Zen Outpricing Itself with FTTP?

[SpellowHouse]

I have been a long time Zen customer, and they have always been expensive, but for fttp they seem to be pretty outrageous. I mean they are more expensive than BT ( I always use BT as a comparison with Zen! ) yet only 2/3 the speed. Am I missing something here?

 

[WJA96]

I have been a long time Zen customer, and they have always been expensive, but for fttp they seem to be pretty outrageous. I mean they are more expensive than BT ( I always use BT as a comparison with Zen! ) yet only 2/3 the speed. Am I missing something here?

I think you’ll need to post specifics of your example.

I use Zen extensively and on the current 900/110 FTTP offer, with no other deals or incentives in place, they are £10 per month more expensive than BT and for that you get a fixed IP address and better support.

It’s your call, but I think they’re pretty good.

 

[VaderDSL]

If you ignore special deals, the 500 service is £4 month more with a static ip?

One change recently is they seem to be reviewing/removing the no price increase guarantee. I think they’ll keep it for existing customers, for the moment at least, but won’t be surprised for them to remove it completely.

 

[ChrisD.]

I don't think their pricing is outrageous at all. For the ~5% increase in cost you get much better support and a static IP address. There's also their router which is significantly better than ISPs such as BT.

 

[SpellowHouse]

The problem is the lower end of the range. For 100mbps Zen is £38. For 150mbps BT is £36.

And I agree that Zen Customer Service is far better I think that performance difference may well put a lot of people off.

 

[WJA96]

The problem is the lower end of the range. For 100mbps Zen is £38. For 150mbps BT is £36.

And I agree that Zen Customer Service is far better I think that performance difference may well put a lot of people off.

I don’t think there is any money in that end of the market so I suspect they’re not that bothered if they don’t sell too many of those packages.

 

[Caged]

I'm sure Zen will lower their prices if they feel that it's causing a problem. They are £5/month more than Sky for 900Mbps, the price doesn't then go up to £60/month once the initial contract period is over, and you get a static IPv4 and IPv6 allocation. If you need the static IP or you have too much going on to renegotiate contracts every two years then the price is comparable with other operators.

I don't really see the pricing as an issue at all. Pipex 512Kbps ADSL was £24 when it launched in 2002. This was widely hailed as the lowest price service, and is the equivalent of £42 today. There was around £10 of line rental on top of this number as well, which would be another £17 today.

If you want physical network competition and improvement then the services have to be priced at a level that makes it sustainable.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Zen doesn't price rise once you are in. All the other ISPs do year by year. In 5 years I have been with zen the service has been down once. For 1 hour. I haven't once had to call them because my line is so stable.

They are far better than any other company out there 100%. Their support is far superior than any other company out there when needed (IF).

 

[BUDFORCE]

Zen are fantastic but their FTTP is expensive.

I get an absolutely cracking deal at £18 a month unlimited FTTC which is about 80 megabit, I have been a Zen customer since 2008 so they gave me a pretty good deal and also put me on a no price increase thing.

I am probably going to upgrade to FTTP as its available, but seems a big jump up, particularly if you only go 100 megabit, id probably just go for 500.

That being said, Mrs pays phone line something like £23 a month, so bin that off and get the £7 a month VOIP thing they do, so you are saving there.

 

[SpellowHouse]

Zen are fantastic but their FTTP is expensive.

I get an absolutely cracking deal at £18 a month unlimited FTTC which is about 80 megabit, I have been a Zen customer since 2008 so they gave me a pretty good deal and also put me on a no price increase thing.

I am probably going to upgrade to FTTP as its available, but seems a big jump up, particularly if you only go 100 megabit, id probably just go for 500.

That being said, Mrs pays phone line something like £23 a month, so bin that off and get the £7 a month VOIP thing they do, so you are saving there.

In the end I did get Zen. I am not sure why really!

I got the cheapest fibre, the 100/20. Having run that for a little while now, there really is no need for any more. Thing is that the services I access, most of them are slower than that. The phone line I got rid of and replaced it with a cisco 192 ATA and Sipgate. That's cheaper than the Zen alternative of £7 a month - it's £0 per month, lol. I have the Fritzbox as a backup. As for a fiber backup I have nothing, but I am looking in to that.

 

[SpellowHouse]

If you ignore special deals, the 500 service is £4 month more with a static ip?

One change recently is they seem to be reviewing/removing the no price increase guarantee. I think they’ll keep it for existing customers, for the moment at least, but won’t be surprised for them to remove it completely.

It's £12 more and I don't care about a static IP ( puzzled as to why I should ).

 

[VaderDSL]

It's £12 more and I don't care about a static IP ( puzzled as to why I should ).

BT 500 is £45.99 and Zen is £49.99

The lower speed packages are overpriced, and if you don’t need a static IP I’d just go with whatever is cheapest.

 

[SpellowHouse]

BT 500 is £45.99 and Zen is £49.99

The lower speed packages are overpriced, and if you don’t need a static IP I’d just go with whatever is cheapest.

Oh I see, as compared to BT. Gotcha.

 

[a1ex2001]

The better support argument always puzzles me as I haven’t rung a broadband company in over a decade!

 

[Deleted member 77746]

It's £12 more and I don't care about a static IP ( puzzled as to why I should ).

You might not but someone running services on a residential line might.

 

[SpellowHouse]

The better support argument always puzzles me as I haven’t rung a broadband company in over a decade!

I used to be on Talktalk.
The problems came in when I wanted to change my package. No disrespect and no stereotyping here ( well, as little as possible ) but their support understand the words but not the sentences. I was terrified ringing them because they never understood what I wanted. The final disaster was the day that I asked them to change my phone service and they cancelled everything except the change I requested. Took two weeks to get my broadband back. Then they got hacked and lost all my data which was the final straw.
I had a similar problem with Virgin. Once again, they completely misunderstood what I wanted. That ended up costing me £90 in cancellation fees for a product I didn't want and never asked for ( at least they picked up half the bill ).
Since then I have been willing to pay for support that understands!!! But they are pushing it a bit far with their FTTP.

 

[a1ex2001]

I used to be on Talktalk.
The problems came in when I wanted to change my package. No disrespect and no stereotyping here ( well, as little as possible ) but their support understand the words but not the sentences. I was terrified ringing them because they never understood what I wanted. The final disaster was the day that I asked them to change my phone service and they cancelled everything except the change I requested. Took two weeks to get my broadband back. Then they got hacked and lost all my data which was the final straw.
I had a similar problem with Virgin. Once again, they completely misunderstood what I wanted. That ended up costing me £90 in cancellation fees for a product I didn't want and never asked for ( at least they picked up half the bill ).
Since then I have been willing to pay for support that understands!!! But they are pushing it a bit far with their FTTP.

Everyone's experience is different I've moved supplier basically every 12-24 months for over a decade and in all that time have never needed to call support and I've been with all the major players.

 

[Eurofighter]

You generally don't need to call support until something goes wrong, I had to switch from Vodafone FTTC to Virgin as I couldn't get Vodafone to send an engineer out to fix the line, they kept fobbing me off.

I have worked on Zen technical support. Much better than most places.