UK ISPs ???

[sufi]

Metronet = My Old faithful ISP - reliable, personable and good value for the last 8 years or so, have been eaten by the dastardly Plusnet & become utterly useless,
i've also moved house (currently posting via somebody's hijacked unsecured 56Meg wireless line )

I used to use pipex once upon a time and found them to be really fine, but i hear their phone support is not so good,

there is a big offer from talktalk at the mo which provides 'broadband for life' but already has 10 weeks waiting list for conexion...
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/ is a top reference for all of this - any other recommendations pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez?

ta muchos
sufi

 

[Ness Rowlah]

I avoid anything owned by a cable company - their customer services
should you ever need it are the worst. And there comes a time when you
want to cancel when moving (house/or from unhappines about service).
With cable that can almost be impossible.

The horror stories I've heard about NTL, Telewest
(I could tell you my own horror story here -
but it would be impossible to do in less that 1000 words - let's just say
that I received bills with outgoing calls showing a line that was never installed)
and Cable&Wireless mean that you should avoid them like a nasty strain of ebola.
So that excludes Bulldog and UKOnline (who I tried to get an account with -
but they managed to screw up the transistion from my old ISP so badly that I cancelled.
Even the cancellation was flawed.

You get what you pay for. If you want a proper service be prepared to
pay 3 to 5 quid more a month. If not - don't start kicking yourself when
you get standard waffle back from the "customer services" dep.

So I've taken my own advice and am now with
Eclipse Internet.

Happy. You pay a bit more - but I think it's worth it.
If I could get 24 MBps from Be (bethere.co.uk), I would.
Just because I've spoke to some of them at Podcastcon UK and
they seemed like they were going to really try to make a stab
at giving a fast good service at a good price.

Good luck.

 

[sufi]

come on all step up with the recommendations please, i know you all must have isps !!

this was the best isp i ever enjoyed...

bogo.co.uk
ah them were the days

 

[hint]

I use NDO

http://www.ndo.com

My first and only ISP, so I have nothing to compare them to.

Slightly more expensive than some, but I've always got through to speak to someone within about a minute when calling their (24-hour) support line.

BUT - They were taken over by Namesco fairly recently and there have been increasing numbers of unhappy customers, it seems. A few creeping changes in policy etc.

 

[sufi]

Thanks hint & thanks Ness!!

 

[Rambler]

Unfortunately all my ISP experiences have been bad. I started on Virgin (dial-up), who were fine until I wanted to stop using them. They were happy enough to cut off my connection straight away, but it took three months (regular payments each month), several phone calls and eventualy the intervention of Ofcom before they stopped charging me.

I'm on BT now, but don't have a choice since my company pays for the connection and won't let me switch. But it's crap. The connection itself is fine, it's now reasonably fast, but it's very expensive - £25/month for 2MB (was 1MB until recently) - and the customer service is at the low level you expect from BT. Plus their website (which sloshes indiscriminately over 3 or four separate domain names) is a horrible, horrible mess. When new offers get emailed to you, don't expect to be able to activate any of them if you stray outside the Windows/Outlook/IE paradigm.

So two to stay clear of...

 

[wonk_vitesse]

Virgin seemed pretty crap, my dad spent weeks trying to resolve the fact that he needed filters on both his telephone sockets,

Bulldog , avoid, terrible service

Eclipse.co.uk have been with them over a year, OK, upgrade you automatically.

 

[BSquires]

At home I've used Demon since 1997. It's quite expensive (£25 per month for 2.2Meg) but the connection has been reliable and they don't make you use their software. I connect via an iMac and don't have any issues. Generally, over the time I've been with them, it has just worked.

At work we use Nildram - this was selected by our resident internerd based in the findings on the site you mention.

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/