Changing ISP
John Surtees For years, we had been told by BT that we were too far from the exchange to get broadband. Several ISP's we approached said the same. However, Demon reckoned that it would work. Slow - but it would work. And that's how we ended up with Demon and their truly terrible customer service.
In my experience, if you want to buy something from Demon, you get through immediately, and are able to speak to somebody that is easy to understand, based in this country. But if you need help, you wait in a queue for up to half and hour, then you get the inevitable overseas help-desk manned by people with such heavy accents, that even if they have the answer to your problem, you can hardly understand what they are saying.
To be fair, I didn't need help very often, but when things go belly up, the last thing I need is the extra hassle of someone I can't understand, reading from a script.
Our telephone service was with TalkTalk, and last Christmas, we had three weeks of misery with them, when our phone stopped working. With what seemed like the same asian based help-desk as Demon, they were a total joke. In frustration, I wrote to TalkTalk, got a reply from an office in Southampton, after which, the problem got rectified.
As both Demon and TalkTalk had in the past, tried to use BT as an excuse for their poor service, I decided to look for a provider that used the BT infrastructure, but were totally UK based, and that is why we are now trying MacAce with one of their combined phone and broadband packages. As I don't need hassle, I opted for them to supply a preconfigured router.
So, my experiences with MacAce so far. It was a bit of a shock when ordering on the web, to find that I had to purchase the router. But, I thought, at least it would be preconfigured and it might be a better quality model than some those that other ISP's supply free. Wanting to take advantage of the extra range provided by the 'N' standard routers, I ticked the box against a Thomson 'N' standard model. A few days later I received an invoice for a 'G' standard model (the same model as I was already using).
So, not a very impressive start. However, I rang the support line. And I immediately experienced the advantage of dealing with a smaller outfit. Instantly a voice at the other end asked, how could he help me. Now I wasn't prepared for this. Where was the pre-recorded voice giving me the list of which button to press for which service?. Where was the 'your call may be recorded for training purposes' message? Where was the twenty minute wait?
What I did get, was a friendly chap who asked my name, admitted they had made a mistake and said an 'N' standard router would be with me shortly. True to his word, the router arrived early the next day. At 11.50am my service from Demon stopped. I connected the Netgear and within minutes, I was back on line with MacAce.
The one downside so far, is being charged £98.99 for a router that I could get for £50.00 from Deltatronics. This is rather disappointing, given the fact that most ISP's include a preconfigured router with the deal.
On Wednesday, our telephone service switches from TalkTalk to MacAce. If it goes as smoothly as the broadband, I'll be well pleased. I know that there are cheaper deals out there. O2's new telephone/broadband service (with UK based help-desk) looks very tempting. But at the moment I'm rather enjoying being treated as a person, not an account number.