This was kicked off when I was asked to recommend a broadband service for someone. Their use would be low and they needed cheap. Wasn’t that interested in download caps or speed (so I don’t really mention it below), and I presume they will be with the service for at least 12 months (so if a provider offers free connection/signup if you stay with them that long I consider it free). Fine, I thought they might be able to get a deal for £11.

The first two adsl providers I tried were freedom2surf (a well regarded isp bought by pipex a few years a go) and uk online (the consumer operation of easynet, generally well regarded, and now – the only downside – owned by Murdoch).

• Freedom2surf – £13.99 – need to buy equipment, no signup fee, but still a little pricey.
• UK Online – £9.99 a month -need to buy equipment and £25 fee, but still good value. However, turns out that it only applies for those exchanges they have their own equipment in, the price was actually ~£19.99. So no good.
• Tesco was meant to be cheap – Strangely their servers return a ‘403 fobidden’ error message when I tried to access the page linked to here from my office PC (and others on campus). The same thing happened a year a go when I tried, I emailed them at the time but just got a dumb reply. Why would they disallow access to that page from the University of Sussex campus? The only thing I can think of it perhaps because we are the University of SuSEX?!). Anyway, their cheapest deal is £13.97, free signup and connection, so could be an option.
• Bulldog (also owned by Pipex) – They had a bad reputation a few years a go, but thought it was worth the risk especially when it was £9.99 a month and a free modem. However, again, turns out this requires their own equipment in the exchange, once it was clear that this was not the case for the exchange in question we were redirected to the pipex homepage…
• Pipex – First glance this again looks good, £9.99 and no obvious ‘6 months only’, each option allows you to add a telephone package on top for a set price. However what isn’t clear at all is that you can only get that price if you take the telephone package as well. It is then clear that it is £14.99, not impressed.
• I normally ignore the big providers, they are generally high priced, and how poor customer service. BT in particular seems to play on its name and the fact that people presume that as they have a BT line a BT broadband account would be best (of course the reason most people have a BT line is that they dragged their heals for years on local-loop unbundling – allowing others to provide phone services to customers – and then forcing everyone to subscribe to a free calls package and not allowing you to just subscribe for line rental, what was OFCOM doing!?). Anyway, perhaps I was being unfair and should give them a look.
• BT – The homepage currently shows that broadband £8.95 a month, currently no asterisk or footnote, no small print, that’s all it says. However it quickly turns out that their cheapest deal is £17.99 a month (the price above is just for a few months). It is so frustrating that so many people sign up with BT because they get their phone rental (and compulsory monopoly-like competition-destroying calls package) with them. No thanks.
• Tiscai – never heard good things about them, cheapest price is £14.99.
• Freesever Wanadoo Orange – again £14.99
• Finally I remembers a friend used to use Plusnet – they seemed to offer a package for £9.99 – as of yet i can’t see any reasons why this is not true (haven’t found any mention of requirements of their equipment in the exchange etc). They also seem like an alright company.

So, in conclusion I think I shall reccommend Plusnet. Failing that, Tesco or Freedom2surf. Oh and BT are still crap, which makes me happy that I have not paid them a penny in the last few years (no phone line and I use NTL Virgin Media for broadband). Oh and the name of this post… Just about every ISP advertised a price that was not available to us for various reasons and many had hidden extras, rip off.