Bye bye Zen

Switched to a Briant Broadband 2.5Gb (£50 pm) connection over CityFibre at approx 9.00am this morning.
CF arrived at 8.00, when I was still in bed, having gone back to sleep after waking during the night.
The CF technician was very co-operative and agreed to install the new Calix GP1007X ONT in a location more to my liking, despite it being a little more work than just swapping the ONT's would have been.
When the ONT was connected with four green leds a phone call to Briant was required for the connection to be enabled. At the same time I asked for the details required to use my own router, which were given to me over the phone and confirmed by email. The connection is IPv6 enabled without me having to request it.
All good fun. I'd been about three years with Zen.

Why move? Honest question! You'll save a fiver a month, any other reason?

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

Why move? Honest question! You'll save a fiver a month, any other reason?

Why stay could also be asked its not as if they are a premium provider any more.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Why stay could also be asked its not as if they are a premium provider any more.

I stayed to keep my IP address block.

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

I stayed to keep my IP address block.

Out of pure interest, how bad or massively overpriced (not saying either are at present for you) would their service have to become before you would consider changing or are you locked into their service for life because of the IP address block?

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

Why move? Honest question! You'll save a fiver a month, any other reason?

I'll be paying £120 a year more for what is effectively a vanity upgrade so saving £60 is worthwhile.
In three years I had to call Zen twice. Once when the neighbour accidentally cut through the fibre that ran along the boundary, which has been permanently fixed by moving the ONT, and once when CF had a network failure so they've not had much opportunity to secure my loyalty for their CS.
When they emailed saying that 2.5Gb was be available I replied saying that I was interested and that I'd want to ONT to be moved at the same time, knowing that it needed to be changed, but I was told that moving the ONT would incur a £120 charge, presumably because Zen wouldn't have known for sure that it need changing until they placed the order, but I wasn't impressed, and there was no follow-up to try and obtain my business for an upgrade.
I'm getting a £12 refund, though, because the billing period did not coincide with the contract termination.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Out of pure interest, how bad or massively overpriced (not saying either are at present for you) would their service have to become before you would consider changing or are you locked into their service for life because of the IP address block?

Zen's prices are (in the marketplace) neither cheap nor expensive, so it's not currently a price issue. I don't think they're bad. Maybe Aquis now sit in the reputation seat vacated by Zen. In the time I've been with them they've grown bigger, but still I haven't had any major issues.
So they'd need to drop to Virgin levels of service or price up to AAIP before I'd start looking around. Changing IP wouldn't be a big problem but I've had them a while and they don't have a bad reputation.

more to the point why get on here to do an advert about how good the new deal is..... makes you wonder how they are getting through my ad blocker. (btw OP do you think we care)

I used to think these forums were constructive but seeing the usual adverts for why you left and your new shiny provider is better or the usual 6 experts fighting each other I can no longer see sebs vision.

Edited by pyarwood (Sat 22-Feb-25 01:36:24)

In reply to a post by pyarwood:

OP do you think we care

I am very interested in how people find the experience of moving from one ISP to another, be it on the same or different network infrastructure (e.g. Openreach, CityFibre).

Reviews like Peters are good and help people, I hope we see more from others going forward.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by pyarwood:

OP do you think we care

I am very interested in how people find the experience of moving from one ISP to another, be it on the same or different network infrastructure (e.g. Openreach, CityFibre).

Reviews like Peters are good and help people, I hope we see more from others going forward.

Thanks for your comments, and for a correct interpretation on my motives for posting. I had previously posted about my interest in moving. (Ping is 3, by the way.)

Edited by ParksidePeter (Sat 22-Feb-25 13:43:13)