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AA have a good reputation. Zen do too. I'm not sure why anyone who'd done market research would go with one of the bigger name ISPs these days. Well, OK, I am s

AA have a good reputation. Zen do too. I'm not sure why anyone who'd done market research would go with one of the bigger name ISPs these days. Well, OK, I am sure: AA and Zen both tend to be a bit more expensive. But this is one of those areas where you get what you pay for, I guess. Ironically, the one major exception to this is Virgin, because they do offer an alternative product with technical advantages, whereas almost every other landline ISP is ultimately just backed by the same physical BT infrastructure. But given the speeds you can get in most parts of the country from that BT infrastructure now, the difference isn't going to be as important for most people as it used to be a few years ago.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
We had a Zen account for a while. They were terrible - absolutely hilariously incompetent at getting us connected, expensive, and minimal bandwidth at busy periods. I'd used Zen about ten years earlier and they'd been much better, so I was very disappointed. My experience with Virgin was fine. The product was fast, there were a couple of short outages but no serious technical issues, and I had no problem cancelling when I moved a few years ago.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  I'm sorry to hear that. We've been with Zen for many years and through multiple addresses, and the only technical issues I can recall originated with Openreach rather than Zen and got escalated promptly by the Zen support people. Never had a bandwidth problem, and right now we're routinely getting close to the top speeds available with FTTC, even at "busy" times and with the coronavirus disruption. We did have a bit of hassle getting connected the last time we moved, but again I'm not sure whether that was really Zen's fault, because we ended up getting a BT engineer sent out to install some new hardware as well. It's true that Zen are relatively expensive, though, and their lack of 24/7 support is still well below par. A&A would be the obvious alternative to consider if we were moving again or decided to change ISP for some reason.
daveoc64 6y ago
I'm with Virgin Media (and have been for 20 years) because they offer the best speeds in most parts of the country. AA or Zen simply can't compete when they are offering FTTC or ADSL. I don't care at all about customer service. If you're contacting your ISP enough to care about the customer service, they must be doing something wrong. Virgin Media currently offers speeds of up to 500mbps across their entire network. That will be 600mbps at the start of next month, and it's 1000mbps in some places (such as Reading).

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

We had a Zen account for a while. They were terrible - absolutely hilariously incompetent at getting us connected, expensive, and minimal bandwidth at busy periods. I'd used Zen about ten years earlier and they'd been much better, so I was very disappointed. My experience with Virgin was fine. The product was fast, there were a couple of short outages but no serious technical issues, and I had no problem cancelling when I moved a few years ago.

Silhouette 6y ago
I'm sorry to hear that. We've been with Zen for many years and through multiple addresses, and the only technical issues I can recall originated with Openreach rather than Zen and got escalated promptly by the Zen support people. Never had a bandwidth problem, and right now we're routinely getting close to the top speeds available with FTTC, even at "busy" times and with the coronavirus disruption. We did have a bit of hassle getting connected the last time we moved, but again I'm not sure whether that was really Zen's fault, because we ended up getting a BT engineer sent out to install some new hardware as well. It's true that Zen are relatively expensive, though, and their lack of 24/7 support is still well below par. A&A would be the obvious alternative to consider if we were moving again or decided to change ISP for some reason.

daveoc64 6y ago

I'm with Virgin Media (and have been for 20 years) because they offer the best speeds in most parts of the country. AA or Zen simply can't compete when they are offering FTTC or ADSL. I don't care at all about customer service. If you're contacting your ISP enough to care about the customer service, they must be doing something wrong. Virgin Media currently offers speeds of up to 500mbps across their entire network. That will be 600mbps at the start of next month, and it's 1000mbps in some places (such as Reading).