Best Broadband provider

[sg31]

I've been with Talk Talk for a long while but it is getting more expensive. With anytime calls it's not far off £40. My contract ends next month so I'm having a look round for a cheaper broadband service that is reliable, anytime calls is a must because we don't have a mobile signal in this area.

Who would you recommend.

EE and Plusnet have competetively priced deals including calls but I keep getting mixed reviews on them. I've decided not to go for the cheaper Pop and Now services because reviews have been shocking.

[Itsallaguess]

I've been with Talk Talk for a long while but it is getting more expensive. With anytime calls it's not far off £40. My contract ends next month so I'm having a look round for a cheaper broadband service that is reliable, anytime calls is a must because we don't have a mobile signal in this area.

Who would you recommend.

EE and Plusnet have competetively priced deals including calls but I keep getting mixed reviews on them.

I moved to Plusnet for my whole telephone and broadband package a while ago now, from previously using Talk Talk for my broadband and BT for my phone.

Not only were Talk Talk expensive, but I had consistently poor broadband quality too.

Since moving to the Plusnet package, I've not only saved money, but also had zero broadband drop-outs, so I'm happy with the move on both counts..

The broadband transfer went smoothly too - all done on the allocated day, and with almost zero downtime.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[JohnB]

Just switched from plusnet to EE. Something has halved connection speed, and its very frustrating persuading EE I'm not lying. Getting to second level support is hard, they reject complaints with 'its working this end'

[mc2fool]

I've been with Talk Talk for a long while but it is getting more expensive. With anytime calls it's not far off £40. My contract ends next month so I'm having a look round for a cheaper broadband service that is reliable, anytime calls is a must because we don't have a mobile signal in this area.

Have you tried haggling with TalkTalk? I do so every time it comes towards the end of my contract, and indeed did so most recently just a month ago (and actually found it the easiest negotiation for years ... maybe a covid effect).

I got line rental with unlimited copper BB + unlimited anytime UK calls + TV for 18 months, face value £21.50+£12+£4 = £37.50, for which I'm paying £19.95+£0+£0 = £19.95 ...

[sg31]

I've been with Talk Talk for a long while but it is getting more expensive. With anytime calls it's not far off £40. My contract ends next month so I'm having a look round for a cheaper broadband service that is reliable, anytime calls is a must because we don't have a mobile signal in this area.

Have you tried haggling with TalkTalk? I do so every time it comes towards the end of my contract, and indeed did so most recently just a month ago (and actually found it the easiest negotiation for years ... maybe a covid effect).

I got line rental with unlimited copper BB + unlimited anytime UK calls + TV for 18 months, face value £21.50+£12+£4 = £37.50, for which I'm paying £19.95+£0+£0 = £19.95 ...

Negotiation was my first instinct so I went to 'my account' and couldn't find any way to phone them. I resorted to complaining about that on 'Twitter'. They got back to me giving me a contact number in short order. It usually works.

I am going to ring them this morning but if they won't budge I will try Plusnet. The comment from JohnB confirms some things I'd heard about their service. None of the ISP's are perfect, competent will have to do.

Thanks all round for the replies

[mc2fool]

Negotiation was my first instinct so I went to 'my account' and couldn't find any way to phone them. I resorted to complaining about that on 'Twitter'. They got back to me giving me a contact number in short order. It usually works.

I am going to ring them this morning but if they won't budge I will try Plusnet.

If you phone then tell the voice-recognition system "cancel contract" or "loyalty team" to get through to the right department, but actually this last time I did it using their online chat facility.

[sg31]

£39.50 down to £28 for exactly the same deal. Thanks to all.

JohnB, if you are on Twitter complain on there about the problem with #EE after it. You will be contacted by a resolution team member within the hour. All the big companies hate any bad comments on social media. I've been on there for 10 years, I've done less than 40 tweets in that time. It is really useful for getting action when nothing else seems to work.

[Howard]

I would second the Plusnet recommendation and have been very pleased with their service having transferred from Talktalk around 10 years or so ago.

And agree that it is worth negotiating at the end of each contract (every two or three years for me). The advantage with Plusnet is that one can easily talk to someone in a UK call centre and common sense prevails, ending in a satisfactory price.

Also, as a very light user of a mobile phone, I am pleased with their £5.25 per month mobile package.

regards

Howard

[Maroochydore]

I would second the Plusnet recommendation and have been very pleased with their service..... The advantage with Plusnet is that one can easily talk to someone in a UK call centre and common sense prevails, ending in a satisfactory price.

I would third Plusnet both for Broadband and telephone. All landline and calls to mobile not chargeable 24/7 if you buy the £9 per month add-on.
Very helpful staff if there is a problem, based in Yorkshire, prices good. Discount on landline if you pay upfront (about 13% saving so better than putting the money in the bank).
I get unlimited FTC up to 40Mbps, guaranteed 30 Mbps but I get 36-38Mbps consistently.
They will negotiate in a friendly manner but to be honest saving a couple of quid for a bunch of hassle just isn't worth it. If it ain't broke....

[Breelander]

I'm not so concerned about shopping round for the cheapest possible deal. My measure of 'Best Broadband provider' is reliability. In that respect my BT package consistently delivers the 50Mbps that I'm paying for.

I've not tried Plusnet, but as they're owned by BT I would expect them to be as reliable.

[JohnB]

Plusnet stopped a promised duscount early, and it was hard to get it restored. Their website is poor, very hard to see what options you have at contract end. Their exit questionaire was so long i lost the will to live

[AF62]

BT, EE, and Plusnet are all simply brands of BT targeted at different market segments, so although the product and pricing may vary I don’t see why the reliability should.

For me BT delivers the best deal. A reliable 70MB fibre service for £20ish a month - no calls included but I have unlimited calls on my £2 a month mobile phone from Three and unlimited calls through Google Home.

BT also provides free access to their WiFi when out and about or when visiting friends and relatives who use BT (without having to ask for the WiFi password).

Service has been reliable, with one short period of no service in a couple of years but that was because some other contractors cut through the lines when digging a trench.

And at the end of each fixed price contract the inevitable haggle hasn’t been too onerous.

[didds]

AIUI whoever supplies your BBand does so over the same piece of copper wire/fibre etc to your house anyway... though there may be some dedicated kit in some exchanges for some of the larger players I am told.

So its unlikely that ISP X can provide a faster service than ISP Y because generally they ultimately rely on Openreach to get it to your house anyway. Unless these alleged dedicated kits in exchanges have a faster theroughput than normal O/E exchange stuff.

As noted above your ISP is irrelevant if a 3rd party manages to stick a JCB through a street provision, or (in two occassions for me) O/R are up a telegraph pole changing wires!

Where the differences come in - maybe - is a change of provider may mean a more modern router with "better" handling of what arrives at the house.

didds

[tikunetih]

- no calls included but I have unlimited calls on my £2 a month mobile phone from Three and unlimited calls through Google Home.

What's that Three arrangement?

[AF62]

- no calls included but I have unlimited calls on my £2 a month mobile phone from Three and unlimited calls through Google Home.

What's that Three arrangement?

It is their £8 a month sim only tariff (unlimited UK calls, landline and mobile, unlimited texts and 8GB data, plus Roam at Home).

But I haggled a £2 discount per sim when I activated them as the coverage at home wasn't quite as good as the website (they offered a discount immediately without asking to prevent me cancelling in the 14 day cooling off period) and actually irrelevant as I use WiFi calling anyway,

And as done through Quidco came with £50 cashback at that time (seems to be £30 now).

So around £1.90 a month for 12 months - and then the haggle starts again.

[88V8]

Zen.
https://www.zen.co.uk/
Reliable connection.
And on the few occasions that I've had problems, I can call and speak to a real (English) person who doesn't babble from a script, fixes the problem, or if it turns out to be my problem, tries to help me fix it.
A few weeks ago, was getting dropouts which they suspected were down to my five year old Zylex router, they sent me a new Technicolor router foc

Been with them since 2007, moved the landline over to them three years ago, and no intention of changing.

V8

[JohnB]

BTW, I've discovered that EE are in that class of companies who send you pointless "your bill is ready on the website" messages by both text and email each month, and you can't ask them to stop. "Why don't you change your contact email to one you don't read", say their support team

[Infrasonic]

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2 ... -isps.html

Once again we’ve taken our biannual look back to see how average download and upload speeds have changed across the fastest nationally available fixed line ISPs and mobile operators. Overall the COVID-19 crisis has produced a broad downward trend in H1 2020, but Virgin Media remains top for fixed lines and EE top for mobile.

Cont.

[stewamax]

1. Andrews and Arnold (A&A) - but note that download volumes are capped. If you have problems, A&A is the place to go
2. Zen

Neither of them is a 'pile it high and sell it cheap' merchant: you get what you pay for.

Re PlusNet: I was a PN customer for many years until it was "slimmed down" for sale (to BT) by former CEO Lee Strafford. Whether they still provide email as part of their service I don't know, but it became shockingly bad: it didn't even support encrypted connections and webmail was mostly unusable.