Which provider?? They all seem to have bad reviews!

pinkzebra

My daughter is moving into a student rental property soon (just her and her partner). We are helping her sort out broadband for the house. She doesn’t need tv. I’ve looked at reviews for broadband providers, and they all seem terrible! We are with sky ourselves (with tv package) - fairly happy with them, but just wondering who else to look at, as they aren’t the cheapest. Any advice welcome. 

[Deleted User]

All providers have terrible reviews, as no one ever leaves reviews to say their broadband works.

The vast majority will provide a decent service, though everyone will have a horror story about any given provider 

LindsayT

Have you looked at Now? They are cheap and calls to landlines and mobiles included. Can't say what they are like yet but I'm moving to them in 10 days because of reviews I found and because my present company is selling out. I agree with the poster above that there will be a horror story about any given provider.

matelodave

As said above, people usually complain rather than praise so for the half a dozen poor reviews there are probably a thousand satisfied customers. It's the same with cars, caravans, TV's, mobile phones and even broadband.

If you get poor service you tell ten people, if you get good service (which is what you expect) you dont bother. Obviously there will be some horror stories but TBH, the vast majority of people are perfectly happy with whomever their provider is.

Neil_Jones

pinkzebra said:

My daughter is moving into a student rental property soon (just her and her partner). We are helping her sort out broadband for the house. She doesn’t need tv. I’ve looked at reviews for broadband providers, and they all seem terrible! We are with sky ourselves (with tv package) - fairly happy with them, but just wondering who else to look at, as they aren’t the cheapest. Any advice welcome. 

Realistically if people avoided providers with bad reviews customers would never go with any provider at all.

Also you're more likely to jump on web forums/Trustpilot/Watchdog shouting from the rooftops "Provider X is crap! Don't go anywhere near them, <insert some story here about why they're crap>, AVOID!" than you would going "Provider X is the best thing since sliced bread!  <insert some story here about why they're the bee's knees>, USE THEM!"...

Rodders53

Consider a mobile phone provider's mi-fi or router modem if coverage is suitable.
e.g. http://www.three.co.uk/store/broadband/home-broadband

Student rental is not always conducive to fixed landline 18-24 month broadband contracts.  Where a mobile device can be used in more than one location.

They may already have enough mobile data on their current phones to use them as hotspots to laptops/tablets etc.,. ??

onomatopoeia99

pinkzebra said:

 I’ve looked at reviews for broadband providers, and they all seem terrible!  

A&A have excellent reviews, which as a customer for 18 years straight I agree with.  However, the Great British public seem more concerned with getting a "deal" rather than getting a good service so they aren't very popular on MSE.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/isp/aaisp/?category=17

JJ_Egan

As above

OP suggest you start with the most expensive and work your way down.

Most people never need customer service and many faults are user related not ISP .

[Deleted User]

Personally I'd just go with the the cheapest for the service you need with a view to contract lengths and transfer fees but bear in mind the following:

With the exception of Virgin, the following applies:

• The quality / speed / reliability of the broadband to the point it enters your house itself is mostly down to Openreach regardless of supplier, and if a fault occurs outside of your home, then your supplier is taking messages to pass on the Openreach - whether you wait ages to have your call answered overseas or get a quick answers with a local accent will vary depending on supplier and whether that matters to you is what counts when choosing.
  
  
• The equipment beyond the point it enters your house does depend on the supplier, some give away fancy wifi routers, others give the bare minimum but you can unchain yourself totally from that by buying your own kit. The most frequent complaints about broadband are "my wifi is slow / disconnecting / weak etc" which is all dependent on the piece of kit inside the house and not the broadband itself so you could choose a supplier based on the kit or unchain yourself and go for the cheapest.
  
  
• If you find technical things difficult, need help understanding bills or just like to complain a lot to customer services then pick a supplier based on good feedback in that area - but if you doubt you will ever need to phone them up, then it won't really matter.

So on to Virgin, they get a lot of bad review as well, but I chose them for my circumstances I just need fast internet speed and I can't get it elsewhere, I rarely need to contact customer services and am technical enough to replace their Wifi router with my own and diagnose most problems myself so I care little about their reviews as I'm getting more speed for my money than I could with any Openreach supplier. If there is ever an outage, I can report it online without phoning up, and most of the time it shows as already reported as it is usually an area wide problem.

If it was (or rather when) my daughter, I'd recommend the fastest / cheapest package and buy them a nice super duper Wifi router as a moving in present!