Lothian Broadband Reviews 236

Wow, where to begin. These guys are absolutely incompetent. Had our wifi cable cut by our gardener. A simple repair required. Called to advise of the urgency as we work from home. Passed through department after department, to clueless after clueless. Given the same details over and over. They sent an appointment out to us where no one showed up, no explanation. But worse yet, they can’t even see the email in their own system?! That THEY sent… this seems like a data protection issue. They seem utterly disorganised and incapable of running a business. No one available over the weekend either. Three days without wifi now and no explanation or even a clue when or if someone is turning up to fix it?! Shocking customer service. Avoid if you can.

Absolutely awful service. The worst. Outages all the time, extremely unreliable broadband service. Highly disappointing. I will never recommend this broadband service, incompetent and quite frankly useless.

Installation day outstanding ... 2 super polite friendl instructive intelligent engineers Conor and Ryan .. ( kindly removed outdoor shoes on this muddy rainy day before indoor work) .. took their time to assess placement for junction box and router for tidiness and easy access for outside connection . Good team work and for myself a supportive and good start to new service supplier.

On the 2tb package but I've yet to see over 1tb speed constantly goes below 500mb customer service is non existent can never get them on the phone

Calum, Ryan and Mark did a great job. Arrived promptly and we are really happy with the excellent service.

Lothian Broadband. What has happened to this company? I am one of their original customers via the dish on Traprain. After pretty shonky connectivity in recent weeks, we have now had no internet at all since Sunday night. For two days, after I have spent hours on the phone with their call centre, performing dozens of resets (essentially being told to log off and on again) they now say there’s nothing they can do. Nobody they can escalate to, nobody senior in technical support, major language barriers, no access to customer service, unable to say when someone might get in touch to try to schedule an engineer visit, no way to contact engineers. Hopeless. Lothian Broadband This is hot on the heels of the data breach on my account in the summer. Ref 30082.

Appreciated the communications from Lothian Broadband team ahead of installation. On the day, the Installation team (Callum & Ryan) were excellent- knowledgeable, courteous and left no trace…apart from amazing connectivity! Thank you!

Ryan and Callum were amazing. Dug the wire really neatly, checked connectivity, set up TV. Delighted and very grateful to be online! Thanks

I have been having serious trouble with my fixed wireless broadband since December. In fact the service was virtually unusable for streaming TV and for Zoom calls throughout the whole month. Our Christmas TV viewing was ruined. I have politely made multiple requests for a refund for December which have been simply ignored. I've lost count of the calls and emails sent which seems to go into a.black hole. Tonight has been the last straw. I've just tried to participate in an important zoom call which I've just had to abandon as the internet began as patchy and then disappeared totally.
Lothian "Broadband" seem to have abandoned the fixed wireless customers it built it's business on for more lucrative fibre contracts elsewhere.
Bland apologies don't wash, Lothian Broadband. Please fix this creaking system and please do the decent thing and refund my December payment.

Installation was on time and went without an issue. The engineer returned a week later to say they had detected a problem and wanted to fix it. I had damaged the internal cable when I moved some equipment and never noticed, very proactive of them!

I had an issue with port forwarding so I called the helpdesk. The process for fixing this issue was too laborious in my opinion. The first agent never tried to fix the issue, they just passed it to their 2nd line who called the next day to say they had received the task, confirming the issue, and would be in touch soon to resolve it. 2 days later I got a call to say it had been fixed. I think it should have been fixed on the first call and within a few minutes, not 3 days.

Other than that it's been a good service so far.

Absolutely appalling service from LB, I am now at the point where I need to call them multiple times a week to get internet out back on, at this point it is off more than it is on. If it’s not completely off then it is a good as off as the connection is absolutely abysmal. Never a resolution to why it is happening and absolutely nothing in the way of even pretending they care. Happy to collect the money LB sometimes double the money but you cannot even provide a service. Absolute disgrace of a company which was once decent. Unfortunately call centre staff try their best but the language barrier is a huge issue. Iv now been without internet for days causing myself and daughter a loss of income. Multiple calls and absolutely no answers. You have also ignored all communication for compensation for a service you clearly cannot provide.

Today was one of the coldest days of the year so far, up to -5 outside, and it was my installation day. Two cheerful men turned up on time, ready to discuss where best to place everything necessary, how to bring the cabling from the box across my drive and to the house, and where I would potentially get the best coverage from. Apart from needing boiling water to try and thaw out the ground a little, the engineers required nothing from me and allowed me to continue with my planned activities for the afternoon. Only coming to disturb me once it was all in place, working and ready for action. Choosing passwords, making sure all devices were logged in to the new broadband, and even a tricky ring device that didn't want to play wasn't left out. Speed tests in every room, full instructions on what I might or might not need to do if I found my self having issues, guidance on where the cables are if ever having work done in the garden. All things put back tidy that had to be moved. Paths swept clean, rubbish tidied away. These two gentlemen were perfect advocates for their company. Well spoken, kind, hard working, considerate to the fact I was a vulnerable and disabled adult, and knew exactly what they were doing. Ryan and Michael you are a huge credit to yourselves but also to your company and I hope you get recognised for the hard work you are putting in.. I couldn't ask for a single thing to have been better today. They were superb. Absolutely superb. And ŵhen it comes to signal. I have t had it long enough to say much... but it is already 6 times faster than my Last provider ee/bbt so I'm happy.. 😄 thank you very much .

Initial install date on Dec 11th - two technicians attended and they could not complete, but would be back in roughly 3 days. They advised me their service team would contact me to arrange another date for completion of installation.

They did not contact me, I had to chase them up and eventually managed to get someone to email a date for 11th Jan.
They never showed up and when I called asking about my appointment, surprisingly, no appointment. Asked to re-arrange for another date and was told I would receive a call/email back.
Unsurprisingly, no contact has been made to finish my installation.

By pure chance I bumped into the local Lothian broadband rep (Kyle) who sent an "urgent email" requesting an update/contact about finishing my install. He was great and I'm very aware it's not in his control.
5 days later and they've still not contacted me to arrange installation.

Quite frankly, I don't understand how companies can have willing customers who want to give them money - yet, the companies have zero customer service and are unable to provide a service.

Disappointed and hopeful that they can maybe rectify their terrible service.

Update 27/7/24
The broadband was all dealt with and sorted as eventually agreed and contacted from upper management. I would normally upgrade them to 4 stars given the initial teething problems, however, there have been times when we have been without internet connectivity. Something I've never really experienced with broadband. Maybe it'll get better with time??
You do receive occasional emails about unfortunate outages, however most of the time it's just random, sometimes it requires a hardware reset 🤷

Update 16/10/24
There are outages all the time. I've never experienced internet with connectivity problems like this - having to explain to the kids constantly the internets off again....the kids quite rightly asked if we could get internet that works all the time...imagine that.

Conner and Michael were very polite and professional today doing my installation today

Connor and David arrived on time, done a great job today. After ground being very hard with ice. Everything working perfectly. Explained and talked me through everything. Very neat and tidy.

Had Michael & Connor out this morning to install my fibre very polite efficient well mannered young men very helpful at explaining how the installation process even cleaned up and swept the floor when they had completed the job

Lothian Broadband replied to my last review as follows:

“Hi Mike, thanks for message and sorry to hear about the issues you have been experiencing. Our tech team has been trying to reach you on a number of occasions since you first emailed last week and will try and get in touch again.”

This is rather duplicitous as the facts they provide are WRONG!

I first contacted them regarding this SECOND occurrence of the same issue (markedly reduced speed) on 12 December not early Jan as claimed (previous identical issue was 8 Nov and on 16 Nov they said they had fixed it remotely Ha Ha). I copied in the Service Manager because it was a repeat occurrence of the problem. I stated in the email that there was nothing else downloading when I ran the tests and checking the routers throughput chart verified this. I also said “DO NOT PHONE ME. I WANT EMAILS!” but this has been ignored and NOT for the first time.

Other than an email saying they had sent the complaint to Tech Support I had heard nothing from 12 to 31 December at which point I emailed again.

With no reply by 4th Jan I emailed again and this time asked the Support Manager for the email address of their CEO – this has not been provided.

I emailed them again on 6th Jan to give them a link to my latest Trustpilot review and suddenly they are trying to be helpful but publicly claiming that I first contacted them on first week of Jan! I say helpful but they are phoning instead of (as requested) emailing YET AGAIN.

Isn’t it amazing how things can appear different when ALL the facts are presented?

As I have said previously, the ability of this company to communicate is laughable.

The person responsible for this team is the Support Manager. He is FAILING to make this team effective. He is failing to reply to comments and failing to provide data requested from him. Rot starts at the top. If the support teams are not effective then go figure the cause.

I am STILL waiting for the email address of the CEO!

P.S. I note that the majority of the good reviews is about the installation team and the majority of poor reviews is about the support team.

Ryan and Calum were punctual, clean work and very polite great service

Oh LB, used to be so good! Now your service is unreliable with speeds fluctuating up and down to the point of uselessness and your customer service is frankly pathetic. I know that you have moved on, attracted by the pot of government gold for fibre roll out, but you have turned away from your longstanding customers. Such a shame!

Calum and Ryan were first class.. excellent customer service and neat and tidy engineers.. definitely recomend