How are Zen these days?

Hey all,

Looking to move to a new ISP when FTTC (finally) gets activated in our area. Currently a toss up between Pulse8 and Zen, both on 80/20 packages. TCO over 2 years puts both providers on par (£23 between them) so cost isn't a decision.

As a remote worker the quality of service is what matters and I'm willing to pay a premium to get a better quality connection.

I was with Zen years ago on a 8Mbit ADSL connection, never a bad word back then. I see some rumblings on here from earlier in the year regarding speed/capacity issues - looking at the most recent posts and some of the BMQ and download graphs that people post, it seems these issues have gone away.

Have Zen now got their house back in order?

Thanks in advance,
R.

EDIT: P.S static IP is a must

Edited by rupert999 (Thu 22-Sep-16 10:24:23)

In reply to a post by rupert999:

I was with Zen years ago

Thats what their main reputation was built on. Historically!

I moved from Zen after 9 years all in from a fibre line that was all over the place with shocking latency [apparently there was nothing wrong with it] over to another provider that halved my latency and has given me a near perfect connection. Thanks to the BT network failing only I would say 99.9% perfect.

Also they are extremely approachable

Obviously this is my own personal experience!

Edited by derekdel (Thu 22-Sep-16 19:18:04)

My connection was fine, they were my second FTTC provider, until their system cocked up and cut me off - and I was forced to pay for the rest of my line. As I was a business customer I was not impressed and I switched. Taking a lot of future business from the company and colleagues with me (also went to the other ISP)

I couldn't care for them going bust, but that's just my personal experience

I had been very happy with Zen for around ten years but when my local cabinet allowed me to upgrade to 80-20 VDSL it all changed.

After just two months it became obvious that Zen had capacity problems, and whilst my VDSL service continued to be very fast between midnight and the start of the next working day;

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

Attempting to use my Zen 80-20 service at other times was a different story;

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

This continued for around three to four months whilst Zen refused to release me early from my VDSL contract.

Eventually Zen upgraded their capacity at Telehouse and overnight the performance immediately improved.

Recently their capacity is beginning to show the strain once again, just how far Zen will let it deteriorate before they increase their capacity again remains to be seen.

But I must admit that I am counting down the days that remain on my present initial 12 month contract period.

Today, this is the performance of my Zen 80-20 VDSL,

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

Alas I no longer have any confidence in their intention to maintain it that way.

Godfrey.

Thanks for taking the time to reply guys.

R.

After a lot of problems around end of 2015/early 2016 my Zen connection now appears to be stable and running as it should be. That said, the problems I had were attributed to Openreach congestion so not entirely Zens fault but I did feel Zen didnt fight my corner as much as they perhaps could have to get the problems resolved so I'm still considering a move when contract is up for renewal.

In reply to a post by craski:

After a lot of problems around end of 2015/early 2016 my Zen connection now appears to be stable and running as it should be. That said, the problems I had were attributed to Openreach congestion so not entirely Zens fault but I did feel Zen didnt fight my corner as much as they perhaps could have to get the problems resolved so I'm still considering a move when contract is up for renewal.

When that happened to me, although I had to contact a certain team, I was sorted within 48 hours on BT. New segment.

I don't personally buy this openreach of congestion. The ISP in this case zen chooses the bandwidth they wish to pay for, for instance I highly doubt customers on BT using openreach backhaul would have been having the same issues on the same exchange...

Absolutely spot on. If the congestion was purely down to Openreach then BTW based customers of AAISP, IDNet, Timico et al on the same exchanges would also be affected but the fact that only Zen customers were/are, suggests they didn't purchase enough bandwidth from OR.

I remember IDNet a good few years ago getting rid of bandwidth limits on their ADSLx products, within weeks their network ground to a halt as just about every freeloader moved over to them (ala flies being attracted to faeces) and not long after, they scrapped unlimited products and went back to their old usage caps. AFAIK Zen are the only 'niche' ISP to offer unlimited usage on BTW based products but if they're unwilling to purchase more bandwidth from OR then perhaps they need to scrap unlimited products if they want to maintain their excellent reputation. I guess only Richard Tang can answer that....

Edited by deleted (Sun 25-Sep-16 09:18:06)

Awful.

I have several lines with them for several years and they used to be 2nd best after AAISP.

Recently I moved a line to them which went down on moving day and didn't come back up.

In all it was down for almost 3 weeks before they managed to get BT to fix it.

Aside from no Internet for 3 weeks they seem to have given up on customer support.

They didn't update the online ticketing system until I shouted at them. They didn't even seem to realise that it was important.

Every time I phoned they were "experiencing high call volumes" and I had to hold for an operator at my time and expense (just to be told that they couldn't be bothered to update the online ticketing system!)

Worst of all they seemed to have no inclination to better their systems or make BT do better fixing a simple fault. Shame on them.

Not the Zen they used to be