By Jo Best, 5 May 2006 13:10
NEWS
How much do you love your internet service provider? If you're a customer of BT or NTL, you're most likely to be suffering from a lack of warm and fuzzy feelings towards your provider.
A study by utilities comparison website uSwitch.com, which examined the relative popularity of the UK's ISPs, found that PlusNet is the nation's favourite, with BT and NTL picking up the wooden spoon for the largest percentage of unsatisfied customers.
All in all, it seems the British are a broadband happy bunch. According to the survey of 16,000, 92 per cent of PlusNet customers are satisfied with their ISP, while BT and NTL - with the fewest satisfied customers - still notched up decent levels of satisfied users, with 81 and 82 per cent respectively.
But what makes broadband users happy with their service? The research found that broadband Britain rates connection quality and reliability - rather than price - as the most important elements.
However, broadband users aren't convinced their ISPs are cutting them a good deal. Around half of those surveyed said they don't believe their providers are doing their best to put them on the right package.
BT got the largest thumbs down over price, with around four in 10 users saying they don't think the telco is value for money.
ISPs by overall customer satisfaction
- PlusNet 92 per cent
- Pipex 90 per cent
- Telewest 89 per cent
- Virgin.net 87 per cent
- AOL 83 per cent
- Tiscali 83 per cent
- Wanadoo 83 per cent
- BT 82 per cent
- NTL 81 per cent
Comments
There are 5 comments. Join the discussion
1. Richard
My 1Mbps NTL is good:
(Provided that you don't need to contact Customer "Services.")
Don't tell them, but my basic 1Mbps NTL cable service is usually fast and reliable.
Upload speed is rather slow, too slow for uploading large video files to Channel4.com/fourdocs.
The NTL email service is working at present although some real incoming mail is deleted by NTL's anti-spam filters. (I would like control over this!)
It's uncomfortable being a captive customer but at present the NTL service seems OK.
2. misceng
As a customer of Cable & Wireless when cable TV became available I suffered from the initial teething troubles but these did not last. By takeover I became an NTL customer and things have gone downhill ever since. Only the great upheaval needed to get out of their grip stops me changing. I am surprised that their customer satisfaction rating is so high. Perhaps it is because it is now too expensive to complain at 5p per minute for TV and 10p per minute for broadband and it can take up to 30 minutes to speak to a human being at the call centre who will usually give an unhelpful standard answer.
3. anonymous
How impartial is uswitch? After all they get a fee for customers they switch, so don't they have an interest in promoting those ISPs that offer the highst fees?... I would be more impressed if an objective pollster was used.
4. Lever
NTL are OK most of the time - it's those moments when things go wroing that tests the quality of their service...
When the worst person you've ever had the misfortune to work with gets a good position at NTL then you know there's something VERY bad happening...
And when they change the settings of their BB service and don't tell you, only for their support, in some unsympathetic foreign country, to tell you it's ALL YOUR FAULT that you can't connect to the Internet, even after you humoured them by going along with all their scripted support and finally demanded a supervisory chimp listen to your pleas for help... changing the proxy settings where you've NEVER had to do so before in 7 years (yes when it was CableTel) is THEIR duty to inform you of in good time!
Oh, and occasional outages in service for hours at a time. Funnily enough it was 2 hours today!
*ahem*
But other than that all is fine and OK dandy in NTL land :)
5. Seymour
I've been on NTL broadband at home for 7 years, and PlusNet at work for 4. We've had over 500% more downtime on PlusNet than I've had on NTL
NTL downtime - 1 day in 7 years
PlusNet d/time - 3 days in 4 years
Just lucky I guess