- This topic has 18 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated April 30, 2006 at 1:12 pm by bird.
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April 19, 2006 at 5:40 pm #1037590
ok one for all you East Anglian lot..
I’ve just had to cancel my NTL service as it will take over a month to sort it out here :rant:- the cable ducts in my area are full of mud and the install crews weren’t able to deal with this and would have to pass it on to another crew with a big waiting list.. FFS this is bumpkin land, I’d expect them to be prepared for dealing with things like this this, its not as if mud is an alien substance in East Anglia
I’m going back to a BT line and will need to get ADSL broadband on there. I want at least 2 MB/s downstream
whats the best provider at the moment? BT said they could do it but ISTR they are rubbish at customer service – maybe they’ve improved though..
are there any better ones around that anyone else uses? any ones to definitely avoid…
April 19, 2006 at 5:45 pm #1071186Seems like Tiscali don’t do too well in this area so I’d avoid them.
The only others I have any real experience with are BT and NTL.
I’d go with NTL cable if I had a choice (which I assume is what you are wanting to do) but i don’t because we can’t get cable here.
I’ve been with BT for 3 or more years and I’ve had no real problems 99.9% of the time. I have never had to deal with customer service because of this.
They do seem to be a little bit expensive though.
April 19, 2006 at 5:45 pm #1071192bulldog
April 19, 2006 at 5:47 pm #1071188i’ve been looking into changing from wanadoo for ages (cos of non-existant customer service), but all the independant reviews seem to say the same thing – reliable ones at a reasonable price are growing so fast that demand is over stretching them and so they start to fail
carphone warehouse are about to move into the market with a deal for home phone / broadband that will make them a multi-million pound loss over the first year or two
but i guess that’s not soon enough for you
April 19, 2006 at 5:47 pm #1071177alex J wrote:bulldogAren’t they a bit shit?
April 19, 2006 at 5:48 pm #1071189alex J wrote:bulldog
few mates with them in london – v unreliable connection
April 19, 2006 at 5:52 pm #1071187globalloon wrote:carphone warehouse are about to move into the market with a deal for home phone / broadband that will make them a multi-million pound loss over the first year or twobut i guess that’s not soon enough for you
I thought that was already running? TalkTalk free broadband for all. You just have to have a talk talk line and pay for the line rental (£20ish).
That right?
April 19, 2006 at 5:56 pm #1071182the mud put NTL out of the game.
They do have circuits going to this area but my house wasn’t cabled – mud got into the bits the cables would go through in the pavement and NTL don’t have enough resources to sort it out in a timely manner. they said they may need to take the pavement up again and the waiting list is at least a month.. fuck that….
there is bare mud all down the driveway now as well :get_you:I’ve heard horrendous stories about bulldog though …
April 19, 2006 at 6:32 pm #1071193globalloon wrote:few mates with them in london – v unreliable connectiondunno, never had any probs, connects at 6meg………..8.99 a month…..
April 19, 2006 at 6:42 pm #1071178alex J wrote:dunno, never had any probs, connects at 6meg………..8.99 a month…..I’m with Wanadoo (Amsterdam), it’s meant to be 20 mb but I only get 6 mb although it does comes with a free / different excuse everytime I call their helpdesk…
April 19, 2006 at 7:31 pm #1071190i’m also with wanadoo
they have been unable to upgrade my connection for 6 months now (not due to hardware, duw to incompetance)
although i did get through to a decent sort at their customer service, who suggested I change company :horay:
April 19, 2006 at 7:47 pm #1071179globalloon wrote:although i did get through to a decent sort at their customer service, who suggested I change company :horay:LOL!
April 20, 2006 at 11:52 am #1071183NTL saga continues – they sent me another text “confirming” the install so I had to ring them again to confirm that it wasn’t happeneing and my contract with them had been cancelled :rant:.
The call centre staff are a lot better than they used to be and quicker to respond; but they weren’t even prepared to try and recover the business by bringing forward the install date which shows NTL don’t have the resources needed to maintain their infrastructure if things go pear shaped – they refused to budge on the 1 month timescale even after I mentioned I was going back to BT and I have a marker on my NTL record which shows “preferred customer” (a lot of Reading heads were NTL employees and would give me inside info)
NTL are also recovering the cost for all customer support calls (even bills etc) by moving away from an 0800 number to a local rate one..:get_you:
I never thought I’d find myself praising BT but they have improved loads..
still a free call for customer support – there was a wait time but I called in the evening when NTL are often closed and the lady who answered the phone (in Glasgow not India!) was really helpful – they can sort their stuff out in 5 working days for voice and another 5 working days for broadband.Still too long IMO as there’s no infrastructure work and all it involves is re-activating the circuit at the telephone exchange switch and the ADSL line card but thats as good as you get with BT and better than a month.
checked ADSLguide.org and all ISPs are shown “average” or “poor” for service (there are no good ones it seems!).
Most of them re-sell BT services anyway and those who are putting their own kit in BT buildings can’t handle the customer service, probably because they haven’t allocated enough cash for this and infrastructure..
Telecoms in the UK seems to be a level playing field of mediocrity – and mud..
April 20, 2006 at 1:00 pm #1071191General Lighting wrote:there was a wait time but I called in the evening when NTL are often closed and the lady who answered the phone (in Glasgow not India!) was really helpful –That’ll be the whole migrate callcentres to Scotland thing again then….lol :bigsmile:
April 20, 2006 at 3:36 pm #1071194We’re with ukonline and they’re pretty good.
I’ve not had any connection problems in the three or four months we’ve been with them, they are much nicer to deal with than NTL, plus you can actually get through to them, in the uk, in less than five minutes.
We had a slight issue when the card they were using for worldpay had expired, so we were cut off once we’d disconnected (the connection had been up for about a week, during which they’d disabled the account, but until we dropped the connection we didn’t notice) and within 20 mins we were back on, despite still not having paid, but on the promise of payment the following Monday.
Can’t fault them :bigsmile:
April 25, 2006 at 11:32 am #1071184BT (voice) line being reactivated tomorrow (Chernobyl Day!) – hopefull should have some sort of broadband 5 working days after that.
probably will be BT as after doing a few searches all the others seem equally mediocre (TBH I think the UK public internet may be reaching capacity) and they have vastly improved on customer service recently – nearly all ISPs are dependent on BT anyway – the “nice ones” probably are just better at explaining away a delay or problem..
Until LLU takes off (if it ever does) BT and NTL will have a duopoly on the UK residential telecoms market due to their investment in infrastructure.
They are selling a voyager ADSL wireless router for £50. Is this any good? Anyone know who actually makes it? (its rebadged BT but probably some Chinese kit)
April 30, 2006 at 12:57 pm #1071180Site wrote:I’m with Wanadoo (Amsterdam), it’s meant to be 20 mb but I only get 6 mb although it does comes with a free / different excuse everytime I call their helpdesk…Ok, I take it back. My internet connection improved to a very respectable 13mb overnight! I’m happy, again…
:bounce_m: :bounce_o:
April 30, 2006 at 1:05 pm #1071185I reckon the excuses are because like most salespeople they “sold the bear skin before shooting the bear” either they haven’t upgraded the kit at the exchange or they were waiting on KPN to do it but didn’t want to admit to the problem
2006-05-05 is the activation date BT gave me (5.5MB/s max despite being within walking distance of the exchange…)
apparently a lot of the problems are because of old copper wires which will only be replaced as and when the telcos have the resources to do so (they aren’t gonna haul a 60pair cable out of the ground and replace it because just one customer whinges..)
April 30, 2006 at 1:12 pm #1071181For sure, you’re right. Although I was under the impression all of Amsterdam’s exchanges had been upgraded and Wanadoo were rubish, it seems not. Should tide me over nicely until they upgrade everyone again to gigabit connections within the next 5 to 10 years. I’ve heard several european cities including this one have fibre optic networks in the pipeline (no pun!)…
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