subject: Should We Listen To Broadband Surveys? [print this page] Which? Magazine has published its latest broadband survey which reveals who its readers think are the best and the worst broadband providers in the UK today.
We know that choosing a broadband provider based on customer service is important but - until we sign up with one provider and experience it for ourselves, that is - how do we know who offers better service?
All broadband adverts claim to offer good service, of course, and listening to complaints can be misleading. Broadband surveys such as the one above seem to be way forward.
All of which begs the question: should we listen to broadband surveys?
Some of the biggest names in broadband won the top prizes, as well as the booby prizes.
O2 Broadband, Be Broadband and Zen Internet took the top spots with customer satisfaction ratings above 75% and five out of five stars for customer service.
AOL Broadband, Orange Broadband and Opal telecoms - the business broadband arm of TalkTalk Group - all had ratings of less than 40% and only one star out of five for customer service for their broadband deals.
Zen Internet is a broadband provider with less than 100,000 subscribers but scored a whopping 89% satisfaction rating so it's no surprise that Zen have been a Which? recommended provider for the past five years.
Broadband surveys seem to favour smaller providers so are worrying for this reason.
Having said that, O2 and Be Broadband meanwhile have both been consistently highly rated by customers for customer service and overall satisfaction.
Together O2 and Be Broadband have around 700,000 customers and it's good to hear of a larger company winning such plaudits for customer service, too often it's the other way round, which neatly leads us onto the honourable or not so honourable mentions for AOL, Opal and Orange Broadband.
All three of these broadband providers scored less than 40% on the Which? satisfaction survey a poor reflection on a service which customers may be using for up to 2 years due to the length of broadband contracts in general.
All of this highlights how important choosing the right broadband provider can be.
Thankfully though research like this helps make the task a lot simpler although it doesn't include 15GB mobile broadband.
Which? surveyed around 10,000 of its members with broadband connections to generate these results and rated each broadband provider on the ease of setup, connection speed and stability, value for money, customer service and telephone and online support.
