back to article Complaints against ISPs and mobe firms are up by a fifth — reports

BT Broadband is one of the most complained about ISPs, according to UK consumer body Which?, scoring particularly poorly in technical support and value for money. Moreover, complaints in general about ISPs and mobile companies are up 20 per cent on the year, according to numbers released by the Ombudsman Services. Consumers …

  1. NotWorkAdmin

    John Lewis? An ISP?

    Possibly over nit-picky of me, but I'm under the impression there are 2 ISP's in the UK - Openreach & NTL. Which to the punter appear as BT & Virgin. Everything else is a brand name tagged onto one of these networks isn't it?

    1. Greg D

      Re: John Lewis? An ISP?

      Pretty much my thoughts exactly. ISP in this sense is the entity that holds the contract with the customer as opposed to the entity which runs and maintains the infrastructure it all runs on.

      1. Dazed and Confused

        Re: John Lewis? An ISP?

        It might be OpenReach or NTL that owns and runs the string that connects to your premises, but a lot of the SP part of ISP happens after that.

    2. AndrueC Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: John Lewis? An ISP?

      Possibly over nit-picky of me, but I'm under the impression there are 2 ISP's in the UK - Openreach & NTL

      Not really but you could be forgiven for being confused :)

      BT Openreach is not an ISP. It's an infrastructure provider. It owns and operates the hardware side of things mostly. Its basic remit is to help move packets between the modem inside your house and the telephone exchange. After that someone else has to carry the packets.

      If it helps any you could think of BT Openreach as being the telephony equivalent of Network Rail. Vital to the operation but you don't buy train tickets off Network Rail ;)

      Inside the exchange there are several ways the packets can get carried further but simplistically it boils down to one of two options:

      * BT Wholesale carries them from the exchange to your ISP.

      or

      * If you are with an LLU operator (eg; Talk Talk, Sky, maybe a couple of others) they pick up them up at your exchange themselves.

      There are actually two ways BT Wholesale can get packets between exchange and ISP. Either they can carry them all the way or they can drop them off somewhere convenient where your ISP can pick them up.

      Of course BT Openreach own the main national telephony network so whatever method is used at the exchange it likely rides over BT Or equipment at some point anyway. It's very hard to avoid BT Or's network because it's ubiquitous and actually pretty damn' good.

      And it's worth adding that even if you do get broadband from BT as per the headline that is neither Openreach nor Wholesale but is in fact a third division called 'Retail'. All three BT divisions mentioned here operate independently. Ofcom insist that all CPs (Communication Providers) get equal treatment so BT Retail operates under the same rules as all the others.

      You could think of BT Wholesale as being like a rolling-stock leasing company. In which case your ISP would be the company that leases the rolling stock and provides the drivers.

      Hope that helps :)

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: John Lewis? An ISP?

        "All three BT divisions mentioned here operate independently. Ofcom insist that all CPs (Communication Providers) get equal treatment so BT Retail operates under the same rules as all the others."

        In theory perhaps.

        In practice, BT head office gets to see over the "Chinese Wall" and direct what BTOR does and doesn't do, as well as deliberately making it harder for external organisations to interact with BTOR than it is for other BT divisions.

        New Zealand's regulators looked long and hard at how the BT/Openreach split works (Telecom New Zealand pulled the same stunt and was pushing for the same regulatory solution) before opting to force the lines company to be completely divested from the incumbent telco in exchange for broadband funding.

        After 25+ years of monopoly abuse, the regulators were justifiably concerned at what they saw as continued market abuse by BT. It's easily arguable that in the UK, the single biggest impediment to free and fair market competition is BT (they engage in provable margin squeeze but Ofcom won't do anything about it)

        The transformation of the New Zealand Telecommunications market in the last couple of years has been nothing short of astonishing, particularly for those who recall TNZ's anticompetitive activities during the 1990s (some of which are now starting to get to court, but they don't resurrect the companies which went out of business as a result). New Zealand has gone from a poster child of how NOT to privatise your telco to a good example of an operational competitive market with truly neutral LLU.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: John Lewis? An ISP?

          "The transformation of the New Zealand Telecommunications market in the last couple of years has been nothing short of astonishing, particularly for those who recall TNZ's anticompetitive activities during the 1990s"

          Wikipedia says that two ISPs in New Zealand have 75% of the market with most connections delivered over ADSL2+.

          In the UK, according to Ofcom it's; BT 31% Virgin Media 20% TalkTalk 15% Sky 20% EE 3% Others 10%.

          The wiki article may be out of date, but it doesn't look like the NZ regulatory approach delivers much of a benefit over the UK one.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: John Lewis? An ISP?

      No. Some ISPs will resell a wholesale service bought from BT - but many don't and have their own kit and network installed in BT exchanges. Also, most operate their own customer service, billing, all that stuff. I don't think many at all take BT's wholesale vanilla offering in its entirety and just put their sticker on it.

      There's far more to being an ISP than the last mile connection.

  2. tin 2

    Interesting that JL is 1st and Plusnet is 4th, when JL is just Plusnet with JL written on it.

    But maybe the slightly premium price pays for JL customers to jump up the support queue?

    Also interesting when Plusnet were a technical and customer support disaster-zone for many years (a good number of years ago, I'll grant)

    1. spiny norman

      What comes around

      And Plusnet is owned by ....

      BT

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      "Interesting that JL is 1st and Plusnet is 4th, when JL is just Plusnet with JL written on it."

      Not overly interesting or suprprising.

      At home, I'm with http://thephone.coop - who resell TalkTalk business. That extra 2 quid/month gives access to a helpdesk which actually has a clue and can solve problems - including making Openreach show up _immediately_ when they breach appointment times instead of forcing me to wait another week for a rebooking.

      That kind of focus on customer service is what makes the difference between "Good when it works and 7 circles of hell when it doesn't" and "Good when it works and they get it working immediately when it doesn't"

      JL and the smaller outfits understand customer service. The Telcos still work on the model of "We tell you what you want and we tell you when you'll get it"

    3. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Plusnet are no better than they were. I've had to debug for some of our staff recently.

      The best thing I can recommend to most is "change to a decent ISP", but people lock into 12 months contract from the cheapest bidder.

      Most are blissfully unaware that PlusNet == BT Yorkshire. The usual comment is "I went with them to get away from BT and you're telling me that they're BT anyway?"

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "The best thing I can recommend to most is "change to a decent ISP", but people lock into 12 months contract from the cheapest bidder."

        That's essentially the whole problem with UK broadband. People buy the cheapest available. Any ISP who invests in network or kit or customer service is punished in the market. John Lewis Internet probably operates in the same market space as Waitrose supermarkets - people who aren't terribly price sensitive and are happy to pay extra. It's a profitable segment of the market but you won't ever get much in the way of customer volume.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BT could improve things considerably if they...

    1. Debugged their Home Hub. Even on the 5th iteration, It still essentially can't run a reliable WiFi network for more than about 3 devices for more than an hour or so.

    2. Ran their DNS servers on something faster than a Compaq/386. Or allowed us to use Google's.

    3. Got rid of their entire offshore call centres. All of them. The worse, daftest and most technically inept IT people I've ever had to deal with. And I've dealt with CSC so I understand the scale.

    4. Allowed some of their smarter engineers (and they do exist) nearer to their customers.

    None of this would be hard to do. How about it BT?

    1. JonP
      Joke

      Re: BT could improve things considerably if they...

      4. Allowed some of their smarter engineers (and they do exist) nearer to their customers.

      I'd assume that the smarter engineers are the ones who want to maintain the greatest distance from the customers...

    2. jason 7

      Re: BT could improve things considerably if they...

      I just put other DNS servers (Google/OpenDNS etc) in to my router and it goes via them and I'm with BT.

      If you need to cut through the India call centres then just ask clearly "I wish to speak to a level 2 engineer!" a few times and eventually you'll get through to someone in the UK that knows what to do. That can cut a three week issue into a 30 minute one.

      I also never use their Homehubs as everyone knows that they've always been crap so why would you use one?

      Sounds to me like you are punching yourself in the balls for no reason.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: BT could improve things considerably if they...

        @Jason 7 - No self ball punching, I assure you. I don't use a home hub, I don't use BT DNS and I know enough decent folk at BT to get a decent service on the infrastructure I do use.

        But, I'm in a minority, as are we all who hang out here. My point is if BT did all I asked, they'd be in a much better place and it'd cost them a hell of a lot less than the cash they pissed up the wall on BT Sport.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: BT could improve things considerably if they...

      3. Got rid of their entire offshore call centres. All of them. The worse, daftest and most technically inept IT people I've ever had to deal with. And I've dealt with CSC so I understand the scale.

      100% agree with this comment. As soon as you get transferred to the Indian Call Centre of Doom (TM) your heart sinks as you realise what was originally a simple problem has just become another bunch of grey hairs and a headache.

      If it helps, you can get through to technical support in the UK and tell them not to transfer you to the offshore call centres. They don't seem surprised when you ask and generally try their best to avoid it, but you can't always avoid it. Especially if there's an order or replacement hub involved.

  4. Steve Evans

    Home Hub 3

    Until BT stop supplying the known faulty Home Hub (especially the HH3 early, type A, variety), they will continue to get bad publicity.

    I personally had a type A which would periodically just stop routing wifi (this at a time when the TV advert said they had the best wifi coverage), initially I added an external AP, and eventually binned the whole thing.

    My brother had a type A which simply stopped processing DNS requests.

    And a friend has one which seems to have a NAT table capacity of about 4 devices, whenever another device connects, it has a fit, everyone loses internet connection, and eventually it comes back (for a while at least).

    In fact I can't think of a single person using a HH3 who hasn't had a problem!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Home Hub 3

      All providers provide crap hubs, whoever makes the decision on purchasing needs to be sacked at every ISP we've had. I expect the home hub is superior to the one from EE, and Plus Net we've had, certainly the Wi-Fi from neighbours drowns out our own Wi-Fi from our business grade alternative at the edge of the flat.

      There are lots of good hubs for £35-£50 at retail so why they bundle these cheap pieces of crap with their packages is beyond me, half the problems would be resolved for customers poor experiences by making this investment alone

      1. jason 7

        Re: Home Hub 3

        The simple reason is simplicity. The ISP and the Help Desk know exactly how the supplied router works. They can talk the user through setup and diagnostics. That's why they supply them.

        Now try that with an obscure Draytek then user might have inherited from a well meaning tech friend.

  5. Bronek Kozicki

    ZEN

    I was with Zen. They are not bad, but when faced with occasionally very noisy line they won't be able to fix it - you are on your own. Or, you can move to AAISP who know their stuff - including how to make BT fix the line. One downside - they cost more. And the upside - they are xkcd/806 compliant. Really, I tested.

    1. PhilBuk

      Re: ZEN

      'xkcd/806 compliant'

      +1,000,000 upvotes for pointing out that one!

      Phil.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Scoring seems to be inconsistent, using customer feedback to score things is a problem as customer expectations are driven by factors which are beyond the control of the ISP.

    Someone who has had terrible healthcare would score a GP who was mediocre very highly, whereas someone experiencing the same GP after leaving an excellent GP would score that GP as poor, this means smaller ISP's are much more prone to scores which are not strong enough statistically to even this out.

    There is also the issue of brand inconsistencies, John Lewis stores are not known for attracting customers who fit the profile of student who uses 300GB a month on torrent sites, which would drastically change the customer profile, usage profile and expectations. Equally I've known people leave BT after buying the TV and broadband package over the extra £10 per month on the basis that they are not using it, and needed to call out BT repeatedly with the set top box because they didn't know how to use it, convinced it was faulty. BT's problem here is one of selling practices and brand again over performance. I doubt there is any real difference between Plusnet, JL and BT given they are the same company beyond quality of support, lleaving only brand image and customer profile/expectations.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't think that league table really shows the true picture as the customer demographic makes a huge difference. A very wide variety of people will use BT as their internet provider whereas I would hazard a guess (and this may come across as stereotypical) most of John Lewis ISP customers will be older and perhaps not make huge demands on their broadband. By huge demands I mean using it more than once per week to "surf the web" and Skype with their grandkids. That demographic is unlikely to be complaining about traffic management and fixed IP addresses.

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