It's almost time to move back to Canterbury, where I will be sharing a house with two friends who are on the same course as I am. We are all very technically adept, finding a good Internet provider should have been simple!
But no. It wasn't.
Canterbury recently got Fibre To The Cabinet, so we definitely wanted (and knew we could get) a fast connection. The exchange is only two streets away from the house. It must be fast.
Oh, but if we have fast Internet then surely we will need an unlimited download limit? What with Spotify, Netflix, online games and the like… we could not allow ourselves to need to worry about how much each of us is downloading.
So our requirements were obvious… the best possible. Fast with no limits.
Uh oh, just remembered… we are only there for about 9 months (the next year at university will be placement year so it is doubtful any of us will be in Canterbury!) Okay then, fast connection with no limits on a 9 month contract.
Hah. Yeah, that complicates things.
Also, we have all had previous bad experiences with BT, so we attempted to avoid them (and succeeded). Time to find an Internet Service Provider who will do a good job.
We started with Virgin, having heard good things about them. They are not yet covering Canterbury.
Right, how about Plusnet? Nope, long contracts.
Sky? Well they have a maximum speed of 40Mbps and 12 month contracts.
BT had long contracts and everyone else we found (even some we had never heard of) were either ridiculously expensive or just no good.
Eventually, after much reading, we ended up back at Sky. I spoke to their live chat person, they were useless. Phoned them, got thrown on hold for too long. Finally I went back to the live chat and found someone useful. Apparently (after asking for ages to see what deal they could do for us) for 10 per month extra (which between 3 people is not too much), they can upgrade us to their pro version. This pro version is hinted to on their website, but there is hardly any information about it at all! It is basically their 75Mbps connection.
Fast internet, unlimited download and 12 month contract. Not as good as we wanted, but it will do.
Does make me wonder though, why does no one offer customised deals? Especially to people who know exactly what they want!
It also reinforces my opinion of most large business' customer service… utter rubbish. I prefer small companies every time.
EDIT:
I forgot to actually post this. It was originally written on the 12th September. It is now the 5th November and we have not had many problems with Sky and are averaging about 32Mbps down and 8Mbps up on the cheaper package… it seems to be good enough for now.