Bulldog Broadband

Normski

Does anyone have experience of Bulldog?
Are they any good?
Is the deal being advertised on the TV as good as it looks?
Normski

canny_yorkshireman_2

From what I saw on watchdog they got a good roasting for poor customer service and promising too much.I am sure someone with fist hand experience will post up something usefull for you.I am with telewest and they are great a tad expensive but worth paying for.

competitionscafe

Bulldog? Beware, you can get bitten :

".......If you've been watching television over the past few weeks you can't have failed to notice the adverts for Bulldog broadband. The company, which was bought by Cable & Wireless last year, is heavily marketing its super-fast 8Mb service and promising lower telephone charges.

Unlike most other broadband providers in the UK, Bulldog requires those signing up to also switch their telephone line away from BT - it offers its fast, uncapped broadband for £29.50 a month, and currently the first two months are free.

However, if you are tempted to sign up, you may want to know that this company has a distinctly controversial customer service past...... "

Source and full story: http://money.guardian.co.uk/internetcosts/story/0,12769,1656340,00.html

competitionscafe

alexjohnson wrote:

Bulldog's customer service is terrible. It has improved from the summer, but it still isn't great. You can now get through and speak to someone quite quickly (this is new), but don't expect the call to be useful. If you send an email it seems to disappear into the abyss. If that is going to stress you out, then you are in for a World of Pain with Bulldog.

So true and trying to change back to your old supplier is a nightmare too as Bulldog just ignore you!

alexjohnson wrote:

They provide a free modem but it really is a POS - you're better off bying an "ADSL router" - Amazon has a perma-deal on the same wireless Netgear model Bulldog would sell you for twice the price. (USB ADSL modems force you to use a dialler on your computer - one of the nice things about broadband is that it can be "always on" and that completely defeats the point. They are also a huge potential security hole. Routers have built-in hardware firewalls, and do the "dialling" invisibly behind the scenes, and allow you to share your connection.)

Is this the one?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0006M5UQG/

My 'free' modem never turned up so I just used my old adsl modem from BT (I do have a firewall installed on the pc) - sounds like a router may be a better option though?

terriermama

AVOID, AVOID, AVOID.

The worst customer 'service' ever.

glenn_uk

I saw Bulldog's new advert of 8MB for £9.75 everywhere, so I tried to sign up for it and found that my line is not compatiable. however, they will offer me 2MB for £14.99!
So why they can offer 8MB for £9.75 and not 2mb for the same price? when I put this question to the sales girl on the phone, she just hung up on me! they have a serious problems with their customer services no doubt.

ffym

One of my sons has moved into a new house with no phone, Bulldog have offered to provide a line for £1 (BT want thier standard pound of flesh), free landline calls for 3 months and a broadband access package. It seems to good to be true but I can't see any strings in the T&C's on thier website! - only 1 month minimum contract! The views here have me concerned but like I say he'll be £70+ better off straight away than if he went to BT. Has anyone had any experience with thier new connection service?

bunking_off

glenn_uk wrote:

So why they can offer 8MB for £9.75 and not 2mb for the same price?

The 8Mb service is provided using Local Loop Unbundling, ie Bulldog take over your line. To do this, they need to install equipment in each local BT site - they're currently doing that, I believe, to achieve approx 60% penetration.

The 2Mb service is provided using BT's IPstream service, which uses a central pipe between BT and Bulldog to fill in the areas where LLU isn't available.

LLU and IPstream have different pricing models from BT. In effect, once Bulldog have rolled out to a given BT site, it will be cheaper for them to provide service (at any bitrate) than it is using BT's IPStream service. Cost-wise it then costs them very little more to offer 8M above 2M, so they just offer 8M for simplicity.

terriermama

ffym wrote:

One of my sons has moved into a new house with no phone, Bulldog have offered to provide a line for £1 (BT want thier standard pound of flesh), free landline calls for 3 months and a broadband access package. It seems to good to be true but I can't see any strings in the T&C's on thier website! - only 1 month minimum contract! The views here have me concerned but like I say he'll be £70+ better off straight away than if he went to BT. Has anyone had any experience with thier new connection service?

I switched to Bulldog earlier this year. They took 1 1/2 months to connect me over from BT. I received no communication or follow-up from the time I placed the order to connection. I had to call several times in the interim to sort things out myself. When I did get connected, there followed a week of teething problems and no Internet connection.

Things were smooth for a while and connection very fast. However, when problems occurred, just put on your anti-stress helmet and hold on. I experienced breakdowns in the service 4/5 times in 8 months and customer service has been zero. This varied from getting a recorded message after being put on hold for ages, non-action on repeated reports of breakdowns, to ridiculously rude staff that just put down the phone on you. My tel has been 'down' twice in the last 3 months - restoration of service has taken 4 days to 'still waiting after 10 days'.
And though it's a month month contract, migrating to another supplier might be delayed, restrictive due to the system Bulldog uses (sorry not a techie so cannot go into this).

Your son might be one of the lucky ones and not have any problems. However, if he's dependant on his computer/tel being 'on' all the time and doesn't have the time to waste, I'd suggest looking around for an alternative.

competitionscafe

My experiences have been similar to terriermama - in short I would say that the small monetary saving is not worth the stress and hassle!

Go with Zen Broadband, Freedom 2 Surf, Metronet or other highly rated suppliers.

If you want very high speeds a new isp is offering 24MB for £24 per month but I think this is only available at the largest exchanges at present.
http://money.guardian.co.uk/internetcosts/story/0,12769,1578645,00.html

scooter74

Right. I've just connected to Bulldog and am currently writing this with 1MB broadband, unlimited, costing me £9.95 a month (although because they couldn't provide me with 8MB I have to keep my BT line and extorionate line rental).

I watched the Watchdog programme that slated their customer service but I can't fault them so far. All my phonecalls have been answered within a minute (and I held for a T mobile adviser for 28 minutes the other day!). All my emails are answered within 24 hours, even the ones I sent asking them to do non-essential things like confirm my contract details and whether I was still getting caller display.

So....so far so good. I was previously paying £14.99 for 512kb broadband and Bulldog are guaranteeing me a service twice as fast for just two thirds of the price....

A No Brainer? We shall see, will post back in three months.