1. There are many types of Openreach engineer: flat roof trained, ladder trained, underground trained and even underwater trained.

2. PhantomR1982 is great. He’s our top community member, and has spent more than 48 hours reading and replying to everyone.

3. Dogs need support too. Oliver on customer service spoke to a customer's dog. It was a ruff call…

4. There are many reasons why internet goes down. For example, a driver in Brixton (London) knocked over a green cabinet, which wasn't great for some of you!

5. Cuckoo-themed drinks are available. Dan, our Head of Tech, managed to grab this cocktail while out and about (in the days when it was still possible to grab a cocktail while out and about).

We received our 100th customer review on Trustpilot, which made us happy. And it was a 5-star one, which made us even happier.

It was Ollie’s birthday last week, and we thought you might appreciate this celebratory poem written for him by Alex. It doesn’t necessarily follow a recognised rhyming pattern, but it’s clear where his true expertise lies: the emojis are on point.

We need your advice to help name our broadband deal. We only have one, so haven't named it yet!

‘Simple broadband, for good’ is our current frontrunner. But we thought that you, as people who actually use our broadband, would be able to come up with something better.

Here are the rules:
• Suggested deal names must be 30 characters or less
• Submit your entry either on the community or by replying to this email
• As many entries per person as you fancy
• Our favourite will be immortalised on price comparison sites and many other places
• And the top 3 (in our opinion!) will each receive a Cuckoo T-shirt
• The deadline is 22 November

Monthly newsletter - November 2020

We’ve reached November! Here's 5 things we've learnt, a really nice review, a little poem and a mini-competition...

It's turning a bit grey and cold outside, but on the plus side Pumpkin Lattes are back. Welcome to the first instalment of the shiny new Cuckoo newsletter, a monthly update on what's going on at Cuckoo HQ.

We’re asking the government to cut the broadband tax because, especially at the moment, broadband is a necessity. And it makes up 20% of your monthly bill!

Here’s a little snippet of what we’ve been saying to the press:

“…we are taxed more on broadband than any other utility, like energy or water. And this is causing real problems in our society. 27% of the poorest households in the UK don't have an internet connection. Compare that to 3% of the richest. It's even worse when you look at the regional disparity. Relative to average incomes, the poorest households in the north spend three times as much as Londoners on broadband.

The government should cut the broadband tax. At Cuckoo, we promise to pass on the cut to our customers in full...”

You no doubt now want to see a few articles with this quote in, so here you go: City AM, The Sun, The Express, and our own campaign page.

(Tip: if you want to see a large picture of a cat on a computer, then we highly recommend that first link.)

The person who persevered and found their router despite the fact it was delivered into their barbeque.

This month we welcome 2 more to our full time team. Tabatha joins us heading up growth and our technology team increases to 3 with Alex F starting last week.

Here's a quick intro to Insung, our Front-End Developer (he's the one in the middle)

Fun fact about yourself: I once had to sign the UK official secrets act

Top bird pun: one bird can't make a pun, but toucan

Biggest achievement this month: swimming 10m without stopping

In the first instalment of our newsletter, we have an update on our broadband tax campaign, an unexpected barbeque router delivery, and an intro to Insung, one of our developers.

Monthly newsletter - October 2020

14 is also the number of lines in a sonnet, the number of legs a woodlouse has, and the maximum number of clubs you can have in a golf bag. So you could say that today is the perfect day to write a sonnet about woodlice playing golf.

But we also think it’s the perfect day to find out about an exciting new feature that was launched last week:

We’re sure the key question on your mind of late has been: ‘How can I stay with Cuckoo if I move home?’. Very excitingly, the answer is now as simple as clicking the ‘I’m moving home’ button in your My Account.

You’ll be asked where you’re moving and when, and we’ll then do the legwork to ensure you have working internet in your shiny new home on the day you move in.

All you’ll have to do is remember to take your router with you. (This is harder than it sounds, as Tommy can attest.)

And importantly, this is free for you. We do have to pay a connection cost for your new home, but as a thank you for staying with us, this cost is on us 🍻

There was a bug in the payment step of our sign-up flow for a short time this month.

While this was not ideal, we did particularly enjoy this subject line:

We’re pleased to say we managed to take their money eventually, and they’re now a part of the flock.

And sorry if you were affected: bugs happen, but we’re doing our best to make sure that they happen as infrequently as possible!

As the person responsible for making the tech bit of the moving home flow happen, we thought Alex Fenton - Senior Software Engineer - was a good person to intro you to this month. (We only made it to a team of 7 before getting a duplicate first name…)

Fun fact about yourself: I once met one of the Chuckle Brothers in a Garden Centre

Top bird pun: Did you hear the one about the crow and the telephone pole? He wanted to make a long distance caw

Biggest achievement this month: definitely running another 10K! Got some Nike trainers on Cyber Monday and I turned into Sir Mo Farah

The deal name ideas some of you sent in after last month’s newsletter were eggs-cellent. An exhilarating display of bird-related wordplay.

The top 3 names - in no particular order - are:

Simple Broadband - our official deal name on comparison sites!

And we’d also like to give an honourable mention to ‘Chick’.

The T-shirts will be winging their way towards you shortly.

An exciting new feature has just launched: Cuckoo can now move home with you! We also intro you to another member of the team, and ... announce our competition winner 🏅

Monthly newsletter - December 2020

Two unexpected Cuckoo-themed events happened to round off 2020: the Cuckoo colours featured in Pantone’s colours of 2021 (we might have been overly excited by this) and there was even a Cuckoo-y Google doodle.

In 2020, you all helped to connect people in need to the internet with 1 percent of each of your monthly bills going to Cuckoo Compass - currently supporting Jangala. So thank you!!

In 2021, we want to do more. So now each time you refer a friend to Cuckoo, we’ll donate £5 to Cuckoo Compass on your behalf.

We’ve described our broadband as simple from the beginning. Because our aim is to make it simple for everyone to get connected.

And last month, more than 10% of our Trustpilot reviews actually called this out! (We may or may not be regularly checking in on this…)

Monthly newsletter - November 2020

5 things we’ve learnt since launch

Best customer moment

Team spotlight

A call for help!

More from Cuckoo

Monthly newsletter - October 2020

Monthly newsletter - December 2020

Monthly newsletter - January 2021

How fast can you go?