Andrews and Arnold Broadband Internet www.aaisp.net.uk

I have been an AAISP user for a couple of years.

I have no complaints whatsoever & always recommend them to those who want an excellent, 100% reliable service.

The only downside is the price which is on the high side, but for me good value.

NJSS

Very poor broadband service which surprised me considering how expensive they are.

I have been a domestic home customer of A&A for around 5 years. I am used to paying my £33 per month which is quite expensive, but the service (until now) has always made this a good investment.

In July I received a bill of £133 which I contested as my usage pattern had not changed. This apparently occurred during one weekday between the hours of 14:00 - 16:00 when no one was home. Could the line have been hacked, I asked the A&A service rep? "Who knows" was the response. Can you look into this and review the charge, especially considering my long customer record and history of use? "No we cannot" came the firm response from "...but if you would like a migration code then that can be requested online at ..." - I was gobsmacked!

So I cancelled my service. Cancellation charge of £42 (ok - just to get it out of the way) - final month charges were DOUBLED to £65!! Why? "you went over your usage limit by 5GB"...so A&A are charging me £6.60 per GB and again failing to take into account that we were not responsible for the over-use! In fact, I am questioning if there was any over use at all, or whether or not it is actually a fault at A&A's end (or maybe they just like to overcharge loyal customers?).

A truly awful experience - expect high bills and complete lack of support when it comes to contesting them!

After doing a great deal of online research, I signed up with Andrews & Arnold for a FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) line in November 2011 and have never regretted it for a moment.

After a very bad service from one of the big boys who didn't want to know about our dreadful complete lack of connection for a long time (and very much feeling like second-class customers, not being in one of their own cabled areas - we'd stayed with them after moving from one of their cabled areas, where, to be fair, the service had been good), I was paranoid about suffering the same again, so I decided to go for quality and reliability as the primary criteria, rather than purely go on cost.

I read online and spoke to friends and family, many of whom just seemed to accept drastically slower speeds in the evening as normal. This has never been the case with AAISP.

They're aimed at the more technically-minded customer, as you can tinker with and change a lot of your settings yourself, but you don't have to be a geek at all to use them. I'm a self-taught broadband-savvy non-IT professional and I had to contact them to ask about an outage. It was all my fault and a real D'Oh!!! schoolboy error, but they were never impatient and never talked down to me or patronised me one bit.

There's a wealth of information on their website for those who want it and the man at the very top (known as RevK - who unusually for ISPs is a very knowledgeable techie rather than a suit) is rather outspoken - in a good way! He has his own blog and, chances are, if a problem annoys his customers, it will annoy him ten times as much if something isn't working properly! Not to imply at all that they aren't competent with the business/billing side of it - I've had no issues there at all.

MAIN GOOD THINGS ABOUT AAISP (there are a number of more minor ones, especially for techies - detailed on their website):

Support team consisting of English-speaking British national techies, with no scripts, no time pressures and no fobbing off or false promises. If there's a problem, they'll admit it and get it fixed (apparently, they're notorious at being a pain in the behind with Openreach - or Be, who they also offer as a carrier - until they get on and fix it when the problem is at their end!)

Permanent line-check is in place, monitoring the connection (not the content at all) every second. This is just brilliant(!) - they text you to let you know if your broadband service is down (often just for a minute or two, or even just 20 seconds) - not that this happens very often at all (for me, it's mostly when I've had to unplug the router to use the socket for something else!). They monitor the performance and make these reports freely available when you log into your account. I love the way that, whereas the big boys may well deny (or at least avoid admitting) any loss of service if you call them, AAISP let you know on the odd occasion when they may have 'failed' and give the reason, probably before you would have noticed it yourself (if at all)!

Consistent speeds with no throttling and a fast service that just works.

Complete honesty and a simple desire to provide high quality service rather than being solely interested in market share and boosting shareholder profits.

POTENTIAL DISADVANTAGES of AAISP:

Telephone & e-mail Support is only in office hours (although they say that they can frequently be found in various online forums and are happy to help when they can - I can't vouch for this myself as I've never needed support out of hours).

They don't offer unlimited downloads (which may partly explain the total lack of slow-downs in the evenings found with the oversubscribed services of some of the large ISPs)? You either buy units which are consumed at different rates depending on when in the day you use them - relatively quickly in the daytime, slowly in the evenings and at weekends and at an almost unattainably slow snail's pace in the wee small hours. For domestic customers only (using YouTube & YouView etc) in the daytime, they've recently introduced tariffs whereby units are eroded at a uniform rate, whenever in the day (or night) you use them, but the trade-off is that you don't then benefit from the very high allowances at off-peak times. Personally, I feel that the price is an honest, realistic one, designed with capability rather than eyeball-grabbing marketing in mind.

They only offer VoIP for telecommunications purposes (I've not yet used this service myself), which is fully compatible with making and receiving calls for almost all purposes, however if you want or need or are just happier with a PSTN (ordinary telephone line) service - e.g. for Sky Multiroom - you will also need to pay BT, Sky, Post Office etc for the line rental and let AAISP piggyback on the line just for broadband purposes rather than taking the line over completely.

IN CONCLUSION: AAISP won't be for everybody and if you spend all day streaming TV then they probably wouldn't be cost-effective. Similarly, if you want the peace of mind of 24-hour telephone helplines (albeit maybe with a script-jockey in a call centre on the other end - and the need to call them in the first place!), this may put you off. However, if you're happier to pay a little more for a high quality trouble-free service (and especially if you like to control your line settings yourself), I would thoroughly recommend them. I've tried to be honest and mention the things that some may see as a drawback, but all in all, as somebody who actively strives to find the very best value for everything and obsessively cuts costs where possible, I've made a conscious decision that supremely reliable broadband from AAISP is worth paying for and I would truly never consider moving to one of the cheaper, more mainstream ISPs.

Very knowledgeable and friendly technical support. Great service, offering blocks of static IPs, native IPv6 support.

Ann excellent ISP, breath of fresh air after o2 and orange

Andrews & Arnold have left me without internet connectivity for over a week now. Calls to Support, when they are answered, are met with requests to simply reboot the router or promises to call BT and then get back to me.

They never get back to me.

This morning I've sat with the support phone ringing for a total of 10 minutes (2 x 4 mins, 1 x 2 mins) without anyone answering. The staff in support seem surly, totally lacking in customer service skills and give the impression that they have no desire to help resolve my problem whatsoever. I work in a customer facing role myself so I never shout or am abusive yet

I still get the impression that they just wish the problems would all magically go away and I'd leave them alone.

I would not recommend this company to my worst enemy.

Very dissappointed with Andrews and Arnold Broadband Internet perhaps I have been unlucky I dont know but found thecustomer service not great at all.

Speeds are very bad and after a good period of time 8 weeks have decided it best to part company with them.

I would not recommend this isp at all they just seem to be unable to resolve problems and whilst BT are bearing the blame in lots of cases what really is not good is the calls which are promised and never materialise.

In my case I am sorry to say they are not the friendliest when it comes to the bottom line perhaps.

I am sorry to say I cant relate to any of the reviews here which is a shame I only wanted a service thats all but this company have fallen so short.

Whilst they are not the cheapest, they are very knowledgable. Unlimited download outside of office hours and static ip makes them very good for people who need that kind of thing.Whenever I've had a question, the person who answered the phone has been able to help directly, without being put on hold or transfered to another call centre.I would recommend Andrews and Arnold Broadband Internet .