In the UK customers are complaining more and more about their broadband service, and waiting longer for someone to listen to them:
According to the survey, people wait an average of 17 minutes to get technical help from their broadband provider.
According to the survey by JD Power, 52% of calls are complaints and 48% are service related. This is the third year of the survey which looks at seven factors including performance, reliability, customer service and technical support. Tiscali scored 668 out of 1,000 to top the ‘league’ while BT came last with 626 points.
Other points of note include:
- The survey found that people paid an average of £21 a month for broadband, down from £26 in 2006.
- Speed is also increasing, according to the survey, with the average connection rising from 3.5Mbps (megabits per second) last year to 4.8Mbps.
Via [BBC]
Interesting reading. I have had very good customer service and very poor customer service from BT over the last 5 years, but on balance the good outweighs the bad. I guess in any large corporation achieving consistency is difficult.
My costs are down and my speed has increased – currently average 5.5-6Mbps and virtually no downtime. Took a month to get set-up correctly after a recent house move – problem was with the actual phone line. However 4 weeks of up and down performance and a few heated calls is not bad given the bigger picture of 5 years of reliable service and helpful support.
Almost the same here. I have been a fan of Demon for many years because of their true understanding of both the Macintosh side of things and the XBOX Live network. At my last place I had excellent download and upload speeds (as in close to their advertised speed for my phone line) and I had zero downtime in 2 years.
However, when I called them to arrange the moving of my service to my new house, I was very disappointed to hear there was nothing I could do other than cancel my account and open a new one once my new line was active!! And I am a business customer!!
In the end I was down for just over a week while BT did their thing, but since then it’s been back to Demons usual high standards of service… and I even got a reduction from £26 to £21 per month.
We use cable and have had no problems. It is cheaper than in the past. As regards speed, I;m not sure what we’re on, probably 2 meg. I find that the bottleneck in terms of speed is usually the servers for the websites at the other end rather than the broadband providers.
Telefonica have recently increased to 3Mps and are pretty reliable which is a good job as they wont speak any English when you call their customer service. Movistar will for mobile and Telefonica will for Landline.
Costs 40€ per month which is expensive though!!!!
I’m with Madasfish. And overall have been very happy with them. There has been the occasional blip but, whenever I have had a need for technical support I have got through reasonably quickly.
They are a mac compliant ISP.
Darren
that’s a good point you make Darren. Tech support is something I’d not thought about. Virgin have now moved their tech support to a premium rate number, whereas before it was free!
I’m glad not to have had to use it
The deal I have is £17.99 a month. They have just offered me a renewal deal of £14.99 if I sign a 12 month contract. I’m shopping around!
They also have a really cool referral program, which I have benefitted from a couple of times. I think it was something like £25 for me and £25 for them, along those lines.