ISP ratings.

[nath]

Yup, that's how it starts. Just wait till you have an issue and need to contact customer service :\

 

[Bodhi]

I already have, was getting silent phone calls and my internet didn't work straight away. The call centre in Newcastle was helpful, the call centre in New Delhi is a different matter entirely. Both problems were fairly quickly put right, so I'm still happy I went cable.

 

[Furr]

It was me Clown, and you were very close mate. It didn't stop the line from dropping every hour though, even with this Belkin router.

Gone back to Plusnet, please god let them be better than they were when I left them 6 months ago.

Trem noooooooooooooooo, im leaving force9 aka plus.net for eclipse now, can't take the constant changing of the rules of how much you can download coupled with the ever steady rise of internet problems i've had with them.

 

[Trem]

I was with them(Plusnet) about 6 months ago luv. They went dreadful and my pings went uber gay, so I left them for UK Online. I did look at Eclipse and the guys on the end of the phones at Eclipse are quality(I rang them once). But I have a friend who isn't far from me and he is chuffed with Plusnet now.

Eclipse will be my next choice if Plusnet fuck up, I just didn't like the priority thing with Eclipse(those who pay the most get the best connection, then the next highest payers get a lesser connection/contention etc). That smells like an excuse to just get you to pay more.

I am only on a monthly contract with Plusnet so I can get out easy enough.

Tbh I am thinking of going back to NTL.

 

[Dommers]

Has anyone heard anything bad about Talk talk 8mb line?

 

[nath]

Yup.



I can't remember what though :\

 

[Furr]

ok, this is the main reason im leaving force9 aka plus.net, when i recieved this email.

-----------------------------------

As a Broadband Premier customer, you receive a monthly peak-time usage
allowance of 15GB. This allowance ensures that everyone gets a fair share
of our network resources during peak hours (4pm - Midnight).

Your peak-time usage for this billing month* just exceeded 10GB.

Light restrictions will now apply to your connection speeds until the end
of the current billing month. We would have notified you when you reached
8GB to give you an opportunity to avoid these restrictions, however, you
had exceeded 10GB before our alert email was triggered.

Learn more about peak-time allowances -
http://portal.force9.net/support/broadband/network/traffic_management.shtml


See a breakdown of your usage so far this month -
http://portal.force9.net/view_my_broadband_usage/index.php

Remember, we don't count any of your usage outside of peak hours, and the
restrictions on speed only ever apply within peak-time. You may be able to
increase your peak-time usage allowance by upgrading your account -
https://portal.force9.net/upgrade_process.html

Thanks for your understanding. For more information about peak-time
management, follow the above links.


Kind Regards,
Force9 Customer Support

This email has been sent as it contains important information about your
service from Force9. Please do not reply to this email, as this is an
unmonitored address.

* A billing month ends on the day you are charged for your next month's
service.
--------------------------

Eclipse give for just a little bit more a 40 gig peak time rate. Quite a substantial difference.

 

[Trem]

But Eclipse already restrict your account until you pay for the top service(£29.99 a month iirc). So I couldn't see the advantage. Eclipse are very good and they have a good rating on adslguide but there has been a lot of people on there complainig that the speeds have gone to shit with them.

The Plusnet thing is worrying me about how they put restrictions on your account at 8gb, that is truly gay. Did you notice any slow down after they said that Furr?

 

[Furr]

yup, p2p speeds defintly took a hit, but sometimes i don't know whether it is the traffic shaping or something else because the connection I have often seems to suffer from huge bottlenecks from time to time sometimes its slow sometimes is ok makes it hard to know when the service is running well.

Are there any good isp's left... I haven't moved yet, still awaiting my MAC code from force9 which seems to be taking a while. Tiscali is LLU at my local exchange but i've bad bad bad things about them, and also Bulldog and Carhpone are also unbundling next month. But i don't trust either. Im a heavy user of the net and am willing to pay around the £22-£26 quid mark a month. But it seems that ISP's are just starting to become stingy bastards.

On ISPreview Plus.net has a bad score now, and eclipse's is better. I've decided that if m going to choose between two evils, i'll choose the evil with a better Cap on the data download amount.

 

[Trem]

Zen is the best, always has been, but you have to pay for having the best.

We have Zen at work and it hasn't gone off ever.

I will do my downloading in the day with PN and see how it goes, I am restricted due to my phone line not being pure BT(don't ask, I didn't understand either) but it means I can't have Zen without losing servie for a few weeks while BT make the line 'pure'.

 

[nath]

It's totally random imo. I've been on UKOnline for a while - 30 a month for 22mbit (I get about 20), uncapped (fair usage at 500gb/m) and rarely have problems with them. However, I've heard loads of horror stories from them and lots of other companies too. This country needs to get its broadband properly sorted. If people had this much trouble with normal phone lines they'd never stand for it. Nowadays BB is becoming as much of a necessity as phone lines.

 

[Mobius]

I have a question. When I go over my 6gb limit - which I certainly will - are BT going to phone my grandmother to inform her that shes filled her quota on cartoon porn and satanic music? Or do the ISP's not see what you download, but just the sizes of everything? Because that could be an embaressing phonecall.

 

[nath]

I'm sure it's possible for them to find out what you've been downloading but I *highly* doubt they do, and I'm certain they wouldn't mention it to your nan if they did.








p.s. url for cartoon pron plz.

 

[Trem]

I'm sure it's possible for them to find out what you've been downloading but I *highly* doubt they do, and I'm certain they wouldn't mention it to your nan if they did.

I on the otherhand will tell your nan.

 

[old.user4556]

Can i just say Pipex have been very solid for me for three years now. Not the cheapest, but you get what you pay for.

 

[Furr]

Another thing, beware of ADSL max, a company i work at had their ADSL upgraded, and now it hardly works, well... thats a lie... for 10 days the speed went from 2 meg to about 400k. Then it had 3 days of dropping the connection every 2-8 mins, then it went stable at about 4meg speed, then again is suffered the drop outs. Im hoping its resolved for when i go in tomorrow!!

 

[Trem]

Well I am now on my second day with Plusnet and my connection has dropped about every hour tonight. I have asked them for my MAC number already, can anyone beat this for the quickest time it takes to make someone leave an isp?

I am ready to just quit the internet at home, it seems I can't get a decent adsl connection and the NTL 12 month min contract thing annoys me.

 

[Lazarus]

Can i just say Pipex have been very solid for me for three years now. Not the cheapest, but you get what you pay for.

ditto!

 

[DaGaffer]

Well, I'll be moving house in the next couple of months and it looks like I'll have to use Homechoice (no satellite in the apartment I'm buying). The TV side looks ok-ish (although I'm pissed about not being able to get Sky HD/Sky+), but has anyone used their broadband?

 

[FozzySon]

Can i just say Pipex have been very solid for me for three years now. Not the cheapest, but you get what you pay for.

I was saying that a few weeks ago, but now I can't wait to leave them. From bad customer services to them throttling connections.

 

[supersaint]

I was saying that a few weeks ago, but now I can't wait to leave them. From bad customer services to them throttling connections.

Not had a problem for the 3 or 4 years ive been with them.No weekend customer support but ive never needed it.

 

[Mobius]

I got all me ADSL bollocks through (bt voyager 210 router) and all that, but when I go to install it, and get to the stage of "connecting the ethernet cable from router to computer" my pc gets the blue screen of death. Why could that be?

 

[nath]

Yup, Pipex were always fab but if rumours of them being bought out by BT are true that is likely to change.

 

[Trem]

After reading much stuff on ISP's over the past couple of days there seems to be about 4 who are very very good, in order of preference -

Fusion - £29.99 per month, no thrills, no limits and basically business based Broadband. Meant to be uber reliable
Ace - £29.99+VAT per month, all singing all dancing with no limits.
Zen - £24.99 per month. Mega reliable but capping now in place
Nildram - Also meant to be very reliable but also capping in place.

I am going to see how Plusnet do over the next couple of weeks, because at theminute it is performing better than any ISP I have ever had then if they cock up I will go to Fusion, they seem to be fantastic.

 

[SheepCow]

Quicknote on Trem's post, Nildram is owned by Pipex so you can expect it to be (or become) similar to Pipex's level of service.

 

[Noc0de]

So whats currently good then?

Hi All

I've recently moved out of a cabled area so I'm going back to ADSL again.

I haven't been on ADSL for quite a while and honestly, its confusing when looking at the current offerings.

I need something that will be good for gaming, and a bit of P2P & USENET etc. I don't download huge amounts, maybe ~ 30-60GB per month but reading the forums there's such a discrepancy in ppls views.

A lot of ppl are saying good things about IDNet, but with a straight 30GB cap it becomes expensive if you decide to download 60GB in a month with them charging £1/GB over the 30GB cap.

Theres Zen, Eclipse, Nildram and PlusNet that have all had good reps in the past, but I've seen quite a few negative comments recently regarding them.

...and ofcourse there's AOL which seems to offer some cheap packages, but I don't know about them for gaming pings etc - and again there seems to be some mixed view about them.

It really does seem like a gamble at times with what ISP you decide to go with.

Any help/views/opinions would be much appreciated?

 

[Trem]

Hi All

I've recently moved out of a cabled area so I'm going back to ADSL again.

I haven't been on ADSL for quite a while and honestly, its confusing when looking at the current offerings.

I need something that will be good for gaming, and a bit of P2P & USENET etc. I don't download huge amounts, maybe ~ 30-60GB per month but reading the forums there's such a discrepancy in ppls views.

A lot of ppl are saying good things about IDNet, but with a straight 30GB cap it becomes expensive if you decide to download 60GB in a month with them charging £1/GB over the 30GB cap.

Theres Zen, Eclipse, Nildram and PlusNet that have all had good reps in the past, but I've seen quite a few negative comments recently regarding them.

...and ofcourse there's AOL which seems to offer some cheap packages, but I don't know about them for gaming pings etc - and again there seems to be some mixed view about them.

It really does seem like a gamble at times with what ISP you decide to go with.

Any help/views/opinions would be much appreciated?

Nice name, Pearl Jam fan?

The only adsl isp I would go with after all my troubles is Fusion - http://www.fmn.uk.net/

They were the only ones to provide what was promised, I have since left them because I was getting crap speeds due to my distance from the exchange, that is the only I left to go back to cable(which imo is great).

Fusion are dearer than most but worth the extra money.

 

[throdgrain]

Trem should know about ISP ratings, hes been with every single one, the slag

 

[Trem]

Trem should know about ISP ratings, hes been with every single one, the slag

I've had about 8 in the last year, they love me long time

Its a customers market out there, if you go with someone and they so much as look at you wrong......leave, like I do.

 

[Vae]

Never, Never, NEVER AOL!!!

Other than that there are some, like you've mentioned, that have had good reputations. I think you're always going to find people who have negative experiences with ISP's. I personally use Plus.Net. They've had a few problems recently (which haven't affected me) but seem to be getting on top of them now. I've heard generally good things about Zen and Eclipse as well. Don't be put off by a few isolated bad reviews as no service is perfect. Just look at the overall picture from all the reviews.