Broadband Internet & ISP Recommendations?

Potentially - unless you have to generate one specifically. They're on the short list but want to do some more checks into stuff like user experience/portals/logging in etc/troubleshooting/ping etc.

Logging into virgin (see also Vodafone) is such a chore and I wonder if anyone does it better.

Just happened to me. Heaven.

It's generic: here you go, if you decide to go with Zen.

Here for anyone else too. Get £25 for each of us.

https://zen.mention-me.com/m/ol/qx4nd-matt-ashton

Zen is odd, their best package for my address is 64-73Mbs for £33 and a 18 month contract. I don't think I have seen such a specific and bad offer ever.
When I crawled back to Virgin I got 350Mbs for £21.

I'm more than happy to pay a bit more for Zen [granted nobody else offers higher speeds to our house] because on the odd occasion something does go wrong, you get through within a minute or 2 to somebody who actually knows what they're doing and isn't reading off a script, and the problem gets sorted.
My partner works from home and can't be fucking around with waiting 5 working days for a call back from yet-another-chump who can't fix it.

Just renewed my community fibre as the original 2 year deal came to an end, I called them and agreed a GB for two years at £25 a month, all very straightforward.

So far, Zen it is.

However because it's Openreach it's capped at 115 up. I do a lot of uploading (work in video). City Fibre is a few streets over. Ride out Virgin until CF is in for 900 up? Or just get out fast and change in 18 months.

City Fiber is a few streets over

Are you on their build plans? They can be quite localized. For example Community Fibre are doing the streets with overhead cables near me but not touching underground yet.

I'm sure I remember putting a postcode in with them and getting "get ready, we're here soon" or words to that effect not so long ago. But now when I do it on their website it just says 'thanks for your interest'. So maybe it was a different site - don't know.
Council roadwork page show the next street over being cityfibred next week and the street at the top of the hill (kind of parallel with ours) this week.

just got the city fibre notification email that our street is now live. what’s the forum-approved ultrafast ISP? seem to be a few offering 900mbps for around 35£ (yayzi, brill and, brawband). yayzi offer 1 month rolling contract which seems good - any negative reviews online all seem to be related to botched installs by CF

Another 6.9% 'inflation based' price increase coming from Community Fibre in April.

I'm paying £28.25 at the moment for 1Gb, that will go up to £30.20, £5.20 a month more than the £25 I'd be paying as a new customer. The 'brand new customers only' model pisses me off - my loyalty is being rewarded by having to pay £62.40 a year more than new customers (who are also protected from price increases in 2024!).

The product is great but it's a shitty way to treat your customers.

Let them know. Then quit and sign up using a different name/credit card or something.

It’s a business model that means you’re still only paying 30 quid a month for a 1Gb/s fibre line to your house. It’s a bargain any which way you look at it imo.

Anyone on brsk? They're in build in my area and i can pre order for their 1gb package for £35 (offer ends tomorrow so most likely wont do it) a month which is certainly better than VM

true, but it's annoying that it's an industry that lags behind. There's been plenty about mobile phone providers not offering the same deals to existing customers as they do new, or car insurance quotes etc.
Just annoying that the default seems to be "take the piss until we (gov) legislate against", rather than "don't take the piss unless we explicitly legislate that it's ok to"

The problem is it requires all providers/companies to do the same at the same time, otherwise the few that don't will be seen to have cheaper deals, and so they win more custom than those that "do the right thing" and don't offer the new customer discounts.

This is generally why it only happens once the legislation is in place.

Agree the model might not feel great when comparing to new customers, but as ectoplasmosis says, you’re getting proper fast internet for only £30… that’s almost exactly what I’m paying for 40/10 (best we can get from FTTC) and I’m having the same inflation increases. If I could get your connection I’d just pay it and download something well quickly to make myself feel better… or do what hippy says.

Luckily had one brick left, cut the burst half out and sorted it but what a total fuck up it was.

My new fibre is 780mb and it's 68 quid a month. £30 is a good deal.

Yeah you're right, it just annoys me! As @duncs says it lags behind similar consumer products which need a contract, plus the advertising always suggests to me that a two year contract at £25 is exactly that, not your price goes up on 1st April if you signed up in the previous year.

That and our dependence on decent internet means I can't face the faff of quitting and signing up again @hippy

Our contract will be up in September so that will be the real test - if they'll let me go back onto a £25 two year contract I could live with that, if it's just going to keep going up and up not so much.

@JonD / @konastab01 yeah, I get that. We were paying more to Plusnet for about 70Mbps and a phone line we never used.

Yeah, paying £35/mo for ~70/15 FTTC with BT because that's as good as I can get here, but then I don't really need any more than that.

Making an occasional 1GB download take 10 seconds instead of 2 minutes won't really change my life in any meaningful way.

I’m supposed to be moving to them at some point but all the while the Three5G is working fine for £22 a month i’ll stick with them. (250-450 down/17-30 up)
I’ll also swap straight back to Three if CF start acting like Virgin .
Think £30-£40 is fine for reliable fast down and more importantly for me fast up BB
I’m never going back to £50 Virgin shitness.

Signed up with Community Fibre last July, finally got my Amazon gift card yesterday.

Our contract will be up in September

Our contract ran out recently and they wanted to put the price up, I called them and asked for the new customer deal 2 years fixed for £25pm and it was agreed without any hassle.

I know it’s annoying but just wait it out, don’t cut off your nose.

I’ve only had to contact them once for internet down in two years and their customer service was excellent.