%$*&!!)^%$ Talktalk

[Cornish Jack]

Not me, but a mate was so foolish as to be beguiled by Talktalk's hype and signed up for their business deal. Many delays later the broadband connection was established. It works fine, in that he can open up the Talktalk home page but cannot logon. The username/password is rejected every time. Attempting to make telephone voice contact has, so far, meant over 4 hours listening to mindless computer-generated noise and being cut off after about 45 mins, or so. The auto phone log-in doesn't recognise his telephone number and terminates at that point.
On the one occasion that we managed to speak to a real person, they could find no record of the account details which Talktalk issued and would go no further. Decided to give up and go to Waitrose (''Which'' recommended) but can't do that because they need the MAC and that can't be supplied as Talktalk say there is no account:ugh::ugh:
Effectively he has become a 'non-person' and I have run out of (legal) suggestions. Any solutions, anyone???
TIA

[Duckbutt]

Sorry, can't help with the immediate problem but it may be of interest to you that Waitrose broadband is provided by the Brightview group who are currently in the preliminary stages of selling out to BT.

[BLUE SKY THINKER]

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/images/header/ofcom_logo.gif

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/
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Sounds a bit boring I know, but they've done quite well on one or two ISP related issues lately.
[See: 'Complain' icon link]


http://www.btwholesale.com/content/framework/skins/bt_wholesale/images/BT_wholesale_logo.gif
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In addition, BT Wholesale should be able to confirm to you who has a tag on the line (as obviously Talk Talk need convincing!). See here (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consumeradvice/internet/customer_service/tagonline/), para 4: 0800 169 0934 (maybe able to give you some general advice also on the situation?).

[PPRuNe Pop]

TalkTalk is not a bad service!

AFTER..........you have spent inordinate amounts of time trying to get the service you paid for up and running. It was nothing short of diabolical. You get people who cannot put a group of English words together AND who cannot understand what YOU are saying. These centres are in India, Pakistan and South Africa. The latter is the best one. In the UK the centres are in London, Liverpool and Scotland (town not known) and if you write personally to Charles Dunstone he is protected by a ring of people behind which he sits and counts his money. TalkTalk are an unmitigated PR disaster and I am prepared to back it up.

However, having said that, and after daily complaints and showing my annoyance and insisting that the person I got through to, who I could not understand, stayed with my call to ensure that it was transferred to the 'right' person. That worked!

I joined TT on 6th January this year. It took weeks of calls and complaints, 32 of them, before I got the service I wanted. Since the middle of March I have had no reason to call them because the service is now what they were offering. It is near perfect and I am happy - NOW!

The 'system' TT use to provide a service to their customers is flawed, unbelievably flawed, and a 12 year old would be able to see it. But they dug a hole which is in India and other countries and there is the basic problem.

But for £20.99 per month I get all my International calls to OZ, USA, Canada and NZ for free. I can call all of the countries that are in the EU for free and on average I get a download speed of 5.8mb also for free. All day every day. I am saving on my previous ISP (Pipex) provider and BT over £380 a year. The bonus is that I don't have a single link to BT. That is worth a lot!

So......if can you stomach the aggravation for a few weeks (but you never know, you might be lucky) then you will have a good service

[Cornish Jack]

BST
Thank you for those links. Will give them a whirl. There is no doubt about the line 'ownership'; we have the notification letters from TT telling us that broadband is now active and giving the username and password. Unfortunately, they didn't inform themselves :mad:
PPruNe Pop - How did you mange to make contact with anyone? I have, once, but the person on the other end was almost unintelligible and, when I eventually managed to translate what she was saying, she knew NOTHING of any use.
Duckbutt - that transfer to BT sounds like very bad news.... Waitrose were (last week) classed as the best UK broadband provider, by 'Which?' magazine. I would suspect that BT were very little better than TalkTalk:{

[PPRuNe Pop]

Their most common Number is:

0870 444 1820 (0870 to TT is NOT a premium number it is free)

Faults are 0800 049 5050 but you have to insist that you get attention.

Other Nos:

0877 0870 870

0870 168 0870

Also, you can Google 'say no to 0870' - register and you will get any amount of numbers. But............TT are clever.......they still know who is ringing what number but it is possible to to someone direct.

Btw! The worst news I heard was that TT had linked with AOL but that has not proved to be a problem - yet! ;)

You will benefit in the end.

PPP

[Cornish Jack]

Thanks for that. PPP
Have spent most of this afternoon trying many and varied numbers, most of which offered repeated automated apologies and computer-generated noise. two eventually answered, the first one actually recognising that we did have an account and that he would put me on hold while he went to "drag a technical rep to the phone" ... ERROR!!! after 20 seconds the line reverted to idiot noise and then the "select from the following options" spiel. Some temper losses later I managed to find another live human (maybe!) who found the account details but couldn't help with the technical problems and would put in a callback request for us, which would produce a response "very quickly" I have made a note of the reference number but it is filed with my letters to Father Xmas and the Tooth Fairy:mad:
Should my cynicism be proved misplaced, I shall report back ... but don't hold your (collective) breaths. How can these toe-rags be allowed to set up such breathtakingly incompetent so-called 'businesses' ????
Exit left in high (and low) dudgeon:mad::mad::mad:

[under_exposed]

Watch out if you have problems with a line with talktalk. I almost joined them until I descovered that if there is a need for an engineer to visit it is £55 plus vat for call out and £60 plus vat per hour or part, minimun 1 hour so it is at leat £135 if anything goes wrong!

[bladewashout]

I used to have 5 lines with One Tel. Then they were bought out by Talk talk.

I now have no services with Talk Talk and would never, ever, use carphone warehouse (who own them) for any business or residential services. Their customer services is truly awful, and they fully deserve to be deserted by their customers and go down.

We now use BT for the line rental and buy the call packages in: we are also moving to SIP (Voice-over-IP) trunk lines instead of analogue lines, which work over the broadband link.

My opinion: don't touch Talk Talk with a barge pole!

BW

[Cornish Jack]

The latest in this particular saga is that my mate went to BT and arranged to transfer to them for both line and broadband. Not, perhaps, the best move (frying pan/fire???) but we shall see. Interesting phone call from Talktalk billing asking why their bill hadn't been settled. They were told that it would NOT be settled and that the account had been cancelled. We shall see what results.:p:E