suggestion for Cheap Broadband page

Chipping

1. I think more emphasis needs to be put on support and customer service, i.e. the quality of the providers, and less on cost in this article. Words like "urge you to check the following broadband review sites before signing-up" need to be used, giving links (see below). I know this site is for money saving, however, it is extremely, extremely frustrating for people to end up with a 12mth contract and problems that they just can't get resolved. In my experience, people would prefer to have a working service than a free service that does not work.

As most people do not understand the quagmire that is DSL broadband in the UK, they need to be warned to go for a helpful and not money-grubbing provider.

2. Urge people to avoid having anything to do with companies that charge above normal rates for support calls - this is a sign that the company will use underhanded tactics to make money from its customers. I.e. offer cheap prices to lure then sting with hidden charges. Unfortunately, where communication is concerned, charging is complicated so it is easy to dupe the average Joe.

3. Provide links to the following public review sites, urging people to check all of them before deciding on a provider:
thinkbroadband.com
ispreview.co.uk
dslzoneuk.net
Although these reviews can't be completely reliable, they
a) do give a reasonable comparison between companies as to how happy their customers were;
b) will improve in accuracy as more people use the sites, and;
c) are better than nothing (or saying that because all companies have a proportion of unhappy customers its the luck of the draw).

If more people start comparing customer service in Britain and acting on that then we will get away from the widespread terrible service. There are good providers out there, only they might be a little more expensive.

4. You should put more emphasis on the speeds that people can expect. IMHO this is a legalised con perpetrated by the broadband providers (the magic words: "up to"). Let people know that, whether they are buying 24Mbps or 8Mbps, the average speed in UK is 3.6Mbps. I refer you to ofcom.org.uk/media/features/brspeeds. This report also states "one in five of these subscribers actually receive an average speed of less than 2 Mbit/s, while on average the actual speed consumers receive is 45% of the advertised headline speed."

The DSL companies are also not obliged to do anything if you get a slow service. So they could turn up and stick you with a dial-up speed broadband and your only options then would be to cancel immediately (then what to do?), 'lump-it', or get stuck with a long-term contract with hours on support calls in the hope they may fix it.

I know of someone who got brand new 8Mb broadband, phone & TV with Tiscali. They were 2km from the exchange and in central london. The TV needs 4Mbps to work. Tiscali 'engineer' came, got 160kbps broadband, spent 2hrs on phone with Tiscali. Then said couldn't do anything about it - can't have TV. Its up to customer if they want to be happy with 160kbps or cancel. Cannot fix it as that is up to BT and BT won't fix because line works OK. Did not mention that Tiscali would have to pay BT £190 to come out to fix. For this Tiscali 'engineering' the customer had to pay £99 for installation.

Hope all this helps. Your article is great BTW - very good info for newbies.

PS I am not associated with any of the sites or companies mentioned. I'm just a techie (know a little about DSL) who is annoyed with the dodgy broadband provision in Britain.