ISP with British Call Centre?

[signia]

Hi everyone, just requested my MAC from Orange... can't wait to get out of there!

One of my main gripes was that when their service was bad, I ended up listening to someone with poor English in Bangalore read the script telling me to reboot, unplug the line etc... none of which I ever did of course...

I want an ISP who, when there is a problem, can be honest about what's going on, believes me when I say I know what I'm talking about (I know my way around a router) and understands english terminology (so when I ask "why is the connection having a bit of a mare?", they don't just respond "yes&quot.

I'll happily pay a bit more for better service.

Currently looking at BE as an option, they do get rated quite highly. But none of these ISPs tell you where their customer/technical support is.

Anyone know of any?

Cheers.

[Silent1]

Zen have a british call centre IIRC, i would reccomend my ISP but as they're a LLU unless you're in south cambs they're useless.

[whygee02]

Sympathise with your Orange experience - I've had exactly the same, round and round IVR menus, eventually to land at an indian who can only just speak recognisable English, and no ability to deviate from a script.

I did hit lucky on one occasion and 'arrive' at one of their UK call centres, who were very good. Other 9 times out of 10, very poor. Usually end up hanging up in frustration and fixing it myself when its possible.

I'm still with them, but for how long I can't say.

[LordGrover]

I rarely call them, but I'm pretty sure demon is still solely uk.

[GregE240]

BE has English call centres, and they are very efficient at dealing with any issues you may have.

Highly recommended.

[arcturus]

Enta. Excellent 24/7 service from a call centre in Telford. You actually speak to someone who can help rather than a script reading monkey. Not that i have had to call them much 'cos their broadband, well, just works!!

[onomatopoeia]

A&A. Don't have a call centre at all, just some techies at their office AFAIK.

[signia]

thanks all.

Ironically, when I rang up today, I got through to a UK call centre...

I'll keep looking out. I'd like to try for ADSL2+ to see if it makes much difference.

Alledgedly 21cn is due for rollout in my local exchange in Q2 2009, so at best I'm looking at 2 years before I might be able to move on.

I'll take a look at Demon and see how they are reviewed. At the moment, BE are up there though.

Cheers.

[bigdods]

Griffin are excellent. They are a business / home worker ISP so a bit more expensive but when you call its routed straight to an engineer in the UK, no call centre in sight. On the rare occasions I have had to call them they have been very helpful and resolved issues quickly and not a script in sight !

[Zad]

GregE240 said:

BE has English call centres, and they are very efficient at dealing with any issues you may have.

Highly recommended.

Be have *some* support people in the UK. The first point of contact is the Bulgarian call centre. It does rather sound like you are calling the KGB though and the technical skills vary widely from person to person. I would recommend Be for their speed, price and uncapped download, I wouldn't recommend them for their technical support though.

[Panclan]

IDNet www.idnet.net do not have have a call centre, but an office staffed in St Albans. They are rated as one of the best, if not the best for customer service and connection speed with an upto 8mb ADSL line on www.thinkbroadband.com

[Scraggles]

www.merula.net, offices located in St Neots, last time I called it was to some English lady, who passed the message onto engineers - not have or need 24 hour cover

[cyberface]

LordGrover said:

I rarely call them, but I'm pretty sure demon is still solely uk.

I've been using Demon for 14 years. I migrated from a 'home' SLA to a 'business' SLA 10 years ago so things may be different for 'home' products now.

But for 'business' products - I always get through to a UK (normally scottish) person for sales or technical support, very short wait unless they are having a major trauma (like their DNS servers falling over, that tends to kick off lots of tech support calls... ) and knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff.

If you've got a business line from Demon and had to wait too long to speak to a tech support bod when their network went down, it was probably me gossiping about random techy crap with one of their advisers

My link has very rarely gone down (less than once a year, if that) - there's no bullshit about 'up to 8 meg' meaning '200 k' - but then again I pay for a business grade link (the product is called 'Business 8000' IIRC) which isn't as cheap as some 'home' broadband products.

Again, I think you get what you pay for. Customer service and connection quality are worth paying for AFAIAC - it's up to you how much service is worth. I've moved both my energy utilities and credit cards to providers with UK call centres - as soon as a current provider switches to India I immediately cancel. No problem with Indians - they are nice people on the whole - but I've not yet come across a company that outsources call centres to India and also provides the Indian call staff with infrastructure and authority to actually serve customers. After all, you only offshore to cut costs. I've spent too much time being apologised to by an Indian energy company employee telling me that he can't let me pay the red electricity bill because he doesn't have authority to accept payment, and can't accept a meter reading because he doesn't have authority to enter it into the system, etc. - and on asking to speak to someone *with* the authority, he can't put me through because he hasn't got the authority to transfer customer service calls back to the UK so I have to dial another number, which he doesn't know.

Hell, I can understand the chaps and chapesses in Bangalore better than the lads and ladies in Glasgow , but at least the Glaswegians are allowed to take payment and update customer records.

Same goes for mobile phones as well as energy, ISP and credit card.... switched to Vodafone from Orange, and my Voda support calls go through to predominantly northern English accents. Energy (both gas and electricity) is French but has dedicated Kent call centres down the road from me (Hastings, apparently suicide capital of the UK, they seem friendly on the phone but call centres are hardly the ideal business for a town noted for its high proportion of mental illness!). ISP is Demon and most of them are in Scotland (and the girls with Scots accents, but I'm not paying through the nose for a leased line just because my account manager sounds gorgeous ). Credit card - worth checking with this one, because I have two cards from the same provider, one costing me money to run and the other not. The card with the big fee gets me instant no-wait service from a very helpful English lady or gentleman. The other gets a long on-hold period and eventually an Indian call centre. It's the same with my bank (Lloyds TSB) - call the number on the back of the bank card and I eventually get an Indian chap or lady, but if I call my 'bank manager' (who isn't actually at my original branch, but a lady at a regional call centre who deals with many accounts and changes from time to time) then I get an English person (LTSB have a few big call centres dotted around Middle England IIRC, places like Northampton, Birmingham, Cambridge, Grantham, etc.).

It's a purchasing decision of mine, mainly because all the experiences I've had with Indian call centres have been very problematic - not because of the Indians (or any language barrier, which can be overcome if you know your phonetic alphabet and have worked with Indians with poor English before) - but because the cost-cutting that drives companies to choose Indian call centres also drives them to give the poor buggers no infrastructure or authority to actually serve the customer (accept payments, change addresses, refund mistakes, etc.). This is particularly a problem for ISP call centres, because frequently the customer and support person have an additional fundamental language barrier - the language of IT. It's hard enough for an English tech-illiterate customer to explain a problem to an English first-line helpdesk person, let alone introduce a time-delay, a strong accent and a chance that the customer will be using local idiomatic English to explain the problem because he/she doesn't know the correct technical terminology regarding computer and network infrastructure and software....


So after another random ramble, I'd recommend Demon Internet - also called 'Thus' - but ensure that the product you choose has the Scottish helpdesk / account managers. For me that's a business tariff, but I need the SLA and the speed of reaction to faults. It's not expensive though, by any stretch of the imagination, so unless you're trying to really cut costs, go for a business grade ADSL line. The only difference is the contention ratio, the QoS and (if the home products get cheap support) more expert call centre staff.

[LordGrover]

cyberface said:

I've been using Demon for 14 years. I migrated from a 'home' SLA to a 'business' SLA 10 years ago so things may be different for 'home' products now.
... but I'm not paying through the nose for a leased line just because my account manager sounds gorgeous ). ...

I have eight ADSL lines and a 2MB leased line from Demon - compared with the others I tried at the time they're not expensive anyway. It may be possible to save a few hundred pounds a year but what's that in relation to a very reliable, fast service?

[Don]

LordGrover said:

I rarely call them, but I'm pretty sure demon is still solely uk.

No, they are not. And they are shit.

I am still with them - but this is because I have been with them for fifteen years or something. Not because my recent experience was any good.

A few days before Christmas BT made an administrative error and thought I was moving house. I emailed them to say I was not but, being BT, they only respond to phone calls despite purporting to answer emails. So I phoned them but it was too late.

We were disconnected then reconnected. The reconnection was fraught and required an engineer. At this point there was a misconfiguration between BT systems and my broadband stopped working.

So I called Demon. Their diagnostic procedure is utterly shit. I TOLD them the disconnection/reconnection story and they took no notice. They have a script to go through and they will fecking well do it no matter what. TEN CALLS LATER I STILL WAS NOT RECONNECTED! They even tried telling me to buy a second router! I was LIED to on occasions simply to get me off the phone - "oh you'll have to call Customer Service" - this is NOTHING to DO with "Customer Service". They told me they would have to investigate why BT disconnected me WHICH WAS A LIE! They told me they had done it - I checked with BT - THIS WAS A LIE! BT knew NOTHING about that. Eventually we get to the end of their diagnostic script and with extreme reluctance the Indian Call Centre escalated the problem to Demon in the UK.

Within moments I had a phone call telling me they had looked at the problem and had escalated it to BT. BT were around the next day and the engineer fixed it - in about two hours.

All in all I was without Broadband for around ten days. No refund. Seriously unimpressed. Whilst I realise you could get the same poo with a UK Call Centre their reluctance to escalate the problem whilst the diagnosis (BT disconnection/reconnection) was staring them in the face was...highly unimpressive.

[andyuk911]

See http://www.avforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=...

on what you should consider before you buy

[Scraggles]

was the link even online 15 years ago like the last poster mentioned ?

[Silverbullet767]

www.fast.co.uk

Highly recommended, calls for support answered in 2 rings, no menus.

Not cheap but possibly the best in the UK (rated no.1).

[malman]

Don said:

LordGrover said:

I rarely call them, but I'm pretty sure demon is still solely uk.

Said stuff

It took Demon 4 days to sort out an issue on a core router that was preventing ipsec traffic. So it doesn't surprise me that it took 10 to sort out your connection. 4 days is the benefit of the doubt too as they already knew about it before I rang up.

Just keep ringing back until you get a weak minded newbie that you can bully off the script

[Don]

malman said:

Just keep ringing back until you get a weak minded newbie that you can bully off the script

That's how I got it fixed in the end, I reckon. There were probably more things to do but I just wasn't having any of it.