Best Broadband Zen Internet

RECOMMENDED AAISP

If car parking spaces were allocated at the PC Pro Excellence Awards, Zen Internet would have its own. It’s won this award, year-in year-out, since we first started handing out broadband gongs, although the competition this year was tough.

Straight-talking rival AAISP came within two percentage points of stealing Zen’s title, proving that Zen isn’t the only option if you’re looking for superlative customer service.

That said, Zen’s 98% score for customer service is almost unparalleled across the entire awards, let alone the broadband industry. “Zen has technical support that you can actually speak to technically - a refreshing breath of air amongst many consumer ISPs that treat you like an idiot,” wrote a satisfied PC Pro subscriber.

AAISP customers are equally glowing. “Once you go AAISP you won’t go back,” wrote one convert. “That’s like eating the best steak in the world then going back to McDonald’s, you just

wouldn’t.” Yet, if there’s one thing holding AAISP back, it’s perceived value for money – a score of 79% deprived the firm of first place.

As for the bigger players in the market, it was the two BT-owned brands that proved to be the best of the rest. EE and Plusnet both recorded overall scores of 68%, surging far ahead of the mothership – BT Broadband itself came second bottom, with an overall score of 51%. BT’s customer service rating of 42% proved to be a familiar sore point. The number of Zen and AAISP customers remarking how much service had improved since they left BT was striking, while those with BT rarely put in a good word. “If I never had to contact BT for anything again the day could not come too soon,” wrote Rebecca Jay.

TalkTalk also flunked the customer service test. “Changed from TalkTalk to Zen, principally because of total dissatisfaction with their offshore call centres,” said Peter M J Davies.