ISP Recommendations

[Rose Chap]

I'm moving house shortly and am already feeling rage at my long serving ISP - Demon - who always, always, always make a complete hash of the whole house/account moving process.

I'm tempted to use a different company, Pipex for instance. Does anyone have any recommendations?

I'd be after a solid, reliable, unmetered service and I don't mind paying for a proper ISP, ie, not Sky, Orange or Kellogg's Corn Flakes.

I've been paying £23 per month and that's ok, I just expect more in terms of customer service.

The new house has a standard BT line for ADSL.

All thoughts welcomed!

 

[wemorgan]

You can compare ISPs here:
thinkbroadband :: Compare broadband service providers

I used Pipex for 5 years. They were initially good, then over the years the quality reduced. I think the IP used to be fixed for free, now they charge. The connection would drop every couple of days. I would say that they are still better than most, but not as good as they used to be.

I'm now with BT. They're not a fashionable young ISP company, but they are very reliable indeed and reasonably fast.

A friend is with Eclips and rates them highly and thinks the customer support is very professional.

 

[BTB 500]

I've been very happy with Demon, but not moved house since I've been with them.

I would never personally use Tiscali again. I wanted to upgrade my account, their system wouldn't allow it, after almost 6 months of emails and phone calls they gave up and admitted they had no idea why and said there was nothing they could do about it.

 

[MrT]

Be - or if you want the same for cheaper, O2. Getting 16Mbps, reliable connection and good customer service.

Used TalkTalk in the past (atrocious), Orange/Freeserve (not as bad, but a bit unreliable), BT (consider it expensive for what you get TBH).

 

[bennesspipers]

DONT CHOOSE PLUS-NET, They obviously dont train all their staff to the same level,just had 3 months of being messed about by them. 1 person says 1 thing, & the next contradicts ! & they are owned by BT ! As soon as my contracts up with 'em i'm changing.

 

[rag1873]

Im with orange - cracking deal and a cracking service. Dont go near tiscali though, had a lot of problems with them and their customer service is terrible

 

[Dryce]

I've been very happy with Demon, but not moved house since I've been with them.

I used to be happy with Demon - I've used them for years at home until recently, and for office connections.

However I would be wary of them after recent experience.

Had dealings with Demon last week to help out a friend who couldn't get them to sort out a problem that occurred the week before.

Got through to customer support on Tuesday. Went through the ritual questions. They then asked me to send email with details plus some ping/traceroute dumps.

Meanwhile we replaced the router and after checking it wasn't his kit got on to Demon again. No joy.

However another Demon customer in the same area said they'd been trold it was an exchange problem and that it would be fixed Thursday.

Phoned Demon and asked explicitly if this was an exchange problem and they denied it.

Problem resolved on Thursday after the exchange was sorted.

Got an email from back from them last night asking me to redo the dumps (which are in fact quite obviously pointing the problem at their end).

So Demon are a right shower. Support is pot luck. And not coordinated. It's slow. It took them four days to follow up on an email that was simply followup to a critical problem. I'm shiocked that they fobbed off my friend. And I'm surprised that they couldn't reconcile all the information they were being given.

This is a pity as I recommended to my friend to go for Demon. In days gone by you'd get a UK call centre and they tell you that there were problems at your exchange. These days it's an Indian call centre and they're run inconsistently - and I suspect quite disconnected from Cable and Wireless who do the actual infrastructure support.

 

[robpow]

Another vote for Be/O2 here. Was on PlusNet before and Freeserve before that and Demon before that (dial-up) and I must O2 has been as good as or better than the others.

Matt

 

[Dryce]

Another vote for Be/O2 here

Switched to O2 from Demon at the start of the year - mainly due to price.

O2's 20Mbps ADSL can cause problems with some older third party routers (eg. Draytek) which can be a bit inconvenient if you're using features such as LAN to LAN VPNs.

O2 is good value if (a) you have an O2 mobile contract and (b) they can provide their service at your local exchange.

 

[timskemp]

New connection? Install BT. They'll get it working and stable. When contract is up switch to someone else, Pipex if you want cheap but don't care about customer service (since the Tiscali takeover it's been rubbish), Be / O2 if you want fast, or stick with BT if you don't mind paying more.

 

[Beetnik]

Be Unlimited if you can get them. ADSL2+ - I'm getting 6+ Mb download for £10 per month. Customer Service - no idea as no problems in 18 months I've been with them. Any outages and there've been few have been advised in advance by email.

 

[Piff]

I've switched to Post Office for phone & broadband.
Minor glitch on the switch over - my fault, the Post Office router arrived and as it looked the same as my own netgear, I didn't bother changing it over.
Service ceased when old ISP (aol) switched me off.
Post Office got me up & running, changing router & helping me set up 3 desktops & 2 laptops running a variety - Vista 32, Vista 64 & XP.
No problems at all since the switch.
Have heard O2 have some good deals if you are already an O2 customer

 

[columb]

O2.

I used to work for BT (all levels, trust me- RUBBISH!), had Virgin (rubbish as they share somehow ADSL with BT), had PIPEX, heard about Eclipse (waaay too expensive for what it was) and now I'm with 02.

I'm very heavy user and never had any problems. Speed is always great!
Rung helpdesk to check them twice. TOP support! Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. Used to monitor other calls for BT :>

Moved house- all done online and ZERO hassle.

Well, I've even recommend O2 to couple other friends and they are super happy! One has switched from Eclipse and other from cable Virgin. Both has said one thing: it's brilliant!

PROTIP: get the free O2 sim card (I should have some, PM me if you need one) and go for the discount!

Cheers
Chris

 

[masqueraid]

Be - unlimited download
Following Orange's infamous letter to me saying I had "exceeded my unlimited bandwidth two months in a row" I had been with Freserve/Wanadoo/Orange without a hitch. Apart from an issue with SNR (a fair way from the exchange) initially, have had nothing but praise for them. (and all the Be customers here can get referral points for recommending a new customer )

 

[kay7]

Demon adsl2+ here : down 9.7mbps, up 786kbps > peak times. We had huge problems with demon since their move to adsl2+ but all worked fine since 1st of July. Connection is 24/7 on as we`re running 4 servers and database. No problems so far.
Was gonna move to BE but their customer service advised me that i could get max 7mbps( strange ! )and decided to stay with Demon.

 

[Geezer]

BE for me. Almost 10 meg download and over 1 meg upload. :bannana: If I got 2.5 meg with BT then I was lucky!

 

[Baron_Samedi]

DONT CHOOSE PLUS-NET, They obviously dont train all their staff to the same level,just had 3 months of being messed about by them. 1 person says 1 thing, & the next contradicts ! & they are owned by BT ! As soon as my contracts up with 'em i'm changing.

Gots to negate bennesspipers post...

I have been with Plus.Net for almost six years and only once (the notorious emailing spamming episode) have they given me cause for concern.

No intention to leave them until O2 roll-out ADSL2+ in my 'hood