It’s time to get connected – but who to choose?

Q

WE’VE just moved from a home in a deep Lakeland valley to a big town. In our previous home there was no mobile phone signal and we had dial-up internet, only good for email. Now we are in our new abode, we want to catch up with broadband and the rest of the country. Where do I start?

AFIRST the good news. There are at least a dozen broadband providers – mostly accessible via a number of comparison sites including Which? Switch Broadband. Most are online so you’ll need to borrow a friend or family member with a connection to use these.

Now the bad news. A recent Which? survey of 7,000 users found that not only was there no standout best buy, none of the 12 companies is without issues.

The most common complaints were router problems, price increases and slow speeds.

Virgin Media, among the pricier, was the most complained about but its price increases generated the greatest number of moans rather than connection speed.

Overall, seven out of 10 Virgin customers said they had been dissatisfied over the past year.

But other big brands including Sky and TalkTalk are not far behind. TalkTalk’s customers’ big complaint was slow speeds.

In common with Virgin, many Sky customers were unhappy about price increases.

Most deals last for two years but four out of five stick with the same provider for longer. That’s fine if it works but telecoms watchdog Ofcom says companies can punish loyalty with fee increases, costing consumers £1billion a year.

Ofcom calculates two out of five have been rolled onto a more expensive deal when the contract ended. Whatever you do, remember to shop around in late 2020.

Smaller providers tended to do better in the survey. Zen Internet was the least complained about – but even here a third of customers were unhappy.

Now for more good news. Since October 2016, broadband providers have had to include landline costs in quotes.

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