Read more.Let us know who you're with and how you're getting along.
Read more.Let us know who you're with and how you're getting along.
Yes. Zen seem reasonably priced (but not cheapest) with a good online portal, support that understands technical queries and a reliable connection.
Worlds apart from my previous supplier Origin. Constant drop outs, non existant support and a clunky portal. Cheaper is not always better value.
Yes. I'm with Virgin now, it's not perfect but all the others in my area are based around Openreach copper to the home and regardless of who I was actually with a fault on the line somewhere had reduced my service to less than 1mbps - and this is in a built up area which should otherwise have been capable of some form of 'superfast'.
Happy enough with the Virgin broadband but not so much with package cost (TV, phone, BB).
What I'm really not happy with is constant incremental price increases, and I don't just mean the end-of-intro-deal hike. That, I knew of in advance and was expecting.
What really annoys me is the way it keeps creeping up, when they add new channels that I don't want and then use that to justify a price increase and, after a while, you look at the bill and think how the [naughty-word] did it get that [another naughty word] high?
Okay, before anyone says it, yes I know, ring and ask for retentions and threaten to leave and, probably, we'll get a price cut.
My point is that I really, REALLY object to the type of sharp, disreputable (though legal) business practice that relies on customer inertia to gouge that customer and, to my mind, it entirely depends on automatic, on-going payment systems, on "subscriptions" where it renews automatically unless you actively cancel. And it isn't just broadband - everybody is at it, from magazine subscriptions to car breakdown to all forms of insurance.
Okay, getting a bit off-piste (just fir a change) but you'd think that the billions and billions of pounds banks etc have had to pay over PPI mis-selling would have issued a red-flag to this kind of obnoxious-but-legal practive but it seems not.
It seems companies like charging us for things we haven't said we want. For example, adding on insurance (yes, Scan, I mean you .... among many others) we haven't asked for, unless we explicitly turn it off, until legislation makes that sort of disreputable practice illegal ... eventually.
But in the meantime, it leaves a very bad taste in consumer's mouth. It is why I haven't used Scan for years, and why, though the broadband itself is fine, I am starting to get very angry with Virgin over being treated like an idiot.
So on the vague off-chance that someone senior at Virgin, or my insurance company, or the AA, etc, reads this, I do not want to spend half my spare time looking to see how's gouging me this month. Yes, I know I can ring, moan and get a reduction but I just want a quiet life, not to spend it auditing the latest rip-off wheeze from companies I use regularly.
So, happy with broadband, sure. Virgin? Nope. Not at all.
/Here endeth today's rant.
blokeinkent (16-03-2019)
I've never had incremental price increases on virgin except for the Retail Price Index increase.
The only thing that frustrates me about Virgin (and any company that does this badly) is outsourcing to India and let their culture of KPI chasing run wild.
Been on my current ISP for a year and am overall pleased with the service. Speed is consistently higher than advertised by an average of 10% (typical 220-225mbs down for advertised 200mbs) and about same 10% on upload too. Ping is very nicely low in all games and reliability is high with only 2 times in the last year down for a couple hours each time, both times due to weather and understandable.
Our price hasn't changed at all since signing up last year, so that's been nice too. No data caps on my service. I did have to replace the router the ISP supplied me with with my own because it was kinda a piece of junk that only did the basic job of routing, and couldn't port forward to save it's life. Putting my own router in place worked fine with the ISP service, so that too is a positive.
Overall nothing negative to say about Spectrum internet and cable, but am on the Time Warner side of it, apparently Spectrum isn't as solid on it's Charter side. Time Warner Spectrum is great, Charter Spectrum not so much, I've heard.
Zen, no problems so far. Had to reboot my router only once in over a year.
My upload speed has been a little lower over the past couple of weeks, but apart from that, very happy with Virgin Media.
I completely agree with this rant. The default ripoff / Loyality penalty should never been allowed. it started with Car insurance and has spread all over the place.
My parents had an issue with sky recently. they had a sky + box which was around 9 years ago. I suspect the hard drive was failing as it kept on freezing and being non responsive. all they wanted was a working box with the same channels. Sky wanted to charge them more for a sky q box with less channels. they have been a customer for around 13 years. it cost over £20 for the phone bill just to contact them due to the time he was put on hold.
I am currently with plusnet and havent had any issues so far. I have been with plusnet before and other than a major outage affecting the whole network i havent had any issues. I could of gone with virgin but i have heard enough had stories about them that i didn't feel the faster speed was worth it espically concidering how often they seem to trottle the speed anyway.
Not really. Was on BT infinity then switched to talktalk faster fibre as costs started to spiral with bt. Talktalk connection is poop, cuts off quite regularly, have to reset router at least once a week. My 2 year contract came to an end so thought I'd go back to bt. Says i can get infinity, then at checkout it says i can't have it and tries fobbing me off with standard broadband. So i'm stuck on talktalk now
With talk talk, everything works, nice and cheap, not the fastest but more than fast enough.
ADSL with Zen here.
Started with Sky since moving to our home 7 years ago. I've had issues on my line for the last 2 years, started with increase in speed at the cost of high ping. When asked why my ping had increased & spikes when gaming they said "well you can download faster!". Needless to say that didn't go down very well, the line was investigated by a fat old Openreach engineer who said "you've got a fault under the ground, don't know where. Deal with it".
To be fair Sky were really good & I had no issues with them asking for the fault to be escalated.
I decided to try another ISP in Zen after recommendations from other users.
Next issues were disconnecting randomly, my routers log showed pages of line drops ! After going through the usual internal tests (again & again) they said the failure is external & said basically "deal with it because Openreach won't".
I've got only 1 month left & my only option is Virgin. Luckily they've just fitted a new fiber optic line so fingers crossed that works.
Currently with Zen but dissatisfied with their pricing. The rest of the broadband isp technical support must be horrendous as I feel Zen's technical support is overrated. Looking to jump ship to Hyperoptics - get rid of telephone clutter cord.
I'm in a Virgin cable area but there is no way I'll get their broadband. The dark days of ntl have left its scar on me.
Millennium (15-03-2019)
Happy with Plusnet Fibre. No downtime. No need to contact support.
Price is a bit steep £20 for BB and that ever increasing fkn Line rental. Think I paid £13/m last year.
I'm with Virgin and whilst I agree it expensive for the package I actually get what I want. All in pay £100 a month. 2 boxes, telephone line and broadband. Supposed to be on Vivid 200 but actually get around 275 down and 27 up....
So all in all - expensive but I can justify it when we sit down to watch something like the footy or F1 in 1080p through our projector and surround sound. The missus is disabled (said it before) and recent changes to the pubs and cinemas round here mean it's much better to just sit at home and watch stuff these days
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
With Sky, no issues with the service provided aside from it using the poor Openreach network with super slow speeds compared to my old VM connection from years ago. Copper, just wish they'd get rid of it entirely.
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