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Chances are, if you are hooked up to the service of one of the UK's largest ISPs, then the answer to the above question is, yes. Data from a new survey conducted by Which? magazine, suggests that some of the most highly appreciated ISPs are often the smallest ones, with only one of the five biggest in the UK recording a customer satisfaction level above 50 per cent.
In contrast, Britain's smaller ISPs like Plusnet (admittedly, a branch of BT), Zen Internet, Utility Warehouse and John Lewis Broadband, all have satisfaction levels over 70 per cent. In contrast, BT received just a 45 per cent approval rating, scoring two out of five stars on value for money and technical support. TalkTalk received similarly bad results, taking home two stars for speed and technical support and a customer satisfaction of just 48 per cent, according to The Telegraph.
However even though the smaller firms did far better in many categories, like reliability, ease of connection and the clarity of their bills, one category that almost every firm failed at across the board, was speed. Only Zen Internet and Virgin media received anything above a three star rating.
The reason for that, Which? believes, is because in order to advertise a package to customers with a specific speed, only 10 per cent of them need to receive that rated performance. Having spoken with regulator OfCom and the Committee of Advertising Practice, Which? hopes that ISPs will in the future have to be far more forthcoming with actual speeds in their adverts, instead of sticking to ambiguous terms that suggest high bandwidth. Similarly so,it hopes that advertising regulations will be changed to make is so that more accurate information will be given about the kinds of speeds that customers can actually expected to see.
To help encourage companies to make these changes without regulatory bodies weighing in though, it's started a campaign for customers to sign up to, to pledge their support for those that act voluntarily.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
KitGuru Says: I'm pretty happy with the PlusNet package I have, but I'm still waiting on BT to upgrade the local infrastructure so fibre is possible. The downside of living in the sticks I suppose.
Which broadband provider are you guys with and are you happy with their service?
Image source: Mike Cathell
I’ve got BT infinity currently. Happy with the speed (typically around 70ish Mbp/s) as it is only partly fibre and there was no cost increase over the copper connection before. Customer service is beyond appalling though.
I live in a smallish town in Cornwall and I’m with BT on their best Fibre deal (65Mbps). It’s expensive but It’s never failed once. The only thing I dislike is the lack of English call centers, I don’t mean to come across as sounding a bit prejudiced but I haven’t spoken to an Indian person for a few decades and I struggle to understand the accent 🙁 which is obviously my problem and not theirs.
I’m on BT Fibre too, (74Mbs down 19Mbs up average speed so far) but I have to say that their customer service has been great for me. They call when they say, they email chat logs to you without asking, problems get fixed fast.. its hard to complain.
It is expensive, I suppose you pay a premium for the best available – and I do have a big discounted TV package that I got at the same time.
I’m happy enough that when BT start offering mobile phone contracts I will probably switch from Giffgaff.
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I am quite happy with my 152Mbps speeds of Virgin, just a wee big expensive, but good, am getting in excess of Virgins 152Mbps at times too (going up to 160Mbps) just the only problem that i have it it is that it will go off on very rare occasions
I’d love to see one of these for US Providers 🙂 Bet they’d be much lower ratings across the board heh
In the Philippines, average speed is 1.41Mbps
i was getting 80 meg till i moved back out to the sticks,now on 3 and a half if im lucky :(,i was spoilt rotten for a couple of years until now,back to downloading over nite for games lol
What is wrong with the Averaged Joe is not so much being the Dual-Natured/Multi-Faceted claiming to be Singularly Natured, you know, being The Blind-Blinded thoroughly infested with Hindsight, Insight & Foresight because one’s Fame, Fortune & Immortality registers are “Full of Eet”, it is because most “Averaged Joe” believe “whole-heartedly” in the Religion & Religiosity promoted by “The Devil”, commonly known as The Biggest Trick The Devil Played, which is that some’ow but don’t know ‘ow, there is Truth within Untruth. Especially when the joker is multi-faceted, of course. You know, the one who exists because of Shades of Grey,The Middling Truth being the Dance of Salome of The Whore Sibling of The Chosen Few, Propaganda. The Vun who owns The Oral Gymnasium. Yes, She came, and others died-ed…… Yeehaw !
A lion is a lion and so is a snake a snake but when it comes to the worshipper of The Multiplicity of Choices, the human creature is all lion, snake, tiger, fox, crybaby, toothfairy, and more within zer Hour Dahlingssss, Ja? But is that any reason to Blind-Blindedly Accept-Reject the myth that the likes of “ISPs” are anything but “Full of Eet”? Beecuz yore IntaNet Speed is zooming at 1000MB/s and threatening to zonk to 3,000MB/s? Yestarday, Today and Tomorrow too. Bet you would be booking a trip to Da Stars on Whitey Beard’s should your Fame, Fortune & Immortality [FF&I] registers be Zippying Do-da every second of the passing day&night. Not when FF&I are The Facades of Malevolence, Malevolence being The Stone Dead among other fancifuls Nazis masquerade as. For the Vacuously Parroting, oka The Conceptually/Thoughtfully Limitable,the salient characteristic of a Nazi, be that Overtly/Cruelly or Covertly/Cunningly, is to be Number One. In addition to being Privileged, Entitled and that Ole Rope for New Money, Exceptional, whilst not forgetting that perennial, “Chosened”, too. Afterall, when Nazis were ruling the roost Overtly, every covert Nazi is keen to be overt but Number One diehards should be conscious and be aware if only because when Nazism/Number-One-ism is Covert, one’s Nazism is then Overt. Overtness like dying to be Privileged, Entitled, Exceptional and that Ole Ropey, Chosensed. You know, worshipping every word a Barefaced Liar utters – whilst, some’ow but don’t know ‘ow, realising that the joker is a true blue liar whose first and final duty is to Dividends/Profiteering.
BT-ISPs are Da Goode & Faire Guys? You know, the sobbing bit about “Failing You” – should Propaganda ever gyrates that far. More so when the fully ferrited Ole Haggis was the one credited with unleashing The “BT Genie” – the moment when National Security is chemeleoned into the Might & Right of Annualised Profiteering. Yes, one for you, another 1,000 for me. Another one, sob, for you, and another 2,000 for us – and so forth, National Security be damned. And guess how Beggars N Thieves work that ole ropey of Creaming/Commissioning/Bookie-ing off The Looting? Yes, get OrftYerKoms, one’s Strange Bedfellow, to posture as The Goode Stilletoed –Whipping Cop by meowing some Paper Tiger of “Late Again, Toots?” whilst instructing the 5th Kolumn within “Politics” to mutter sump’fing about “Local Kouncil Kontributions” plus some litter from The Public Loot and Bob’s yer Unc. As such, 2020 for some semblence of Fairness jest might be possible if only because by then, The Aggregation of Profiteering will encourage even Ole Profiteering Misers to [unwillingly] relinquishing some of their profits. In the meantime, Ole Blighty take care of Yourself, Da Governmented of Beggary-Thievery be damned.
It is prudent to realise [and not Blindly Accepting-Rejecting] that without “National Security”, telephony communications reaching some farmer in the middle of nowhere would not have been possible, the institution of The Telephony System not being dependent on Dividends/”Profit&Loss” but upon “National Security”. If only The Averaged Joe realises the monkey tricks “ISPs” get up to which is “directly proportional” to Kinge Kong’s right to “mate” with any “ISP” whenever the beastie chooses. Yes, eet shore ist gut to be zer Kinge within the arena of Might & Right. Why? Beecuz Ah Kan, Sweet Cheeks.
This comment a trolling hogwash? No, it is the fallacy that by juxtaposing the Pros vs Con, that Business is about Fairness & Care. It is not Sweet Cheeks. Business is solely about Profits, First & Last, with contrasting the “Winners” with the “Losers” like this “Newsing” piece merely being the distraction to avoid being universally known that Business As Usual’s ONLY duty is its allegience to Count de Money, said Count’s hobby being the compliance of Sweet Cheeks and little else.
Talk Talk, it’s pretty rubbish. Intermitent connection “periods” that seem to pop up about once a month. This isn’t when they are working on the exchange or anything like that, they don’t know why it happens. One router broke so they very efficiently tested it and found fault with the router over the phone and sent out a new router, was actualyl impressed.
New router broke after 1 day, wound’t turn on anymore. Using another router now, still intermitent connection using ethernet cable and master socket to router. No way to email them and the online chat service of theirs is pretty useless. It’s cheap I guess, but I would be willing to pay more to avoid getting this standard of service again.
Why is it your problem? Don’t apologise for not understanding people when they do not speak with a readily understandable accent. This is Britain, if BT and others choose to outsource away from this country, it’s up to them to provide support staff that can readily converse with Brits, not for us to have to make allowances, or apologise because we cannot understand a foreign accent on a partially english speaking staff member.
I’d love to be able to say BT are good, but I’ve spent hours on the phone this month trying to get my broadband connected to their Infinity system. Being passed from pillar to post either online or by phone as my order is either unavailable to view or hasn’t been instigated. Hopefully now, after more than 3 hours on the phone, more often than not listening to “you are 1st in the queue we’re sorry because we are so busy”, or some ear defeating hold music of dubious origin, I will have my line upgraded within 2 weeks. I’ll not hold my breath though.
Fast, service, value …. pick any two!
Fiber is stupidly confusing in my area, i am with Sky as they are one of the only providers in my area but my area has Fiber, my 2 next door neighbors have fiber to the left, yet me and my neighbors to the right do not have fiber yet everyone in my area comes of the same server so some have Fiber and some do not, the guy next door doesn’t pay for his fiver but he can order it, i want fiber but can’t order it. It makes no sense.
I used to live down in Stafford, i was with Virgin Media, the customer service was great, paying online was fine for them and my Speeds were 162MB and 12MB upload and i paid £34, now i live back in my hometown of Leeds, i get 7MB download and 1MB upload and pay £16 on a deal and the price goes up after 12 months.
I live in lovely place, Hull in UK. To all the glory of “democracy” and “free” market there is only one telephone and broadband provider, KC. The monopoly of their service is bad, high prices and you have choice of only land-line with broadband. The fibre optic lines are just laid down around city but prices of them are something like £51 for the packed I would like to get. You can use providers like Pureboardband or Connexin who provide Wireless broadband through antenna but service is very often not as should be.
Been with Virgin Media for 2 years in the past, and it was great – then I moved closer to the city centre (Edinburgh), and the connection I got was absolutely terrible..
Switched to PlusNet (BT Infinity), and I haven’t noticed more than one dropout (about an hour) in 1.5 years, reliably getting 76/19mbit. I got a nice deal the first 9 months, but am paying full price now, and still feel like I get a good value (paying £32/month for landline+internet)
I’m getting 1.17/0.21 with BT in Mid Wales. Sometimes up to 6 people on the internet at the same time so it isn’t ideal.
That’s megabits so download speed is about 0.15 megabytes/second when nobody else is using the internet which means if I’m going to download GTA V when it’s released I’ll have to go over to my friends house for visit as he’s about 10 miles from me, on fibre and gets download speeds about 9.5 megabytes/second.
about time someone said it, their english might be great but if their accent is horrible i shouldn’t have to be disadvantaged for it
And here in lithuania OUR regular internet speed for 10 eur is 100Mbs down/ 100 Mbs up
Which is nice, but on the downside you do have to live in Lithuania 🙂
I pay £42 a month (about 58E) for my phone, line rental, unlimited internet, Netflix and a full TV HD package (BT Sport, ESPN, Eurosport, all the entertainment channels etc) without Sky Sports. That also comes as standard with a free Humax 1TB PVR which is excellent.
It’s not cheap, but I’m reconsidering.. I don’t think its expensive for what I get at all.
Spamming twats like you should meet a horrible end!
I get nearly 90MB and it still takes an age to download to my PS3! PS4 is pretty fast though and makes use of all that speed.
TalkTalk customer service is crapest ever. When I was with them they constantly cut me off, and my nan and granddad had their phone cut off once for no reason and their number lost, just like that, for no reason whatsoever. They cold call BT customers to get them to switch for a better deal, no hassle, and woop, hassle. Just stay with who you’re with if they’re doing well. Wait until contract is up, and threaten to leave if you’re not getting a new deal.
Dude! You need to get a life!
I’ve hung up many times because the conversation had me asking them to repeat themselves over and over again. The UK needs jobs and they outsource all of that work to save on money that they can afford to use on UK jobs.
PS3 IS deprecated tho ..