Which internet provider would you recommend / not recommend

[FindTheCupForMax]

Currently having a lot of problems with our internet and being left for days at a time with no internet. Please tell me who you would or wouldn't recommend, and why if you wouldn't recommend

We really can't carry on like this and it's just causing more stress that we could do without

Would recommend BT - though pricey, we always have a decent connection and a good download speed

Wouldn't recommend Plusnet - poor connection and ridiculously slow.

I think a lot of it depends on location so may be different in your area but those were my experiences

We're having a good experience with Virgin internet, it's fast, hasn't yet gone down in the 10 months we had it, and the bundle price we pay is reasonable. I do think it varies a lot by area though. I have friends living 200 miles away who found Virgin's services poor and their customer service atrocious, so getting local recommendations is probably best.

I've had different people in same street say that one provider is crap and great, so that's why I thought the more people inasmuch the better chance we've got of getting a half decent one

Do you need their phone with all of them or can you get it with different phone provider?

*inasmuch = I ask

Recommend Plusnet, been with them for years and no serious problems, though the internet tends to drop for about a minute if there's heavy rain.

Advise against Virgin Media. My employer uses them and we've had so much trouble. Outages any time there's a bit of hot weather, a weird issue with their static IP service, the router at one site has crashed three weeks in a row now, it's rubbish anyway, long hold times for support (as in, nearly an hour before anyone answered), and to top it off I've been told outright wrong stuff by their engineers that caused hours of downtime when nobody could do their work.

We're stuck with them because nobody else has the speed where our office is, but personally I wouldn't touch Virgin Media with a bargepole.

PS: That's in Birmingham.

Have BT everywhere I’ve had a say and it’s always been the best.
Sky are ok
All my experience with virgin has been terrible ditto talk talk

Not bloody plusnet. Their contract is only to provide broadband to your HOME. Not to provide working wifi.
Really crap but they won't release me from the contract.

Not Virgin.

Avoid virgin

I'd recommend BT. Great speeds and it's very reliable. I don't ever remember any loss of service. Whereas my local FB page has people complaining about virgin all the time

Plusnet is owned by BT now.

Hiphopopotamous I assume you've been through this already, but the way it's phrased there, an issue with wifi as opposed to the broadband connection to your home sounds like a router problem not an ISP. Need a new router - and/or a repeater if you have a big house and the signal isn't strong enough further from the router.

We're with EE, no issues and good service.

Was with sky, years ago and they were dog shit. Their customer service was shocking

Talktalk are rubbish, constant connection problems and slow

Been on virgin now 15 years, never had a problem with speed or customer service tbh

Virgin, always had great service, broadband only, no complaints.

I think a lot depends on ur area, we are with sky and never had a problem..

BT seems ok on three days' worth of experience, although we had to reboot the router this morning because port 80 and 443 weren't open. Facebook worked, but external links didn't.

We used to be on Virgin, which was blisteringly fast when it worked. When it didn't, which was at least once month for up to 24 hours, we were screwed due single bar phone reception.

Not only your area, it will also depend on your home and where the router is located in relation to where you are using wifi. My house is old, solid walls, router would work only intermittently to send signal to main sky box which was literally next door but through v solid walls.

Sky took a cable under the floor via the Basement and hardwired router to sky Q.

Not ideal but no problems with service and we don't plan to move the main Q box around. I also got them to give me a booster to improve signal upstairs for Wi-Fi and a Q mini box

Fleur Telecom. Relatively small provider but with first class service. I honestly can't recommend them highly enough.

I started with AOL and moved on to Talk Talk.. they were both awful, seldom got a real live English speaking person to speak to and simply not interested in problems.

Fleur spent ages talking me through a connection issue, then they phoned me back the following day to check it was all working properly. They are polite, fast to answer the phone and it seems nothing is too much for them.

Never never never BT. They've won the worst customer service awards several times in the last few years and for good reason. Not too bad when things are ticking along but the moment anything goes wrong they are beyond useless.

I've been with both Sky and Vodaphone and both have been good customer service wise but slow speeds. However I think this is because all the services (apart from virgin I believe who have their own firbe optic lines if they are available in your area) run on the same line so you are going to get roughly the same speeds with any of them.

In my case internet was very slow (less than 1mpb when I was paying for up to 17mpb) because my house was so far away from the nearest 'main.' It didn't matter who I was with because they all used the same line - there were only very slight variations due to how good the router was and how many other people in the area were with the same provider and therefore on the same channel.

In the end I had to upgrade to fibre because it used a different line.

• These may not be the technical terms but its the way the engineer explained it to me!

This is all useful info, thankyou!

@onceandneveragain very interesting thankyou