I want ADSL at home!

July 22, 2005 1:20 PM

I moved to London (SE4) just under a month ago. I've already found a great job (this is good), and I'd like to get broadband at home. I ordered ADSL from Demon just before I moved, I am still waiting for it to be installed, a month later.

They originally stated a 10 working day install time. They have repeatedly moved the install date back, promised they'd ring me, and so on. Generally, they've put it down to BT, distance from the exchange, etc., but not offered any means of getting in touch with anyone directly responsible for such things. When I call up, after being on hold for about ten minutes, I'm put on hold while the operator talks to the provisioning team, who I, apparently, can't be put through to.

Should I ditch Demon and go with another provider? Anyone have anything but nightmare stories when getting ADSL?

posted by armoured-ant to computers & internet (8 comments total)

I've got nothing than praise for Tiscali (5 days installation in my new flat) but everybody else seems to hate them. And before I've only heard good things about Demon. Apparently, your mileage really may vary. Maybe give them an ultimatum?
posted by keijo at 1:44 PM on July 22, 2005

My gut feeling, is that I'd be inclined to believe what they're saying about it being a problem with BT.

You could cancel and try someone else plenty of links here, but i'd be concerned you'd just end up hearing the same explanations from a different company.
posted by selton at 2:49 PM on July 22, 2005

Demon suck balls - avoid them. I found that not only were the download speeds often unsatisfactory but that their customer service was awful.

I use Zen at home and my company uses them for their remote sites - they seem to be able to install ADSL much faster than anyone else and their customer service is very good. You'll find their slightly more expensive but then again you're not tied into a yearly contract. If you don't fancy Zen then I found Pipex were OK - although that was three years ago.
posted by dodgygeezer at 1:53 AM on July 23, 2005

I really like FireFly, assuming you're able to receive service from them. £20 for 2Mbps down.
posted by yellowcandy at 1:55 AM on July 23, 2005

Ooops. Zen.
posted by dodgygeezer at 2:26 AM on July 23, 2005

www.adslguide.org.uk is a very good place to get answers to questions like these. Getting broadband via ADSL in the UK is something of a lottery, these problems crop up a lot.
posted by ascullion at 6:20 AM on July 23, 2005

I would imagine that Tiscali are shite - but we have a conection here and it is really solid, very little downtime and no download caps.
posted by laukf at 2:57 PM on July 23, 2005

I second the link to adslguide--their customer serivce rankings are probably more helpful than any anecdotal evidence you'll get here.

That said, here is some anecdotal evidence:

I used Pipex in our previous flat and was generally pretty happy with them. Then I moved and they wanted to charge me a silly amount of money to transfer the service to my new flat. It didn't seem fair of them to charge me a lot of money for the privilege of continuing to give them money, so I switched to plus.net

I've been very happy with plus.net as internet service providers. I've been less happy with them as website hosts--even though my ADSL subscription comes with free webhosting, I got fedup with their crappy hosting and ended up paying somebody else to host my websites. But I'm still using plus.net for my ADSL connection, and have had no complaints there.
posted by yankeefog at 9:00 AM on July 26, 2005