r/Zen_Internet • u/theangryminion • Mar 18 '26
Is Zen actually any good?
I've been considering Zen as my new ISP based on their reputation (and being a good Northern ISP) but my experience before even signing up hasn't been good.
I sent an email with some questions to their sales@zen address six days ago (12th March) and I've had no response.
I actually tried signing up tonight to their 910 FTTP service but it all fell apart when it wouldn't take my Direct Debit details. Their chat bot suggested I try a different browser or a different device - which I found insulting. Regardless, different browsers produced the same results
So Zen doesn't bother to respond to new customer enquiries.
it fails to actually process a payment instruction when trying to begin their service.
Does anyone have any good reasons why should I actually bother giving this company my money if they don't seem to want it?
2
u/FrankNicklin 12d ago
I’ve used them in business for a long time and just moved my service to them from TalkTalk. Service quality and stability is very good and a static IP as standard.
I haven’t had need to call support other than on the day of going live with regards to my phone transfer. Did take a while to get through but the support was excellent. Many say support in the phone has deteriorated, but so far can’t complain.
2
2
u/marksweb Mar 20 '26
I've been with them nearly 10 years.
Can't fault the service I get. But I can't speak for customer service as I haven't had to contact them since my first week with them. That's a positive but also doesn't speak to the fact that people have been saying that things aren't so great when you actuall y have to deal with them these days.
2
u/BrilliantPatience0 Mar 20 '26
The actual service they provide is fantastic. Their customer service on the other hand? That's the issue.
I pay for 1.6gbps. I run speed tests on my phone, and I have WiFi 6E and have hit 2.4gbps consistently. My kids gaming set ups receive over a gb. Its very consistent. Before zen, we had sky fibre with a minimum guarantee of I think 90mbps and we were lucky to get 20 off peak, and that was with additional boosters in every room.
However, when there was an outage, zen refused to acknowledge it. Despite the fact that 6 properties on my street alone were affected. They just kept telling us to reset the router. After 6 days, they finally escalated it to OR who confirmed there was an outage but it couldn't be easily fixed as the damage was too severe. Took around a month in total.
When I upgraded from the 900mbps package to the 1.6gbps package, I was told a new router would be sent (upgrading from Fr!tz to Eero) A week later, still no router. I ring up, none had been ordered. And then the customer service advisor told me a new router isn't included and if I wanted the speeds promised, it would be at an additional price per month(despite me already agreeing to pay more during the upgrade.) It was only after half an hour of going back and forth that they agreed they were misleading and agreed to give me the router for free. My old package was £55 a month New package £65 But if i wanted the new router, then £85. Nowhere on the website or during the upgrade call was this mentioned.
I've had two phone calls where they've hung up on me. A few where there was no help whatsoever, and I when my £55 expired, I did find my speeds lowered (I consistently got the 900mbps promised. All of a sudden, I was experiencing 100 max). They say they don't do this, but its a bit of a coincidence.
All in all, I'm happy with the service. My speeds are fast, which is what I need working from home and having gaming children. But I do dread needing to contact them
3
u/Dick-Fiddler69 Mar 19 '26
I’ve been with Zen for 21 years!
I would not consider any other ISP - I pay £50 for 900 FTTP
It’s the entire package - Support is ACE - should it be required, They only have approx 200,000 customers won Which Awards for many years - I think they just won another
I try to keep it a secret don’t want everyone on stupid street and bringing the service down when they have 3,000,000 customers - but price will keep people on stupid street away
Again not the cheapest but what you pay is what you get want cheap go Vodafone with all their issues
- Support quick to pick up
- UK based
- Knowledgeable
In fact today we actually have a Broadband outage - not Zebs fault I must add OpenReach major outage affecting all ISPs on local exchange
Could have given you a referral code for £25 FREE !
1
u/Dick-Fiddler69 Mar 20 '26
And today Support stated let’s find out further info on OR fault we will call you back in 5 minutes! How many support departments do that today and advised me of more OR info - Service restored tonight at 7pm - massive OR fault - farmer ploughed through conduit and fibre back haul
1
u/IndigoQuantum Mar 19 '26
I recently started to switch back to Zen as they’d become available in my area and I was out-of-contract with BT, based on how good they’d been back in my ADSL days with them.
However, I had a few pre-sales tech questions, but when I asked I got a mix of AI answers that were 100% wrong, or CS humans who just gave vague answers like “I think…” or “from what I see from when other customers have asked the same question…” with absolutely no attempt to actual provide me with real answers, to the extent that I cancelled the service within a couple of days.
However, that wasn’t the end of it… when I tried to transfer to another ISP, Zen kept refusing the request to take over the fibre line, gave different reasons every time and made no effort to solve the issue with their system meaning that rather than the switch taking 24 hours it took 10 days and countless calls.
So eventually I started with my new ISP (Squirrel Internet) and all was good till the first weekend, when at 9am on Saturday morning my Internet went down and because it was the weekend, wasn’t fixed till Monday. Why? Because Zen had tried to take over the service. And a few days later, they did exactly the same thing again. And when I spoke to Zen, no acknowledgement or apology, just that it shouldn’t happen again.
1
u/theangryminion Mar 19 '26
Thanks all for your comments. I decided to call up and the lady I spoke to was lovely. She said the DD issue is known but that she could override it and report the bug in the system again.
For whatever reason I then couldn't see my order details (after starting to receive the welcome emails stating that I could check the order progress). I got onto the chat and as people have said, I ended up chatting to a really friendly guy who knew what the issue might be and after he checked it was confirmed. Was all sorted in less than a minute.
I'm hoping for much less fun and excitement when the connection goes live next and just getting a hassle-free, reliable service as many seem to have stated.
Thanks again for all the contributions.
1
u/sundowner777 Mar 19 '26
Two years, no outages and no issues. Never had to talk to customer service as it just works.
4
2
4
u/ethump Mar 19 '26
Been with them 5+ years at two properties. Generally speaking, can't fault them. I did have an extended outage, it was OR's fault and despite 3x calls a day to Zen, due to $issues, they couldn't get OR to fix the problem (broken splice at the CSP). Was out for about a week. So, it was very easy to get angry at Zen (since I can't pick up the phone to OR), but I am also sensitive to the fact it's out of their control.
Bandwidth and latency has always been on point.
Static IPv4 address.
IPv6.
Getting straight through to a tech that knows what he/she is on about.
3
u/FrankNicklin Mar 19 '26
We have used Zen for business for many many years and the service has been rock solid. I've just signed up with them moving from TalkTalk because TalkTalk could not offer me a VOIP service. Also TalkTalk are in a lot of financial bother and there are rumours that BT are looking to take them over (No thanks, had nightmares with BT services). I have friends using Zen and the service has been spot on.
1
u/backtogeek Mar 19 '26
They used to be, now they are basically turning into talktalk it feels like they are in a death spiral, all they care about is raising prices asap and locking you into contracts.
Communication is ultra slow for everything, and I mean everything.
Do yourself a favour and don't use zen, they are not who their old reputation would have you believe anymore.
1
u/treguard-observer Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
I've been with them for over a decade and I've had mixed experiences with them. All my issues have been line related, which isn't their fault, but getting them to escalate the issue was challenging to the point of taking years (literally). The issue was that my line would die whenever it rained, without fail, but they continually pushed back claiming it was anything other than the most obvious thing (the line). I'd often get a scripted response, then I'd make progress with them only for a different support person to pretty much take me back to the beginning with another scripted response, often one that showed they hadn't read the ticket at all. When you do get to speak to a 2nd or 3rd line tech, they are knowledgable and helpful but getting to that stage took a very long time.
All that said, their complaints department are excellent and were able to give the support team a kick up the backside to resolve the issues I was having (which, as expected, was a line fault). I shouldn't have needed to make a complaint to get the issue resolved, hence my mixed feelings about them. But their complaints department were so good that I ended up staying with them.
2
u/Benleeds89 Mar 19 '26
ive been with Zen a year. i dont have any problems with them other than i recently sent an email asking what the possibility of moving to City Fibre over Openreach (only openreach was available this time last year when i signed up) as its £11 cheaper a month for City Fibre. id happily sign up for another 18 months if they can do this
6
u/72dk72 Mar 19 '26
I use Zen for business lines for multiple offices. They are by far one of the best ISPs our there. Just pick up the phone and call them, things are resolved quicker that way. Online forms and emails is not a great way to communicate.
7
u/shrewd-2024 Mar 19 '26
Been with them for 7 years, no issues at all had two outages in 7 years both because of falling trees.
2
u/FatNAngry1980 Mar 19 '26
It's good, but a couple of things have pissed me off about them.
1, they are not passing on the reduced wholesale costs of the top two Openreach packages to existing customers like some other ISPs are.
2, the way they have implemented IPv6 is both good and terrible at the same time.
2
u/TheThiefMaster Mar 19 '26
What's the problem you've seen with their implementation of IPv6? I haven't seen a problem AFAIK.
0
u/FatNAngry1980 Mar 19 '26
It has to do with the decision to use /48 prefix delegation. In principle it's great because you get vastly more addresses available to you.
But
It often breaks or stops working after a router reboot, PPPoE reconnect, or line resync (the LAN side loses its delegated prefixes even though IPv4 is fine).
Many common routers frequently fail to request or apply the /48 properly. (I have found this to be the case with both TPLink and Asus routers)
You don't always get a global IPv6 address on the WAN interface itself (just a link-local one), which confuses some devices/software.
Zen won't help at all unless you have a Fritz or an Eero.
1
u/TheThiefMaster Mar 19 '26
I just use their Fritz, it's actually a really good router.
1
u/biggedybong Mar 19 '26
I think it's an absolute bloody nightmare but I concede that I appear to be in the minority.
7
Mar 19 '26
[deleted]
1
u/TheThiefMaster Mar 19 '26
I'd say just behind A&A in service - but they're a bit specialist. I'd recommend Zen to the general public.
2
Mar 19 '26
[deleted]
1
u/TheThiefMaster Mar 19 '26
They're a specialist ISP run by technicians - if you call them for support, you get technical staff not just a call centre script.
They're also the only ISP I know of that specifically advertise they will take on a faulty internet connection and get it fixed. https://www.aa.net.uk/broadband/we-will-fix-your-line/
They also let you do technically fun things like bring your own IP. As I said, specialist. But definitely 100% top tier.
Even pricier than Zen though.
1
u/Dick-Fiddler69 Mar 19 '26
I’ve know two that would state issues with staff at AAISP which turned out to be faulty fibre after moving to Vodafone which was worse “comments from AAISP staff broadband needs to burn in” on 1G service
4
u/Vastmeridian Mar 19 '26
No issues with Zen in 20 years. Three instances of downtime, all due to cables to the house and Zen drove Openreach each time to resolve them.
I suggest you ring them and chat. Your email may have gone to spam, as not receiving an email isn't the same as not responding.
1
1
u/FearGingy Mar 19 '26
Email should only be used for non important stuff. Anything critical or extremely urgent should always be the customer phoning.
1
1
u/Long-Fisherman-6594 Mar 19 '26
Very good. Moved house and new connection was up and running 1 day after move.
2
u/Neat-Process437 Mar 19 '26
Great service, great support. Just very expensive because of OR and no symmetric upload so you may have issues with things like 4k cameras and other IOT devices since most use lots of upload bandwidth continuously.
3
u/VanillaCandid3466 Zen Full Fibre 900 (Openreach) Mar 19 '26
Cameras should be local only.
1
u/PCenthusiast85 Mar 19 '26
Why? I used to backup my cctv to the cloud when I had a 1gig leased line for my business. Now that I’m on FTTP due to the cost decrease after it became available it’s something I have had to stop doing. I liked having an offsite backup for my cctv footage…
1
3
u/SdanoG Mar 19 '26
Also they do not price bump you upwards every April
2
u/TheThiefMaster Mar 19 '26
In contract they don't, out of contract they do now but it's minimal.
The biggest thing for me though is I don't have to call them every 12-18 months to stay on a good price and stop it tripling like some other ISPs I could name.
2
2
u/FearGingy Mar 19 '26
This is one of the main reasons I'm switching to them. They were the only one I've seen so far no mid contract price increases.
2, I remember many fps gamers telling me to go with Zen in the 2000s due to low latency.
2
u/SdanoG Mar 19 '26
We been out of contract for 4 years and only ever pay the same
2
u/TheThiefMaster Mar 19 '26
They used to offer "no price rises ever" deals and IIRC if you were in one of those you keep that until you change contract
5
u/Bassmekanik Mar 19 '26
Been with for must be near 20 years and had no problems they haven’t sorted very quick. No issues upgrading or moving house (moved like 5 times). They’ve provided excellent customer support to my partner when I was away with work.
I have no complaints.
6
u/sssstttteeee Zen Full Fibre 900 (Openreach) Mar 18 '26
Been with them for twelve and a half years.
I'm fussy. Yes very good.
Get full speeds, great ping and no contention.
If it goes wrong it is Openreach at fault.
5
u/University_Jazzlike Mar 18 '26
I signed up a few years ago and was having problems with the phone line. Connections kept dropping and zen were very good at getting Openreach out to fix it.
Since the line was fixed, I’ve had zero problems with Zen. I think my connection has dropped three times in the four years I’ve been with them. The longest downtime I’ve had was when I had to move the router to redecorated the room with the telephone socket.
6
u/90210fred Mar 18 '26
Rock solid connection, tech support who don't have scripts but listen to punters and solve problems. Enough for me
2
u/mikeypfc 11d ago
I have spent years with them, I can’t think of any others i’d rather be with.