This article is more than 1 year old

Demon broadband disquiet grows

New website airs customer concerns

There's growing disquiet among some Demon broadband customers that the service is just not up to scratch.

A number of users have contacted El Reg complaining about the quality of Demon's Home 2 meg broadband service. One hacked-off punter told us: "The connection is utterly abysmal and getting worse by the day,"

Another said: "Since I signed up last month the highest speed I've clocked between 6pm and midnight has been around 200kbits/s. It's almost impossible to play online games, web pages are slow and downloads take ages."

While another has told us he's gone from being of "a fan of demon to complete alienation" after being fobbed off with excuses from customer support.

Customer frustrations are so bad it's prompted one hacked off punter to set up a protest website - www.slowdemon.co.uk - to voice concerns. Although the site is still being constructed it highlights some of the frustrations being experienced by users.

"If your 130mph car only did 50mph, you wouldn't be happy, would you?. If your dictionary only got as far as the letter 'G', you wouldn't be happy, would you?

"If your 2mbit internet connection was so slow that it actually had the effect of reversing time, sending the hairs on your head back into your skull and the hands of the clock on the wall spinning backwards, you wouldn't be happy, would you? Would you?"

In a statement, Thus-owned Demon played down the problems. While it regretted any complaints, it insists that only a couple of hundred people are affected by the problems.

And while it "adds additional bandwidth as and when required" the problems appears to stem from the fact that people are using its service too much during peak times.

"People are downloading larger files, streaming movies and generally enjoying the Internet more," said the ISP in a statement.

"However, during this period of adjustment as bandwidth limits are increased, at times, users of Broadband services may experience service levels that are more reflective of the contention ratio they are paying for.

"Less than 0.5 per cent of our customers have called us regarding a latency issue and, as an ISP with more than 100,000 customers, we will always have a small number of customers who are not happy with their service and we regret any inconvenience that is currently being caused to your readers." ®

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