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by eterm 3267 days ago
My best customer support experience was calling an American ISP (I guess a small regional one but I have no good way to judge their size). I had been emailed billing details for a customer - the customer had presumably mistakenly entered my email address. I was expecting the usual 40 minutes on hold but it was answered promptly and politely by someone who understood the problem as I presented it.

This contrasts greatly with my experience calling any UK ISP.

The only other phone support I've experienced that has come close to that was (the now sadly defunct) Icesave, which I believe shared their phone support with Newcastle building society.
2 comments
bensummers 3267 days ago
If you're not having luck with UK ISPs, try https://www.aaisp.net.uk/

They have technical people running support who talk to customers as peers. Also you can use IRC if you don't like the phone.

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Nexxxeh 3267 days ago
Yeah, they're not the cheapest by a long stretch, but if your connection is something you NEED rather than something you just LIKE... Andrews and Arnold are worth the premium.

If you will be losing productivity if there's any outage, you'll probably save the price difference the first time you use their support.

I've had good experiences with Zen too, on their FTTP product. (I'd have used AA, but they didn't offer that specific setup.)

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danpalmer 3267 days ago
+1 for Zen - they really know what they are doing. Unfortunately FTTC still requires intervention from Openreach who are still terrible.

I find Zen is a good middle ground between a reliable ISP with good features (like static addresses, IPv6, etc) and good support, and a provider like Andrews * Arnold who are excellent but will cost 2-3x the price. A&A are just not really suited to home use, and price a lot on bandwidth, which in the age of Netflix isn't great.

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Rjevski 3267 days ago
+1 for AAISP. I use them for mobile and they're awesome - no contracts, no marketing BS, no fine print, just voice and data at a fair price.
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Semaphor 3267 days ago
I'm paying 5€ extra per month (Germany) for more upstream, a crappy sla and most importantly a dedicated support hotline. Whenever I call, it's a waiting time measured in seconds and the people answering have technical knowledge.
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