I’m with a small London ISP called Mailbox. For the past five years, their service has been absolutely excellent and I have really enjoyed being a customer – even when things didn’t work out, I could call up and speak to a really tech savvy support person or two. I like small ISPs because they usually care about you a little.
Mailbox recently got bought out by 186K, who have immediately closed down the London office (making various cool people redundant in the process). Last night, I had another dropout in my ADSL (completely unexplained, no logs on their site, no known infrastructure issue but my Linux box was unable to establish a ppp connection over an ATM circuit). I tried calling them today but just got through to a silly phone system and email has been unreliable too. I’ll speak to them on Monday, but I’m not a happy bunny. ADSL Guide surveys show that I’m not alone in thinking things have gotten worse.
Looks like I might be in the market for a new ADSL provider. I’m thinking of going with Blackcat (they’re the most competent people I know who run a full time ADSL service for a living), in which case I’ll have to sink a few hundred GBP in running two parallel services and in having the second ADSL connection installed while things are moved over. It’s just plain annoying. I feel bad for the guys at 186K too because they can’t enjoy having to put up with the upset people I’ve spoken to IRC about the Mailbox situation.
UPDATE: strike two! ADSL went down again the next night for a period of time. Three strikes and I think Mailbox are outta here.
Jon.
