Zen Broadband

[Seeker]

Since Virgin seem to be telling me I don't have a problem despite me showing them that I do, I think I'm going to change ISP.

Zen broadband are currently rated with the highest customer satisfaction and have a UK call centre, anyone here using them?

[Talking Heads]

Nope.
I'm with Vodafone.
Current pricing... Landline, unlimited interweb (at reasonable enough speed) unlimited anytime calls to landlines AND uk mobiles all for £29

The supplied router can be bothersome but can be changed.

[timwilky]

Wish I could leave VM. but the ADSL round here is 3-5Mb and no fibre.


Three have unlimited data/calls/text for about £20/month so tempted to give them a try, just need to work out how to connect my firewall by usb tethering.

[Talking Heads]

Three do a 4G wireless router so there's no need to do tethering.
Basically its the same as a regular home broadband wireless router but instead of a phone line it has a 4G mobile connection.

http://www.three.co.uk/hub/heck-home-fi/

http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Devices/Huawei/HomeFi?memory=0&colour=Black

[Luckypants]

EE also do a mobile data router called 4GEE https://shop.ee.co.uk/broadband/4g-home-broadband

You can install an external YAGI antenna for the best possible signal too. A number of the outlying farms around here are looking at it as we have a new EE mast giving coverage and line lengths means VDSL and ADSL are both poor. I haven't heard of anyone using it yet, so no information on quality of service.

[Luckypants]

Back to the OP question. I'm sorry I have not used Zen, but like you have heard good things. A friend of mine used them and was impressed - he stopped using them when work started paying for broadband.

I'm with Vodafone and have been happy with them for past two years (might be 3). They have resolved technical issues on my line twice - both handled speedily and efficiently.

[Seeker]

I had a visit from the Virgin network engineer this morning to prove that I don't have a problem. At one point he tried to convince me that my two PCs might be causing the issue (assuming I have an issue). I have a win7 laptop and a win10 desktop, I suppose it's possible but Occam's Razor suggests it isn't likely (to me). It might push me to buy a new laptop though, so there is that. :)

I do see his point, though, because there are 900 customers on the same switch and I'm the only one complaining.

He left me his 350Mb modem to try since no one has swapped mine out. I can't get close to 350Mb/s though. Laptop maxes out at 100Mb/s and desktop at 200Mb/s (ookla test).

I was at the hospital yesterday afternoon and during that time BQM said my modem rebooted and the error log had zeroed out indicating the same thing yet his monitor said it hadn't, which is odd.

So, the area manager is coming round with the network guy on Tuesday to discuss what we do next. In some ways Virgin are their own worst enemies - the network guy admitted the call centre wasn't very good (he'd been there and listened in to calls) - they just follow a flow chart script, then I discover that they had been investigating my complaint for over a week but neglected to inform me. When I was a field engineer keeping the customer informed was stressed as being vitally important.

[Talking Heads]

Have you confirmed that your PC's and laptop's network hardware is actually capable of speeds above 200/100?


100 is damn fast btw.....

[Seeker]

Have you confirmed that your PC's and laptop's network hardware is actually capable of speeds above 200/100?


100 is damn fast btw.....

No, and since my laptop is at least 9 years old, I doubt that it's capable, the desktop is a bit newer but to be honest I see no difference (with my usage) between 100 and 200Mb/s.

I have loaded another ping program called EMCO, it's pinging google in Los Angeles and Virgin in Nottingham, when it loses a packet it pings the modem to make sure it's not a cable problem, it also chimes when connection is dropped. If I wait for a chime and then try and load a new webpage it will fail - it sits there until it either belatedly loads (a new chime indicates reconnection) or it says: "no internet".
This happened twice between 10:13 am and 10:17 am, if I look at the BQM graph (which is an external site pinging me) it shows an interruption at this time (I've annotated the lower BQM graph)

Since the Virgin network guy implied it might be both of my PCs, I have just ordered a new Lenovo 330S, Ryzen5, 256Gb SSD laptop and a usb-C to ethernet adaptor since modern laptops don't have an ethernet port now.

I am pretty confident that this is a Virgin problem and I'm meeting the local manager on Tuesday but their network guy insists that everything is ok as fa as he is concerned.

This is what my BQM graph looked like after the last repair 2 years ago (working great).
https://i.ibb.co/kQcwFWM/morning-30-Apr.png

This is what it looks like now:

https://i.ibb.co/HBxJ3C5/350-9-Feb-11-05.png

The red spikes are packet loss. The network guy's equipment does not show any problems.
On 3 of my 4 upstream channels my modem is reporting 160 T3 timeouts (in 24 hours).

[Bibio]

Seeker.. how much time have you left on your VM contract?

[Seeker]

Seeker.. how much time have you left on your VM contract?

to be honest, I'm unsure. I took over the account when my Dad passed away in August and wasn't paying too much attention.

According to the network guy, once Virgin admit that there's nothing more they can do and yet you're still not satisfied, you are offered the option of leaving with no penalty.

However, something has happened, starting at about 12:45, all the big spikes that were evident on my BQM graph have gone and I haven't a single packet loss since then. I hesitate to say it's fixed but it is certainly stable at the moment. Once initiated BQM runs continuously, so I'll get a better idea overnight.

[Bibio]

if the bill is in your name then you are tied into a 12mth contract. no matter what the engineers say i can tell you you will never get out of the contract without paying some kind of fee.

QOS is a very grey area with regards to contracts. unless its a complete denial of service then they will tell you that they are supplying a service and make up some bull about it being more that they are entitled to supply.

good luck...

[Seeker]

if the bill is in your name then you are tied into a 12mth contract. no matter what the engineers say i can tell you you will never get out of the contract without paying some kind of fee.

We'll see what the manager says on Tuesday. If they fix it I have no problems in staying with them, my major issue is them not believing me when I tell them I have a problem. I don't really care that their diagnostics show that my connection is stable. They have shown me what my connection looks like in real time when I agree that it is running perfectly, what they can't seem to do is look back at the times I tell them when it had errors.

I can link the BQM times, EMCO times and the modem error log timing to my own timed observations of connection interruptions and show them this data.
One of my character flaws is that I get incensed very quickly when people don't believe me. I avoid lying simply because I can never remember what I've said previously. When I use something on a regular basis I notice if it changes - especially when it presents me with a white screen saying "no internet".

Meanwhile: I had 7 hours of smooth, error free operation and then back to interruptions. The latest BQM graph clearly shows the 7 hour error free period and the spike that ends it.

[Ruffy]

Zen broadband are currently rated with the highest customer satisfaction and have a UK call centre, anyone here using them?
On OP topic, I use Zen domestically (and have done for a number of years, including a number of house moves to different UK locations).

Service wise I would rate them highly. However, I've not really had to deal with the customer service centre much because day-to-day it just seems to work!

Principal down side is that they're far from the cheapest. So far, in the grand scheme of things, I think it's been a price worth paying for quality and reliability of service.

I think they are more built around a business service model rather than targettng mass domestic consumer so there are perhaps some "quirks" to the way they operate. I have a technical electrical/electronic background (though I only consider myself partially-computer-literate in modern terms) and I have also been frustrated in the past by trying to engage with dumb consumer based companies. I, too, have a low tolerance level. Just the fact that you feel like you're having to fight with Virgin would be enough to put me off them. I've never felt patronised by Zen.

Hope this helps.

[Seeker]

Hope this helps.

yes it does, thanks. Virgin and Zen are about the same price for phone and broadband although Virgin offers a faster connection (which doesn't bother me) I will stay with them if they fix it or if I have penalties for leaving. The thought of having to call Virgin's Indian call centre fills me with dread.

As predicted my new laptop has made no difference. I have both the desktop and laptop running. The EMCO pinging program chimes on the desktop to alert me that the connection is lost and I immediately ask the laptop for a new webpage which, of course, fails. 4 times today, 3 times for 50 secs and one "blink". These dropouts show clearly on the BQM program, I don't why Virgin's diagnostic software is not showing it unless its resolution is too coarse. In the scheme of things 150 secs total errors in 12 hours is not a lot to find (although I did).

[Seeker]

I've decided to switch to Zen broadband, I'm getting their "superfast unlimited" package. They fail to mention on their website that on top of the £55 start up fee, there's a £70 fee for a new cable to be laid. I'm paying for a landline too, although I'm not sure why since my phone usage (landline or cell) is once every 2 weeks. Apparently Zen's landline phone charges are expensive (they told me!), but they have a package for that...

I've not heard anything from Virgin but since they don't consider I have a problem it isn't surprising. I have just had 2 "no internet" messages in the last 15 minutes and I'm totally reassured to hear that Simon, the Virgin network guy, says I am not suffering any drop outs at all. It's good to know when I'm awaiting reconnection. It's only for a few seconds each time though and the Virgin local manager seemed to think that that was acceptable. I hope he doesn't work on aircraft.

[Seeker]

Update: I've been using Zen for a week now without any problems. The speed has settled at 72Mb/s up, 19Mb/s down and pages seem to load quicker than with Virgin's 100Mb/s up, 6Mb/s down and I chatted for an hour to Arkansas via skype without a single issue (I hadn't been able to do that with Virgin in a long while).

[Luckypants]

Surely you mean 72Mbps down and 19Mbps up?:D VDSL is normally faster download than upload.

Good speeds by the way, lucky you!

[daktulos]

I moved away from Virgin a long time ago and never looked back. Apart from the terrible support, and the contention on the cable modems, the up/down ratio has always been the most frustrating feature.

In a perfect world, you would need to use 2Mbps upstream just to download at 100Mbps. In the real world, it's likely to be much higher. As soon as you need the upstream for something else (e.g. checking e-mail or making an HTTP request) the downstream gets killed. I can't imagine how bad it would be if you wanted to do a backup, upload to flickr or youtube, etc.

The 80/20 ratio on BT/Zen fibre gives much more headroom. I just wish that the upstream bandwidth was listed as a headline figure, rather than hidden away by the providers, it really is that important.

Virgin also caused the police to think I beat up my wife ... but that's a different story.

[Seeker]

Surely you mean 72Mbps down and 19Mbps up?

yes, I did mean that - typed pre-espresso. :rolleyes:

[SV650rules]

Kicked Virgin FTTP out last September, our plusnet 'phone line' broadband is 70Mb download and 17Mb upload, been as solid as a rock for 5 months now, no regular reboot of modem like Virgin required....and much cheaper.