yes i agree zen's tech support is simply great, BUT what about offering services over the be network????

as an example?

Hear hear - lets have an alternate platform to the shocking BTWS system and all its faults...

I believe BT will never be beaten into submission by the ISP's and will never give the access & control (to the EU) as the full LLU providers do at the moment. Why flog a dead horse ?

In reply to a post by wayneandleanne:

yes i agree zen's tech support is simply great, BUT what about offering services over the be network????

as an example?

What services are you referring to, or do you have in mind? Did you mean Be, as in the ISP, or BT as in typo? Most of the chargeable services offered by BT can be had for free anyway. The bandwidth allowance is, imho, restrictive and regressive. The TV services are dependant on you having a decent connection. The call services, well, BT is telco first and foremost, the 'niche' ISPs are just that, so its not really an apples-for-apples comparison. However, in the real world people don't make like-for-like comparisons, so I would suggest looking at other call providers and/or VOIP services.

Or, if you can wire up a separates hi-fi system or program a VCR, then you have the skills to home-brew most of the services offered.

TV. Forget Virgin, Sky, BTVision. Many modern sets have freeview and freesat/HD receivers inbuilt. If you need PVR/EPG/multichannel, buy a Dreambox and a hard disk. A Sky box receives around 300 channels. The same dish on Dreamview - 1100 channels. Not enough? Add a motor unit for £50, which the Dreambox can control, and access >22000 channels. There is still nothing to watch, though Oh, and you can chose the size of hard disk, so not limited to approx 80hours...

Voice. You have heard of Skype, of course. Now add, for free, a full blown PABX. Your own complete voice network out-of-the-box. As many features as you want or dont want, including per-individual voice mail, call forwarding, call logging,IVR, follow-me, accounting, etc etc etc. Asterix, FreeSwitch, PBX-in-box, all do this. And the hardware requirements are minimal. I've seen this running on an old linksys router (!!)

Vault services - online data backup. Google, Microsoft, and others all offer on-line data storage. Most give away 2GB for free. Do you really need more? Then perhaps a 4gb USB or SD card on a keyring might be better - and much faster.

Security services - I wouldn't touch Nortons, McAfees, Panda, or anything else with a bargepole. Avira - free - is much better, and can be un-installed without reformatting the hard disk. And is far less intrusive in use.

Give me a small dedicated ISP anyday.

Quote" http://www.bewholesale.co.uk/"

In reply to a post by wayneandleanne:

Quote" http://www.bewholesale.co.uk/"

"ERROR 404 - PAGE NOT FOUND"

edit: found!

Edited by deleted (Tue 15-Feb-11 08:56:14)

bewholesale.co.uk
works for me

Just an idea zen

Can't comment on Zen although I think they have a fairly good reputation from what I've heard, so clearly they are doing some good in this arena.

I can, however, comment on my experience with BE and Fluidata. Simply put, they deliver. They don't throttle or shape the traffic so I get a steady throughput 24/7 and not the typical mid afternoon slow down I got with BT.

Mind you, the Fluidata line isn't cheap, I guess some would be put off by that, but then I'd sooner pay £4 for a bottle of Budvar than 50p for a can of Skol!

In terms of support, I really like the fact that they have they're own NOC where engineers are on duty 24/7, this really came into its own late one Tuesday night when my daily incremental back-up hit a snag at 01:08, I simply called them up and let them diagnose the fault and rectify. A far cry from the torturous hours spent bouncing about from pillar to post in BT's underbelly, in search of resolution to issues encountered.

In reply to a post by Pedro303:

Can't comment on Zen although I think they have a fairly good reputation from what I've heard, so clearly they are doing some good in this arena.

I can, however, comment on my experience with BE and Fluidata. Simply put, they deliver. They don't throttle or shape the traffic so I get a steady throughput 24/7 and not the typical mid afternoon slow down I got with BT.

Mind you, the Fluidata line isn't cheap,

How much do you pay?

More than I did at BT but then its not a like for like.

In reply to a post by Pedro303:

More than I did at BT but then its not a like for like.

Is it more than I pay BE for an Unlimited product?

How much do you pay? and what do you get for your money?

In reply to a post by Pedro303:

How much do you pay? and what do you get for your money?

https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/beunlimited

I pay more than that. But then I get more.

In reply to a post by Pedro303:

I pay more than that. But then I get more.

Thought you might.
How much more? For what?

In reply to a post by wayneandleanne:

Can anybody gimme some reasons why i should stay with zen for adsl & phone -vs- some of the other "niche" isp's out there Gradwell, aaisp, etc?

Ok I'll try and be as impartial as I can here as a customer of Zen's rather than an employee.

I've been working for UK ISP's for over 15 years now most of that time in Customer Service, Support or Operational management capacity. Some of those ISP's include the award winning Prestel Online and Madasafish.

In all this time the ISP I have remained with as a customer is Zen's. To date that is for 8 years without a break. I would NEVER consider leaving because of one thing and one thing only.

No, not the numerous awards they win for Technical and Customer Support or the fact they don�t traffic shape my connection either.

It�s nothing more than the ease in which I just sit back and it all just works. Even though the ADSL service is run off of BT Wholesales network, Zen make sure it works and where there�s the odd glitch they either work themselves on it if they can or push BT to do it for me. I�ve had two minor issues in that 8 years. Two � and both of those were BT�s problem not Zen�s.

Yes it costs more, yes it doesn�t have all the bells and whistles as some other "cheaper" brands out there but it Works. For me that is top of my personal priority list.

I can't fault em personally and where we do have the odd issue here and there we try our damndest to fix the problems to the customers satisfaction.

Regards
Gary

In reply to a post by wayneandleanne:

bewholesale.co.uk
works for me

Just an idea zen

same for me when you simply click the link "Error 404 - Page Not Found" but click on News in the body of the page and it works fine.

I know this is an oldish thread but I'd like to echo what Gary said (I have no connection with Zen other than being a customer) the service just works 99.99% of the time and if there is an issue they sort it quickly.

As you can see from my sig I've used a number of ISPs but I always found that I wasn't getting enough bandwidth in exchange for my subscription, I would then purchase additional bandwidth which I didn't use completely so I would lose it, luckily with Zen it just rolls over until used.

In reply to a post by CommanderZendo:

-snipped-
No, not the numerous awards they win for Technical and Customer Support or the fact they don�t traffic shape my connection either.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2011/02/23/uk-isp-z...



Gary

Yes yes, you can nudge the smug-o-meter up a notch as Zen have won another well deserved award.