Bulldog sorry for poor service

Bulldog has suspended sign-up to some of its broadband packages and apologised to customers over a fall in standards.

Some Bulldog customers with a package based on BT's IPStream wholesale product have experienced slow connection speeds, with this in turn causing a backlog of complaints with the ISP's customer service team.

In a lengthy statement on its website, Bulldog has blamed the problems on an “administrative error" that meant extra network capacity was not in place. According to Bulldog, it placed orders with BT to double network capacity several months ago but the error meant this additional capacity will not be in place until 4 October.

Bulldog said: “Bulldog strives to provide high-speed and secure services to all of its customers. This focus on high speed and high quality has meant that the numbers of people choosing Bulldog have grown very rapidly in recent months."

"Recently that has meant that all aspects of our customer service have fallen well below the standards you and we demand. We share our customers’ frustration at the difficulties in reaching us, and would like to apologise."

Bulldog said it has trebled its customer service and technical support teams over the last two months and "suspended provisioning" of new customers with IPStream-based services until the new capacity is in place.

Rival ISP Wanadoo has also suffered from demand for its high-speed internet services. Some customers have been forced to wait before they enjoy their new 1Mbps connection.

A spokeswoman for Wanadoo said: "There has been great demand for the new 1Mb product. In some cases this has resulted in longer connection times being necessary - this is limited to isolated incidents, and customers are advised of dates on a case by case basis."