Broadband-Internet

UK Broadband Reviews - Reviewed By Andy J

Want to find out if your soon to be UK broadband provider sucks? BT broadband, AOL, Wanadoo, Tesco, Virgin, Pipex, Plus.net, Zen, Eclipse, NTL, Telewest, UK Online, 'Be' broadband, Bulldog, Homechoice, OneTel, Tiscali, Waitrose and others - you can find reviews for all the leading UK broadband providers somewhere online.

There are however a few points worth noting with online reviews. Here are a few UK ISP review issues to consider.

1. Larger ISPs Get More Complaints

BT, AOL, NTL, Wanadoo - they have a lot of broadband customers. You're more likely to hear more bad reviews with the larger broadband ISPs.

2. Large ISPs Tend To Get Bad Reviews For Their Customer Support Service

The larger Internet service providers have a greater volume of customers to deal with. They also have a higher churn of staff in their call centres. Communication issues also occur more frequently with larger companies. High service demand can also lead to delays in contacting customer support.

3. People Feel More Compelled To Write a Complaint Than To Sing A Company's Praises

One piece of research that suggests that when a person has a negative experience with a company, they are likely to tell 10+ people about it. If a person is satisfied or happy with the service - they'll tell only 2 people (on average).

This is worth bearing in mind. A broadband company can get many bad reviews, but these vocal people may represent just 0.1% of the provider's customer base. Given two providers, each with 2 million subscribers - it's wrong to assume that the one with 400 bad reviews is worse than the one with just 50 bad reviews. It very much depends on the nature of the problems and people's propensity for posting in forums.

It could be that customers at provider A, are a bunch of whinge-bags...

4. Are the Reviews Genuine?

Anyone can post a broadband review at a review site. Are these people actual customers of the said provider? Or are they posting based on what their mate Zack told them, over a pint of Stella?

The larger the provider, the more they are talked about, and the greater chance of negative reviews. Do the providers themselves make reviews? It happens in other market segments, it can / does happen in the broadband market. Get the public relations department to add some good reviews to Web sites - especially 'authority' Web sites. Nice bit of PR.

5. Does the Web site in question do Business With The Provider?

Does the provider pay the review site for referring customers? This can be hard to tell.

If the Web site holding the reviews gets paid for referring customers to the reviewed UK broadband service - be wary of the reliability of the broadband reviews.

Always Do Your Broadband Research

So there you have it - UK broadband reviews. You will always find bad reviews for big companies - the scale of their operations mean there can always be issues and delays.

Delays aren't just limited to large-scale operations such as BT Broadband, NTL, AOL, Wanadoo and other popular ISPs - smaller UK broadband services can have service issues too.

Determine your usage patterns and other ISP requirements, do your research, read some ISP reviews, and make an informed buying decision. Easy.

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