I don't get what's so shocking? it's just an auto responder!
Picking up the phone would of been quicker than having a pop on here!!!

As someone who works in a support environment (I don't work for Zen or any ISP for that matter) there can be times when demand on the phones is such that we can't get near e-mails as in any good support department phones take priority and we usually adjust our autoresponder to apologise for a possible extended delay and to suggest people call if the query is urgent.

Is it not better they respond with something than simply not to bother at all?

As has been said by others, if you become a customer the services work well and you'll rarely have a need to talk to them but if you do you'll quickly learn why the premium you pay is worth every single penny.

In reply to a post by techguy:

As someone who works in a support environment (I don't work for Zen or any ISP for that matter) there can be times when demand on the phones is such that we can't get near e-mails as in any good support department phones take priority and we usually adjust our autoresponder to apologise for a possible extended delay and to suggest people call if the query is urgent.

So folks with a phone phobia can do what? Just because someone emails, it doesn't mean their fault is any less urgent than someone who phones.

That post doesn't really hold together techguy.

At the end you say "... if you do [need to talk to them] you'll quickly learn why the premium you pay is worth every single penny".

Earlier in the same sentence you say "you'll rarely have a need to talk to them".

Earlier in the post you validly point out that phone demand can overwhelm the email handling. A minor point I would make about that is that an auto-responder telling people to ring simply makes that "overwhelm-period" longer. The major point is that given the stated infrequency of the need to contact Zen support the call handling should not be overwhelmed.

If we accept your argument, to my mind it follows that the proportion of that premium price devoted to support is insufficient. It may even be that overconfidence has set in and support numbers reduced too much.

I think the phone number is just the main switchboard. It's the only one I see anywhere on their website.

I did spot an online live support chat popup on this page. If needing help Mon-Fri 10-4 is the situation in future that may be the quickest way of all. Plus you can print out the chat or save it to file.

The major point is that given the stated infrequency of the need to contact Zen support the call handling should not be overwhelmed.

Only up to a point. Support is a contended service (like the broadband they supply) so it is reasonable for an unexpected peak in demand to outstrip the supply of available agents.

If we accept your argument, to my mind it follows that the proportion of that premium price devoted to support is insufficient. It may even be that overconfidence has set in and support numbers reduced too much.

That is certainly possible but in order to reach that conclusion you would need to look at the trend rather than a single incident. I did try looking for phone statistics but it appears that they are no longer published.

Yes, I noticed that the stats were not available for now, and raised an eyebrow.

I wasn't commenting directly on Zen's support, I was commenting on the lack of logic in the post.

Regarding their support, I have over the last two or three years seen a few complaints along the lines of Zen not being particularly interested in those specific (domestic) users' problems. I don't monitor their forum here, the ones I have seen arose in General/Fibre/Unhappiness type places. Nor have I bookmarked these complaints.

Ok, Rob, fair point.

The service usually just works so you do rarely have to talk to them but if something goes wrong and you have to talk to them they get things sorted sharpish in my experience whereas in other cases with other ISPs I have used I've been given the run around which is why I believe they are worth the premium.

Regarding telephone phobias and e-mail.

A query received via e-mail is no less important than one received by telephone but one can fire off an e-mail and await a response whereas if you are waiting on hold you can't do much else can you?

They are obviously pretty good on support generally, that's unarguable . Just there are a few really bad anomalous cases crop up in the forums I listed, that would probably put me off if I was looking at a premium supplier. There does seem to be a reluctance to go after OP/BTW for "home" level customers.

Unless the OP doesn't want to call, why not just re-send the email again, and see what happens?