Seriously, are there *any* good LLU ADSL providers?

[nath]

I'm with BeThere and I used to think they were pretty ace, good support and great prices but I've had a number of problems recently which I think is down to issues at the exchange - and BE are being utterly shit about fixing it.

I've had pretty much this *exact* problem before, lost of sync every 2-10 minutes, they hack my profile from 17mbit down to about 10 in an effort to stabilise things, which it does for a day or so then gets worse. They um and ah and after a month they send out a BT engineer to the exchange and omg, look it's fixed! So had that a few months ago and it's happening again and they're making me go through all the same old bullshit and I'm getting really fucking fed up.

So basically, are there any internet providers out there that are genuinely through and through good? No doubt there will be countless people saying "I've never had problem with X", "Y have always been grand" and so on, but I was one of those people with regards to BE. Does anyone know of a provider who, perhaps charges a bit more but still has LLU and has *exceptional* customer service?

I'd like to get through to someone who is a little bit more than a trained monkey on the phone when I call up. I hate being locked behind a wall of dribbling retards making sure I've checked the microfilters and done a quiet line test.

Arrrrrrgh.

Anyone?

 

[Raven]

The blame probably lies with BT, its the same around here. All the exchanges are massively over subscribed. They halved my bandwidth a few months ago and refused to acknowledge it, I went from around 3mb to 1.4mb overnight. They tried telling me that I had always been on 1.4mb. Moving from the south where I had cable to the midlands where I get shite ADSL has made me obsessed about my bandwidth so I know I used to be on 3mb.
Contract is up for renewal at the end of the month so I will be fucking BT off, not that it will make a lot of difference to the speeds I get but at least BT won't get my money, if they cba to invest in the infrastructure then I cba to invest in them.

 

[Kryten]

Unfortunately the only other one that really sticks out is O2 - which is the same hardware, same company etc. Customer service always was excellent with those, and if you've an O2 contract FAR cheaper too.
But as I said it's pretty much the same kit.

Did you ever look at changing your router to see if that makes much difference? I certainly got a hell of a better connection once I ditched the O2/BeBox.

 

[old.user4556]

I'm with O2, I went through a bad patch with them a while back where speeds were unbearably slow along with constant DNS problems.

It seems to be better now, although the odd evening can be a bit meh.

 

[Moriath]

xilo maybe

 

[Zenith.UK]

nath, you have a PM.

 

[GReaper]

I can understand where you're coming from. At home I've got absolutely no problems with BE at all, 20Mbit downstream sync on a 3db fastpath connection. At work it's another story, same exchange but the line is absolutely dire - it just can't cope with the standard 6db interleaved profile. Admittedly the line length is longer - but we're not expecting miracles, just a stable connection and a decent speed. Annoyingly the fault is intermittent, so eventually things return to normal - but it just sends you insane having to start the whole "have you changed your filters?" thing all over again when it starts up.

However at the end of the day it's still a BT line. If there's any fault then sadly it's still up to BT to fix it.

The only ISP I can possibly recommend for getting your line fixed would be Andrews & Arnold. Sadly they're not an LLU ISP and their bandwidth charges aren't super cheap (but aren't actually unreasonable unless you're a super heavy user), although the daytime bandwidth is a bit extortionate. I've never used them myself, but they do seem to be one of the ISPs which actually have a clue and say that they'll fix your line.