written by 146Gallagher on 09/07/2018
Joined Zen 2013, service now diabolical. Tech support guys, read flow charts & blame YOUR equipment/router/Ethernet cable/micro filter/computer=never their fault & despite buying new router, micro filters & Ethernet cables, 1st guy I spoke to failed to diagnose trunk outage in area affecting many residents. 2nd failed to walk me though setting up new router I was told to buy by 1st guy blamed them for fault, I was asked,(despite telling the 2nd guy that I had had a stroke & heart attack & was struggling physically, to kneel on floor) to unscrew phone socket on wall to get at test socket + he had advised me to unscrew wrong one, so had to trace wiring to feed socket in garage-other side of house, he asked me to unscrew that, try phone in it, so had to go back to other side of house for phone then I was asked to go & get router from other side of house. Struggled to plug phone/router into a live test socket hanging off garage wall, 2nd tech guy decided it’s outage in area as both phone lines & internet by this time down he books BT, saying if I don't pay £120 to get private Broadband specialist out-check internal wiring I might be asked to pay BT £140-£178 for call out. Called Broadband specialist = £120, this + having to pay computer shop £75.91 on router, Ethernet cable & micro filters. Broadband specialist after he’d tested internal wiring asked neighbours if they’d any connectivity, they didn't. Called PC repair guy out=was suggested by 1st Tech guy it may be my computer =cost me £50, I’m losing income from booked in clients on busiest night of working week. PC repair guy migrated away from Zen Internet as found them rip off & incompetent-same problems. Phone to lodge complaint, 3rd tech guy=smarmy, condescending, rude & disrespectful, so lost my cool, he tried to justify actions of 1st & 2nd tech’s, as if I was at fault. I demanded manager called me Monday 11 am- 12 noon as started work at 12 noon. At 12.54 pm Monday Nick called claiming to be a Zen manager-he was only supervisor, he was equally obnoxious + unhelpful so asked for complaint to be escalated above him, he refused to reimburse for costs incurred from Broadband specialist PC repair man, only offered to pay for router claiming no tech guys recommended calling out Broadband specialist, fact is I never knew they existed until 2nd tech guy said to do so, so they endlessly back staff, have zero respect for customers. Support=diabolical amateur, useless, no 24/7 tech support. I pay £67.67 per month for 1 phone line + broadband & 1 without, no more than 5.85 mbps download speed & 0.84 mbps upload, diabolical customer service ,they know I‘m self-employed & if I'm late paying bill, billing Rottweiler spams me with nasty threatening emails. Threaten to leave Zen & in smarmy voice they rudely tell you, you’ll never find as good a deal. I am done with Zen Internet they’re a disgrace, my advice steer clear utter rip off utter rubbish, rude unpleasant.
written by 439Morgan on 03/02/2017
I have been using Zen Internet services for many years now and every time there is an issue - of which there are many - their technical team provide a wishy washy reason as to why the issue could not be resolved; this includes years of business data having been completely lost due to their incompetency and inability/unwillingness to solve the problem. Here are my reasons for leaving them: 1) Unreliable servers 2) Incompetent technical support team 3) Taking no responsibility for their shortfalls 4) Overpriced 5) Never being given the reason as to why the issue had been created in the first place and what to do in order to avoid it in the future
written by on 29/05/2014
May 2014 - a letter was sent to me saying I owed £57.46 and threatening me with Hornets Debt Recovery Agency if i didn't pay up in 14 days. I have no account with these people - I paid twice for a web space rental on behalf of a voluntary organisation more than 2 years ago. I am very disappointed - they were good when I used them and I let them know it was going to be paid by another person. I am very unhappy to be threatened nn a letter.
written by AngryQueen on 04/12/2013
Terrible service. Essential the same as BT, but more expensive and with a similar 'couldn't care less' service. Got passed from pillar to post repeatedly. Call centre tried to blind me with science despite what they were saying being total nonsense and having nothing to do with my actual service. Also overheard one of the staff refer to me using a homophobic slur, I assume he thought I was on hold. I gather this sort of nastiness is not uncommon. My complaint, of course, has been given lip service. Terrible service, avoid.
written by on 16/11/2013
daniel293829382's Comments Summary: DONT USE IF YOU WANT GOOD CUSTOMER CARE November 16th, 2013 (Last Edited: November 16th, 2013) You pay a premium to these people and yet you get rubbish customer care. I dare say its one of the worst in the business. Primus give me better customer care and that's saying something. They even addressed me by my middle name in one email. The whole company is a joke. I regret joining them. The reviews on half of the review sites do not reflect the terrible time you will have been a zen customer. If this review saves 1 person from the torture of bad service and one of the worst customer services known to man I will be very happy. NPOWER & primus should be given the gold medal in customer services if you compare them to zen. That is saying something really. BAD BAD BAD INTERNET COMPANY AVOID. P.S The way these people talk about money they sound like they would be happy if there customers don't eat or heat there homes as long as they get there cash. Greedy and bad company. Micky Mouse could provide better customer services.
written by on 22/03/2013
I took out an account with Zen and set up direct debit. They failed to collect one payment and sent me an email asking me to pay by credit card. I had some emails back and forth since I expected that (like every other company on earth) they would use the direct debit to try and take the payment again and I didn't want to double pay. They said I had to pay by card. I said that's dumb but ok and I paid. 2 months later the same thing happened, again I wanted to confirm with them before I paid and ask if there was anything that could be done to stop this silly mess. Before I know it I came home to a very threatening letter saying I owed them for 2x payments (wrong), that they had repeatedly tried and failed to contact me by phone and email (false) and that they would cut off my Internet in 7 days and forward my 'debt' (nonexistent) to Hornets Debt Recovery Services. THIS IS AN APPALLINGLY BADLY RUN COMPANY YOU MUST AVOID AT ALL COSTS. I have had bad customer service in the past and bad ISPs but Zen takes it to another level. To top it off the broadband speed was at 2/3rds of what it should have been and they did nothing to rectify it.
written by westcoaster on 01/06/2012
I have been with ZEN for more than 4 years and found tech support first class. However, between June 2011 and May 2012 all my phone calls were made through BT at a total cost to me of £559.13 after line rental costs. During this time ZEN were billing me for their Voice service which of course I thought was still functioning as a "voice service". I pay BT by DD and unfortunately I failed to keep track of the relevant a/c. When I finally discovered that BT were billing me for calls I thought I was making using Zen's Voice service I contacted Zen and it was explained that the router "must have reset itself" and I was instructed to do a factory reset and all would be well. I was then advised to log in to my Zen a/c on a regular basis where I could monitor my call duration against my monthly allowance of 1000 minutes just in case this should happen again. I was also informed that I had no claim against ZEN, although their terms and conditions are not clear on this matter.
written by on 21/02/2012
I'm speechless. I've been bombarded with calls from Zen saying I'm in arrears with payment for domains. I wasn't, but they like to take payment 2 or 3 months early! After chasing me I decided to pay them online but to my horror I found they'd taken away ALL my domains (even the ones that weren't due for payment), taken them off the DNS and therefore rendered me website-less! I have a business to run! When I called they were basically holding me to ransom. My domains had been taken off-line for 15 days. I'm speechless. I'll leave you to decide whether Zen.co.uk are professional or not. I won't be doing my business with them again. I had to pay up (in advance by the way) so they would put all my other domains back online. Never again. I'm now going to transfer my domains away from them.
written by on 26/10/2011
We have been with Zen for over a year now and I always thought they were quite good. Last week, I was proved wrong. Our internet went down due to problems at Zen. It lost us income and caused great stress to the entire team as we are web based. I had to pay an IT engineer to come out immediately who charged on a Friday afternoon. When I phoned Zen, they explained they had problems that day but did not warn us in advance. I became very angry as they were unwilling to offer any decent goodwill gestures. Another company that is greedy and arrogant-when will they learn-perhaps when their clients leave them. Their only solution was to upgrade to a higher level service and pay more money. This is unethical and greedy. I accept problems happen but it is always to do with how you deal with them. Avoid Zen, they simply do not care about their customers as we are just a number. Having said that, without us, they wouldn't have a company.
written by on 06/05/2011
They have AWFUL customer services at times. They can be very condescending towards small businesses and refuse to accept blame for something that is clearly their fault.
Our internet connnection was on/off/on/off for weeks and I followed all of their instructions for days and days to no avail. They then told me I needed to BUY a new router...even though they supplied the original 1 with the possible problem.
To make things worse - they don't even know if this is the problem! It could be something else at their end - but they refuse to do anything else until we either replace the router WHICH THEY SUPPLIED and test if it has a problem - or accept all costs involved if the router is found to have a problem further down the line!
Ridiculous and appalling.
written by on 18/03/2011
Transition to Zen has been horrible. Sales agent sold me the wrong product, credit card charged, order cancelled, credit card charge not reversed, I was not notified of the cancellation. Only by checking on web site did I discover the problem. Efforts to recover included changing me over to Zen before making sure I had the required router in hand. Indeed, today is the day and the router is 'in the mail' but not here. Friday - no Internet nor broadband no phone service for the coming weekend, but that seems not to matter to Zen Internet. They have another unsatisfied customer.
written by on 03/08/2010
I thought Zen internet was supposed to be quite good but in fact turned out to be quite average. Slow connections, poor customer service (being in a que for 43 minutes is not my idea of fun and after all that told to re-boot my equipment). Cpanel which was slow and unreliable, kept submitting information only for it not to take. One good thing about Zen cpanel was the option to cancel my service. Good call and funny old thing it worked. Now with BT, half the price and a much better service. Had to make a support call at 7pm and was through to a support person in less than a minute. Get in!
written by on 06/02/2010
Disgusting service - the first sign of an unusual problem and their technical support talks nonsense and then does nothing - they don't even respond to e-mails and I have now had to threaten legal action.
The sign of truly good customer service is being able to deal with the unexpected and difficult problems and Zen have demonstrated a total inability to do that.
written by joepeters2001 on 02/02/2010
Zen Internet is over-hyped listen if you like your being line dropped time and time again then zen internet is for you! overpriced and overrated and all these magazine that praise this ISP up should be ashamed of themselves I have had 2.4 years as a customer and I can't take anymore there c panel is so bad it drops every evening.
Hey then you get a simply question to ask the support team, oh sorry we can't help with that? duh!! I been with BT Hub since and no-more problems, less cost £24.99 (Unlimited WIFI) and not capped like zen internet. stay away from zen if you want a decent broadband use BT.
They supply the line and they are GOD when it comes to broadband and if you think the grass is greener elsewhere you are so wrong!! don't be taken in by Zen internet look at the disappointing reviews!!! yes all good for a few months or for the newbees with zen, then all hell breaks out, Oh if you think they will speed things up and get your internet back on! don't kid yourself.
Nobody can beat, BT broadband as much as you think your getting a better deal, I hate to say BT is better in fact it kills me to admit it. I ain't no lover of BT and never have, but the fact is, BT is tthe only way forward when it comes to broadband.
when things go wrong, you have to wait for communication to go through a third party before its sorted, if your with them directly and there a problem, then your get it sorted within 1 hour!!
So remember don't be a smarty and listen too all these compare broadband idiots. listen to a wise person that have tried them all and always returned to BT with my tail between my legs.
written by on 02/02/2010
I have been a Zen internet customer for two years now, and the expensive service isn't all what it is cracked upto be, when you use your monthly allowance don't depend on the buy more GB Usage, as there wizard start up program is as bad as zen gets, as its never worked for me, its useless and zen has left me in a right mess this month, when I couldn't buy more usuage time, I had to buy expensive BT Openzone pass to get on wireless at home.
There support service is rubbish, the lines keep dropping and blame BT it drops all the time and I'm fed up of complaining. So Zen your service is cr*p!
Jamie Phillips
written by on 06/11/2009
My thoughts on Zen 8000 Lite.I joined Zen after experiencing Tiscali's Superslow broadband (1Mb-0.06Mb,generally about 0.2Mb).My estimated maximum speed was 1Mb,and according to Zen I would always get the maximum speed my line would support.I started on 0.5Mb,which then fell to 0.13.Rang the 'Helpline',they offered no useful help.Sometime later rang again,no joy,He did say 0.13 was"A bit slow",by my line data I ought to get 1 to 1.5 Mb.I said Tiscali could adjust the speed when pushed.He said"That's interesting".Sometime during the conversation he said,to my astonishment"We have no control over speed!"This means any estimates or promises Zen make about speed are meaningless.I think"We will always give you the max.speed your line will support" possibly means"You will always get the minimum speed BT can get away with".If speed is your problem AVOID ZEN,it seems to me that if you buy Zen broadband you are just buying BT broadband through a profit making middleman.I found the only fast thing about Zen is the speed they take your money. Mr.Grumpy,Herts.
written by adrian arbib on 03/06/2009
Zen Internet are appalling . In the space of one week their service has stopped twice for the entire day. ie cant send or collect emails. I'm paying a fortune for the service around £500 /year and it would appear that the notion of compensation, sorry or a possible fix time is not even a consideration =- they've been relatively good 'til now - i've been with them 3 years but it would appear they are now unable to cope.
written by purlfrost on 09/03/2009
Zen Internet is great when it works. C panel goes down too often for my liking. My site is then off line and so is my business. it seems to happen every 3 to 4 months. As a business, I can't afford this type of service. Just not good enough.
written by chrismj on 05/01/2009
Poor quality of hardware. Poor knowledge levels at technical support. Lack of English speaking tech support (only speak computerease, which I dont and they seem un willing to translate to plain English). So far over 4 hours on phone and no further on. Dreadfull for an award winner!
written by sadgrove on 08/09/2008
I'm feeling really let down by Zen. For the last four days, my business has had no broadband, and Zen hasn't managed to resolve the problem. Zen's Technical Support refuses to get involved, saying that it's BT's problem. BT, meanwhile, says 'It's a problem caused by your broadband supplier, and we've notified them'. I've asked Zen to at least call BT and discuss it with them. But so far I've had no success.
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Ggrimer's Comment
Written on: 16/10/2012
I was with Zen for 10 years as a home broadband customer, I found their customer service was the best of any corporation I dealt with. Not sure about the business customer service because I've never dealt with them. Find it difficult to understand how they could be so excellent at home CS and so poor at business.