Ditch the pedalo, get a PIPEX board! (Pipex)

Member Name: drewboy

Product:	Pipex
Date:	14/07/05 (834 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Leading ISP, good value packages, web space

Disadvantages: Dont think about moving in the first year, communication after instalation .

What a minefield choosing a broadband supplier seems to be these days. There are literally hundreds of offers out there. So the main question is, who the heck should you choose to take your money from you then?

Well, when I wanted to loose the dreaded two hour cut off on the Freeserve anytime dail up ‘service’, I set about surfing (though now it feels like I was pedaloing!) the net to try and find a deal that balanced both cost and features. A good place I found to start was www adslguide.org. They have all of the major suppliers listed together with the specifications and costs of each respective service on offer. The also have the facility to let you know whether or not you can actually get broadband (pretty important first step) by letting you input your postcode and telephone number. However, after all that, I actually got a personal recommendation from an internet junkie mate of mine so thought that it would be best just to go for what they said.

So, off to www.pipex.com I pedalo’d and took a look at what was on offer. At the time I signed up in June 2004, prices were similar however the speeds you get have now increased. They offer two types of plans, PIPEX Lite and PIPEX Solo. The first type is priced on how many gigabytes you are limited too downloading in a month and comes with a standard 2Mbps connection speed. The second is priced around have no download limits and how fast you want the connection to be ranging from 250Kbps at £14.99 through to 2Mbps as £33.99. At the time, I chose to go for the Solo option for £23.44 (£19.99 inc VAT) giving me download speeds of 512Kbps and upload speeds of 250Kbps although due to BT’s recent upgrade program, the same price now gets you double that for new customers. PIPEX are upgrading existing customers but more about that later.

Now you may think “but I can get that cheaper” however I have to point out that you do get a lot of extra’s for your money. For starters, you get 50Mb of webspace, 12 email boxes, access to thousands of newsgroups and BT broadband services. Not only that, but you are actually signed up to the first UK ISP and one of the leaders in supplying internet connections to the business sector. So for me, that’s a pretty good thing to have behind your connection.

Signing up was very straightforward indeed. All you have to do is first of all confirm to them that your line can handle broadband then fill out a few simple online forms (name, address, payment method – either direct debit or credit card) and then wait the quoted 7-10 days to be up and running. One of the major plus points for me with the process was that they kept in touch by email at every point from confirming the initial order to telling me when the service would start from. All in all, about 4 emails. They supplied the relevant equipment (broadband modem, two micro filters for the phone socket) and once set up, I put that old pedalo of a dail up service firmly in the past.

Using the service has been largely a pleasant experience. With the equipment they supplied I was a bit miffed about the fact that I still had to double click the connection icon and technically ‘dail’ to get connected, but other than that no hassles at all (and have changed to a wireless router now anyway!). To my knowledge, I have actually only experienced downtime twice now in the year and a bit I have used PIPEX and while one was unexpected by the company, one was planned. The only complaint I have with regards to the planned episode, was that they only announced in in the ‘mypipex’ part of their webpage which since I don’t check it regularly (I just don’t see the need!) I had no idea what was happening and when it came back up, I was still under the impression it was a problem with the network and didn’t even think to reset my router. An email would have been better, specially after praising them so much for their contact during the installation!

Talking of ‘mypipex’, this is an area for members where you can go to view the details of your account, change minor things like payment methods and upgrades to your service, activate your email aliases, webspace and newsgroup settings and to wade though their extensive online help section on any problems that you may be having. Thankfully, I have only really had to use this a couple of times but it has been pretty good which it has to be as the helplines and customer services departments are not open past 6pm. They are however local rate numbers which is another major plus over other ISP’s who can (and do) charge you a fortune for any kind of help. With regards to email, I personally don’t use it as I prefer my mail to be kept online however you can choose to have them send you any emails to another account. They do also give you access to your email on a web based site so that if you are using it as a main email account, you can access it when you are out and about and it really is quite a simple web mail setup.

Going back to the upgrade program BT are currently carrying out (a major reason for the recent drop in broadband prices) they did promise all existing customers that they would be upgraded for free when each telephone exchange was upgraded by BT however I was told via mypipex that this should have happened in April. So far it still hasn’t and while this is not really PIPEX’s fault, on the occasions that I have called to enquire about it, they always said “oh it will happen in a few weeks Mr Kerr”. Well, it still hasn’t. I am currently out of the years contract that I had with them so after phoning to complain they did decide that since I had been a loyal customer (or rather I could easily leave them now) they would waive the £15 fee that they had offered customers who didn’t want to wait for BT and upgrade early so I should have turbo charged surfing in about a week. Yay!

However, while that is a good example of their customer service, there is a bad side too. The friend of mine that had recommended PIPEX to me in the first place had to move during the first year of having their service but when she phoned up to enquire about taking her broadband service with her, they said that it would effectively be a disconnection and that they would have to charge her the £60early cancellation fee regardless of whether or not she took up the service at her new flat or not. I can understand them maybe starting the 12 month contract again but really feel that they should waive that charge if the customer takes the service out at the new property.


So, in conclusion, I can thoroughly recommend taking out PIPEX as a broadband supplier as I really have had a relatively hassle free time with them. Certainly compared to some of the horror stories I have heard from people with other providers (no pointing fingers AOL!). So, if you are sure that you are unlikely to move within the first 12mths, you will find that you have a reliable, stable and good value package to allow you to surf the net however due to the problems my mate had with moving and the communication issue during planned downtime, they just miss the 5 star mark for me, though a highly respectable 4 stars non-the-less.

drew

Summary: A quality, good value service.