Soldato
Asked No One about getting an upgrade to 2gb or 2.5gb connection as they are now live in my area, they are speaking to Cityfibre's legal team before they start allowing customers to upgrade.
City Fibre
- Thread starter PzR Slim
- Start date
Associate
We're with Zen too, it was an easy upgrade from FTTC to FTTP. I went for a 300 down and 100 up package for a small monthly increase. Pleased so far and I like the headroom as the family's needs increase.
Anything involving Openreach makes me sweat a bit, as I WFH and am dependent on my internet, but the engineer was ace and did a neat job of the install.
What do you want? You can't have it both ways.
Soldato
i think £32-35 is reasonable price given Vodafone have it for £30. That makes Zen quite expensive at £39. I don't want Vodafone because I don't want a huge name provider with in period price rises.
Plus I think a wifi6 router should be standard these days, not wifi5.
Then pay £35 and see what support you get? And don't complain if it's not as good as the higher tier ISPs because, you know, we told you so.
Associate
I've been with No One for a few months now and they've been great. Got the deal for 900 @ £29 a month. The support is/was fantastic, I managed to get through quickly to a competent engineer who handled a peering issue between their network and OVH within about a week and a half. I'm fairly confident that kind of request never see's the light of day in many other ISP's support channels. Plus its a bonus that I don't get routed up to Edinburgh like I did when i was briefly on Vodafone.. (vodafone suck for the reason that their assignment of gateways is likely to be bad for your personal performance)
It amazes me that on the network section of a supposedly technical orientated forum has anyone who presumably knows basic facts about vodafone relative to other players in the market chooses to use them because its a few pounds cheaper. The hardware historically sucks, PPoE sucks, the routing/peering/network side sucks, the complaints stats/CS/billing/faults side sucks. I would happily pay £10/m not to have to deal with that crap and consider it a bargain. It’s like people who consider Zen of today to be a good bet based on Zen of 15 years ago.
Soldato
I don't want to pick Vodafone. You seem to reject Zen too is that right, or have I misread your post? Which are the decent providers in your opinion?
You were doing spreadsheets comparing them all back in January, how come you are still deciding? 
Zen used to be good but they are going downhill.
No One would be my vote but you discounted them for being a whole £9 a month more expensive.
I'm not sure how going around in circles is helping anyone.
Zen used to be good but they are going downhill.
No One would be my vote but you discounted them for being a whole £9 a month more expensive.
I'm not sure how going around in circles is helping anyone.
Soldato
You were doing spreadsheets comparing them all back in January, how come you are still deciding?
Zen used to be good but they are going downhill.
No One would be my vote but you discounted them for being a whole £9 a month more expensive.
I'm not sure how going around in circles is helping anyone.
I was just trying to collate some information to see if there was a standout value provider, but it didn't really reveal anything useful.
And now I actually need to give notice to VM and choose one.
I feel a small premium for good service is reasonable but a 33% uplift from the cheapest provider is not small. I don't feel that is value for money.
£32 to £35 seems about where I should be looking, and I want a WiFi 6 router for that not wifi 5. Also the router needs to have at least 3 spare ethernet ports.
Just buy your own router/APs, that way you never have to worry about what the ISP supplies.
Soldato
I've submitted an order with Yayzi
Support looks bad, but all the issues seem to be with initial setup and then it's fine afterwards. I don't mind this as it's overlapping my Aquiss package anyway so I should have any teething issues sorted before fully relying on it
Support looks bad, but all the issues seem to be with initial setup and then it's fine afterwards. I don't mind this as it's overlapping my Aquiss package anyway so I should have any teething issues sorted before fully relying on it
Soldato
It's a nice solution but an extra outlay so I don't really want to have to do it.
So you want a provider with good service, you don't want to spend more than a few pounds above what the cheapest ISPs offer their packages for, and you want a high quality bundled router with Wi-Fi 6 and 3x LAN ports.
I'm fairly sure that rules out everybody.
I'm fairly sure that rules out everybody.
Associate
Probably best bet is to ask if No One will extend their previous £29 a month/2 year offer on the condition that they don't provide you a router, then go spend £240 on one that you like?
That was a painful read.
We pay for things in pounds and pence, please stop using percentages like this, it’s just cringeworthy. Also did the person with a grand plus in the two items in his sig just try and make reference to value for money? Surely connecting a few grands worth of gaming PC via an ISP who’s got decent routing and good peering capacity and can and will log and escalate faults if/when you have them and will results in a smoother and quicker experience would be worth a few quid a month? Its certainly less than the depreciation on that lot each month. If not, then please just ignore the advice you have been offered, go with whoever is cheapest and let us know how it goes - you might be lucky and never have to interact with whoever it is and have perfect service.
As to CF and your apparent quest for ‘standout value’ is destined to fail. You’re either naive or unrealistic, perhaps both. CF is a wholesale provider, thats a fixed cost for everyone, just like OR, beyond that everyone has to pay for transit back to core, routing and peering capacity and staff/infrastructure, on-top of that is CPE and ideally some level of profit. Nobody is going to be significantly cheaper reselling someone else's product when they all share the same fixed cost, the price differences are almost always going to be in terms of single digit pounds without cutting major corners on staff and hardware. Of course, that doesn't include the premium providers such as AA for example who are in effect the product.
The spreadsheet you were doing already exists, it was done a long time ago, includes actually useful info like authentication type, CGNAT/Static options and peering capacity and can be found pinned in r/cityfibre. Pricing is a little out of date as it keeps changing, but again, it’s in pounds and pence, not percentages.
Soldato
I think it's my job as a consumer to get the best value for money I can. I don't want to pay more than I should for anything.
My GPU was bought when ocuk had an offer on for £699, not the crazy msrps we've been seeing. My CPU was bought a year after release as an upgrade to my old AM4 platform, so again not full price and I've extended the life of my platform considerably.
I shop around for car insurance, for energy. Don't you? Maybe you're happy paying 30% more for something you hope to never have to use, I'd rather have that money in my own pocket.
Generally once you are installed and activated, Yayzi support is actually pretty solid, even out of hours. It’s not unheard of for me to get a reply after 11pm on whatsapp, even on weekends and the only actual fault I had was identified with minimal effort and resolved in under 3 minutes. At this stage they're small enough to care and provide a personal service.I've submitted an order with Yayzi
Support looks bad, but all the issues seem to be with initial setup and then it's fine afterwards. I don't mind this as it's overlapping my Aquiss package anyway so I should have any teething issues sorted before fully relying on it
Getting installed can be painful though, but thats down to CF and its contractors and the woeful delay/process on failing jobs and arranging follow up construction/faults work, sadly that happens whoever the ISP is.
You aren't very good at this….Energy is a laughable example in a price capped market. Car insurance again is a poor example as the market is littered with provides who’s whole business is based on luring you in with a deceptively cheap price via comparison site, then finding a trivial reason to increase it and charge vastly more resulting in a cancelation fee or amendment fee and increased premium. I tend to stick to the same individual who deals with my insurance, shes good at her job, happy to assist me with some pretty non standard stuff and mirrors my NCB over multiple policies. That alone is worth 10x what she makes on my business and instead of worrying about saving £5/m, I just get on with life and enjoy it.
I cant imagine a world where saving £5/m is worth this much of your time, clearly you can. Good luck with that
Soldato
- Joined
- 24 Sep 2015
- Posts
- 3,952
There's a world of difference between shopping around for a fair price, and what is reasonably achievable. I would like the moon on a stick, but it isn't going to happen.
Time is a huge factor. I could spend days shopping around for something but when the item/service is a low cost (definition of which will vary from person to person) anyway I value my time more than £5/month.