White label broadband scores big for satisfaction

Brightview ISPs dominate Watchdog survey

A BBC satisfaction survey has fingered white label provider Brightview as the UK's most customer-friendly broadband outfit.

Brightview is behind three of the top four ISPs in the Watchdog survey, which polled 50,000 viewers. More than 90 per cent of Waitrose and Madasafish customers were satisfied or very satisfied by their Brightview-run service. The victorious Brightview brand Global cheered an impressive 95 per cent.

Brightview CEO David Laurie said: "The results clearly prove that we are doing a great job for them. Good customer service means treating our users with respect by being honest and transparent and reacting quickly and effectively when anything does go wrong."

The results confirm a run of good form for Brightview. In August a similar Which? survey also placed Global and Waitrose at the head of the pack.

The final spot in the Watchdog top four was claimed by Zen Broadband, which also did well last year.

Of the dominant players, Telewest came top, satisfying 85 per cent of respondents. The BBC said the survey was carried out too soon after the Virgin Media launch to count NTL, Virgin and Telewest results together. BT, meanwhile, delivered a mediocre lower mid-table 64 per cent satisfaction rating.

Defunct small fry Biscit unsurprisingly came bottom. Even before its collapse last week, subscribers had endured a series of outages and billing cock-ups.

Away from that debacle, however, the survey highlighted the better customer service often enjoyed by subscribers to the smaller ISPs which are being rapidly subsumed by the big firms.

Orange's third bottom showing demonstrated this amply. It continued to stutter in its bid to offer packaged communications, as its latest technical glitch this week showed. It was only marginally behind TalkTalk, which still seems to be struggling to regain goodwill after incurring consumer wrath with its "free" offer and widespread connection delays endured by new subscribers.

The full results of the survey are here. ®