Bulldog: Problems are over. Users: No they're not

...in no phone or Internet service was fixed in seven days. I've not received a bill in three months, though."

But Santry's contentment was unusual in our straw poll. Another reader, who also requested anonymity, rated the business broadband service as pretty poor: "On occasion (up to several times an hour) the connection will be lost for up to 10 minutes. Last week they actually gave up guaranteeing a service. That they are not technically competent enough to make a simple 4Mbps ADSL line work reliably given six months to resolve issues never ceases to baffle me."

Another another reader, again talking to ZDNet UK on condition of anonymity, found it hard to put in writing his dissatisfaction with Bulldog. But he tried. "My frustration is so great that it causes me to become almost neurotic..." the reader wrote. "I have called the customer help line many, many times and when I do get through after up to an hour of waiting I always get told that a technical support person will call back, which they never do. Emails to the customer service centre generate an automated response with a ticket number and a message that someone will call, again they never do... I'm currently trying to get the service disconnected so I can go back to BT."

Yet another reader speaking anonymously has gone further. "I have left Bulldog in frustration at having no assistance with my problem of having no phone line or Internet for some weeks…" he wrote. But like Ian Santry, this reader has still to receive a bill, leaving him wondering whether he will be billed for the period where he was signed up to the service but not able to access it.

Others who have left Bulldog are still experiencing problems. When Brendan Smee cancelled his service he was told he had to give 30 days notice, which he felt was fair enough. But even though he has said he is happy to pay for the 30 days, he has since moved out and new residents have moved in, "so the new tenants cannot get a phone connected and can still use my service to make calls." Smee has since received a bill charging him for a period after the disconnection date. "Bulldog should be stripped of their licence," he said. "The company is not fit to operate and satisfy customer needs."

Geoff Henshall was one of the happy users, who said that over the past couple of months he has seen improvements with Bulldog's Internet service as well as with its customer and technical support service. "Most calls are picked up within a minute or so, as opposed to an hour or never when I first joined," he said. "So if I was to rate Bulldog it would be minus five stars for the first three months and four out of five stars now, a big improvement."

But for Ravinder Gill, the experience was very different: "After six months of silence, Bulldog finally sent a network operations engineer down to my house," said Gill. "He conducted a series of tests, and finally admitted that the problem lay in the Bulldog ATM network that serves my local exchange (Southall). After three weeks of further investigation they finally delivered the 8Mbps service that I should have received in the first place. This also fixed the poor speed problem for all 200+ users for the South Harrow and Southall exchanges — they obviously weren't as vocal as me!"

After being told he would get compensation for the unacceptable level of service he received during that six months, he is still waiting. However, Gill did have a good word for the Bulldog engineers: "The customer services and billing departments are still appalling," he said. "But Bulldog's saviour has been the presence of one or two highly capable Bulldog engineers on ADSLGuide's forums, this is where I managed to make contact with the engineer, who pushed for a solution to the speed problems."