The Phone Co-op Telecoms www.thephone.coop

Firstly what exactly is ethical broadband? The Phone co op uses the same network as Talk Talk and there is nothing special about that. Fair pricing? well, they are more expensive, slower and have longer contracts than their competitors. No Hidden charges? Here's the rub: after being a Phone Co op customer for 6 years, our line went down. I had to beg them to fix it in a timely manner as they were in no rush. I ended up in tears on the phone to them. The engineer came and fixed a fault at our local green cabinet. 4 months later, sick and tired of interruptions to our internet which the Phone co op would do nothing about, we switched to a different provider who were offering faster more reliable connection, cheaper and in a shorter contract. Two weeks after switching away from the Phone co op they sent me a bill for nearly £155 for this engineer call out charge as they claimed he had failed to log the fault he fixed at the green cabinet and the Phone co op passed this charge onto me. I then had to go through a lengthy and stressful process whereby I had to prove what work the engineer did. No matter what information I provided they were not satisfied.

I went to the coop phone and broadband service as i was a customer of coop energy and have a local coop shop and have been a supporter of the movement for a long time ,i can still remember my grannies dividend number from the early sixties. I must admit i am very disapointed with the cost ,much of the items that other suppliers do not charge for are added on with the coop.If you want a download allowance of over 20Gb it costs a lot more if you want evening and weekend calls it costs a lot. I looked into a comparison site and found that i could get the same level of supply for only just over half what i am paying.

The speed would still be the same as i live out in the sticks (fastest download only 400 Kb ) and would still not be able to watch catch up at a decent resolution but could save a massive £120 a year plus by switching . The problem is i have no experiance of any others exept B.T. and they could not even tell me the number of the line to my house.

I have been with The Phone Co-op, now called "THE CO-OPERATIVE PHONE & BROADBAND" for 19 months, having previously been with (amongst others), the excellent XILO & AAISP companies. I wanted to keep the excellent broadband service I already had, but needed to save money & wanted a package to include line rental & calls. The Co-operative uses MurphX (the same network as Xilo), so the download & upload speeds are indistinguishable from those I received previously. I regularly test those speeds using JD's Auto Speed Tester and they are consistent "24/7" with no slow-down at any time at all.

Of course, the speed you receive is very much down to your telephone exchange set-up, how congested it is at peak times and your distance from it; I am confident though, that no-one else will provide a faster service on my rural (Winscombe) exchange than The Co-operative can.

Migration went smoothly, though communication was by Royal Mail, not email. Set-up was easy using my own router. This is the only criticism I can think of, regarding this company.

UPDATE: My local exchange recently went LLU when Talk-Talk set up their equipment there. I have been accessing that LLU service via The Co-operative for eight months now & am very pleased with the much faster download & upload speeds (triple speed downloads & double speed uploads, compared to previously). The changeover was handled expertly by The Co-operative & went very smoothly.

Theives stole miles of Somerset telephone lines on 25th August 2011, which left much of Somerset & Dorset without broadband for the day. I phoned The Phone Co-op, got an instant reply & they informed me straight away of the BT Outage; so their customer service seems spot-on. I have otherwise had no need to use their support service as everything just works perfectly!

I signed up for broadband with thephone.coop because I wanted to use an ethical supplier. I didn't need the ability to make phone calls, but had to pay line rental as the broadband won't work without it. I was given a start date for the line (which was of no use to me for the reason above, yet I was charged from this date) and a later date for broadband go-live.

I was disappointed that the go-live date was more than 3 weeks after my order was placed. When the go-live date came around, the broadband did not work. It took several days without broadband and several calls to get it working. It didn't help that thephone.coop doesn't have 24 hr support, so if it's not working in the evening or at the weekend you're out of luck until the next working day. If you have to go to work during the day, that's your problem.

After about 3 days of this treatment I asked thephone.coop to cancel my service (we're supposed to be able to cancel a telephone contract within 14 days). Here's the clever part, because the go-live date for broadband is 21 days, the 14 day period has already passed, so it's not possible to cancel.

In short:

- go-live date was ages away

- connection go-live took several days to work

- consumer rights removed by being unable to cancel after the go-live date

- very expensive compared to other providers

- don't offer 24 hour support, which makes it worse when the connection isn't working

thought they'd be great as an ethical alternative. I just have the standard £10.00 contract. As of yet (2 weeks)am unable to make or receive calls!!!!!!!! No one seems to know what's going on and they seem blase to say the least about the whole thing. To make matters worse, I've just been on hold in a queue(on my landline) for 7mins 31seconds. I do not recommend them.

The Phone Co-op is the only telecoms Co-operative in the UK and something of a pioneer.

I have been with them now for three years and have been very impressed by the enthusiasm of the staff and their willingness to engage with me over even the most trivial of issues. Compared to previous experiences with BT and Talktalk they are a breath of fresh air and demonstrate that increasingly rare ability: Common sense.

They are not perfect but they are a great deal closer to being perfect than any other phone & broadband company I've ever dealt with in the UK. Add to that the fact that they are not lining shareholders pockets, this is demonstrated by the fact that their customers are their priority.

The Phone Co-op is definitely the way forward and I urge you to give them a chance.

Very poor service. Since we have signed up with them, the broadband keeps cutting off at peak times. They want us to keep on making time consuming tests to check a problem which is on their side as it has to do with the bandwith they are allocated by BT and how BT manages it. We have now 11 months to suffer left on the contract with them.

I would not recommend these guys to anyone

My experience with the Phone-Coop has been pretty poor..... On my first bill I was charged for 12months rental. I have queried several charges on subsequent bills which took a long time to resolve and even then only after having to (try to) contact them on many occasions. I finally wrote to the Chief Executive - Vivian Woodell - that was several weeks agaon and I still haven't had a response.

Finally told them how 'disappointing' their customer servicew as and that I'd be looking elsewhere for my telecom service but even this didn't seem to stir them into action. Customer service..... what's that?

Absolutely abysmal service from The Phone Co-op Telecoms right from the word go. After eventually managing to connect to the broadband service I was lucky to get between 500 and 750k. According to the BT test facility it estimated I should be able to get up to 5meg! After a lot of mucking about I managed to get that up to 3meg on a good day. Unfortunately I am now subject to a connection that drops out on average once every 5 to 10 minutes. Three months of phone calls, emails and letter writing have achieved absolutely nothing, except the 'we have changed your profile' answer to everything.

The Phone Co-op is unlike any other supplier in that it is a cooperative venture. It is actually owned by its members and run for their benefit and is answerable to its members. The service is excellent. The customer service staff are knowledgeable and mature and clearly know what they are talking about. I would have no hesitation is recommending this company. We have been delighted with the Phone Co-op.