Best customer service I've ever experienced.
I can't rate this company highly enough. I'll provide some details of my experience and that should reassure any potential customers.
I was originally with Vodafone. My broadband connection was slow and intermittent. They took months to respond and take action. Even then, they failed to resolve the problems with my connection.
I switched to Virgin. At first everything was good, but the connection got worse and worse during lockdown. It appears that their core network is completely oversubscribed (maybe due to lockdown) and they don't run any QoS. This meant that I was experiencing a ping that, at times, topped out at over a second when trying to game. It was so bad that I escalated the complaint to arbitration and was allowed to terminate my contract without incurring penalties.
I switched to Gaming Broadband and, from the start, these guys have been amazing. I had a lengthy chat with the company's founder before I signed up (I think he may have mistaken me for a journalist, but he certainly took the time to explain their setup and ethos). My BT Wholesale line was experiencing some *minor* issues during peak periods. I flagged this up to GamingBroadband and they paid for BT Openreach to install an additional line at my home. This new line was routed via another supplier and I was given the opportunity to test both the original and new lines to see which performed better. My testing shows the new line to have lower latency, almost zero ping deviation and no congestion/contention. I am experiencing great hit detection and zero lag while gaming.
These guys really are the business and I'll certainly be sticking with them in the future. I'm also spreading the word to my friends.
It's a shame that so many people are sucked in by Virgin's advertised bandwidth speeds and assume that translates to 'great for gaming'. My Wireshark captures for Call of Duty show that the actual gaming data is only a few kilobytes per second. The quality of the service (low ping, zero packet loss and minimal jitter) is far more important than a circuit that provides 350Mbps of bandwidth, but erratic ping and jitter.
They're not the cheapest broadband supplier but, if you actually want a decent connection, it's worth paying the minimal premium compared to the bigger suppliers. If you experience gaming related problems with BT, Virgin, Vodafone, TalkTalk, Plusnet, etc, do you honestly think they'll lift a finger to actually fix it or simply say you're receiving the minimum guaranteed speed?
14 June 2021
Unprompted review