UK Online
Average Customer Rating:
Lite
- 2Mbps (40 times faster than a dial-up connection)
- Unlimited downloads
- £25 connection fee
- Cost of Wireless Router £49.99
- £14.99 a month
- Call 0800 053 2222 for 24 hour technical support.
- As part of its service, UK Online offers:
- 10 email addresses
- Free spam email protection
- 24 hour technical support
- Personal web space
- Free parental control
Pro
- 8Mbps (160 times faster than a dial-up connection)
- Unlimited downloads
- £25 connection fee
- Cost of Wireless Router £49.99
- £19.99 a month
- Call 0800 053 2222 for 24 hour technical support.
- As part of its service, UK Online offers:
- 10 email addresses
- Free spam email protection
- 24 hour technical support
- Personal web space
- Free parental control
Premier
- 16Mbps (320 times faster than a dial-up connection)
- Unlimited downloads
- £25 connection fee
- Cost of Wireless Router for £49.99
- £24.99 a month
- Call 0800 053 2222 for 24 hour technical support.
- As part of its service, UK Online offers:
- 10 email addresses
- Free spam email protection
- 24 hour technical support
- Personal web space
- Free parental control
Provider Information
- UK Online is an Internet service provider offering a range of dial-up and broadband services across the UK.
- The company was founded in 1994.
- They use Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) to provide top speeds of 22Mbps, this is available to more than 4.4 million homes in the UK.
I used ukonline for 5 months no problem, then just like others, I could not get a dsl connection for days on end. Calling ukonline was a waste of time, they blamed BT, my modem, the weather-anything but their lousy, pathetic service. Luckily, they altered their contract from unlimited and I got out fast.
You have been warned.
I have been using UKOnline 8mbps service for over a year with no probs whatsoever. I live in London, not sure if that has any relevance.
I had a very poor experience with UKOnline.
They connected my line after 10 days waiting. The service worked for 7 days and then it broke. I called them on their expensive 0870 telephone number. I was on hold for 71 minutes before I hung up. I tried again the next day and spoke to someone after 30 minutes on hold. They said the fault was with my equipment. I told them it was not and that I had checked all possibilities.
Eventually, they realised the fault was with their equipment. Everybody in my local exchange that used UKOnline had been cut-off. It took them 12 days to fix the problem. I spent a fortune calling them on their 0870 number. They broke many promises that it would be fixed ‘tomorrow’.
A big problem with UKOnline is that they install their own equipment in the local exchange, whereas most providers use the equipment that BT already have there.
I strongly discourage you from using UKOnline if service is of any importance to you.
A lot of hate for UK Online then? I’ve been with them for 2 years – I joined them after my previous ISP (Tiscali… eughhhh) restricted my speed to that of carrier pigeons because of heavy downloading. I’ve never had a single obvious problem with them. The internet seems to disappear for an hour or so every few months, but I’m not sure if it isn’t my router just playing up. I’m planning to move house and I’m seeing if they can provide a decent speed there as well.
When it works it is OK; I get the £9.99/month service which works all right mostly. BUT if you have to phone them it’s a total nightmare. The following points from my experience:
- Call them first thing in the morning when they open if you can; just before 8am I got through immediately. Call at 9.30 and you will be on hold for 40 minutes listening to the same 15 or so bars of Beethoven piano concerto again and again and again and again, unless they have changed it (enough to drive anyone insane).
- The guys in Belfast (Bear with me) will talk for ages but may not be able to sort your issues out. Insist they give you a ticket ID and transfer you to a member of the Tier 3 senior support team in Shepton Mallet, they are the ones who should be able to help you. Insist!
- I was eventually given a customer services no. 0800 053 3223, not sure if it still works.
- They will say in the Belfast office they cannot call you back BUT I did get one phone call back when I had got really angry with them, so it must be possible. Insist!!
- Their Code of Practice, for your information, states: "We aim to reply to complaints via email within 48 hours and complaints by letter within 10 working days. Of course you are more than welcome to email us on customer.services@ukonline.net or give us a call on 0800 053 2222." Good luck. It took me a month, endless waiting on the phone with that bloody music, and a Recorded Delivery letter to sort out my problems; and I lost 2 years’ worth of work emails in the process. I only stay with them because it is cheap when it is working…
Been with them for around 6 months after Pipex. Good sales people and most of their tech support people execept one who obviously did not speak English as a first language – honestly I have no wish to be discriminatory but if they cannot understand me (Queen’s English) or I them then they should damn well not be on a telephone to customers.
Connection has been very reliable and on the Pro 8 service download speeds are excellent. Email though seems problematic and often requires repeat attempts to get connected – hell my old Australian ISP is quicker! They do not provide access to Newsgroups.
All in all a reasonable service particularly as the support phone line is free 0800. Will stick with them for the contract year but have to say that I will read the reviews and shop around again after that
As a UK online customer for over 12mths, my findings are as follows: firstly the service – it does as it says on the tin. No I’m not an employee, I’m connected via their LLU from my local exchange, I get over 90% of the advertised speeds (on 8mb pro package) 24/7, they do not throttle, port block p2p, fast path too if you are a online gamer. No connection fee, but there is a mandatory router purchase of £49.99, plus apart from the occasional bt line fault it never drops out etc. 99.95 reliable
Word of warning for upgraders who are already with UK Online. I upgraded from a 2Mbps to 8Mbps service recently as 2Mbps seemed to be getting slower. I now average around 100kbps, about 1.25% of the advertised up to speed. I tried to back out using the 10 day cooling off period rules but was told that those rules only applied to new customers and not to existing ones signing new contracts. Not sure of the legalities of that, but UK Online have been so obstructive and awkward in this that I’ve decided not to even bother with the MAC code mullarkey and have ditched them for Virgin Media, who even at peak times are giving me 15Mbps on their 20Mbps deal, with the full 20 at other times. Goodbye UK Online and good riddance.
I live in Shenley – Milton Keynes and have been a customer for over 4 years I pay for the fast speed and my router connects at 117638kbps downstream and my upstream is 764kbps a very fast and reliable service through a LLU only 1 day in four years I couldn’t connect!
Well I have stayed with them up to now but there has recently been a fall off in speed and particularly after 5pm up to midnight when iPlayer and youtube video is hopeless. Now seriously looking to change. One other annoyance was an outage for a period of days which they claimed was not their problem and had me re-enter all my router settings when nothing had changed at my end – support may be a free call but they aren’t up to much and not a native English speaker which makes the experience less than wonderful. Used to be good but no more.