TALKTALK's reputation in tatters
 

Articles appear in the press about their terrible service and now I personally believe it is justified - and I have been a customer almost since its inception .


Right now! Its email service is down just as it has been since Thursday. I have not received one email - OR - have I been able to send any emails, although TT insist that they are 'getting through' its the receiving of them that is the problem. So THEY say!


I have been trying to get as much info on what to expect but their communications based in India are about as much use as the people who answer you without almost any knowledge of the English language. TT say it saves money - costs more is more likely. I got a guy called Vijay to answer my questions on a online chat thingy but that only exacerbated the problem. In fact it turned to be worse that speaking to him! TT are ruining their own business and our trust in them.


Anyway, I started the process of changing to Outlook.com and that is the most complicated thing of all. There is one security check after another - literally, which leaves it complicated. They almost admit it!


Of course there are those who will disagree. That's fine. But who is the VERY best who have a service that is reliable and steadfast? Is there one?

TalkTalk have always been diabolical. Friends of mine took a contract with them, against the advice of many other people, because they were 'the cheapest'. Invariably a bad choice, and in fact so bad that the frustration of having no service and trying to get the 'help line' to solve problems almost drove my poor friend to an early grave.

I have yet to hear anyone say anything good about TalkTalk, other than that they are 'cheap' ...... but that's not good.

I may get shot down for saying so but I know many people who have ditched Talk Talk for BT.

Well TT remain light years better than ghastly BT.

But I've said a million times before on here. Pay peanuts get monkeys.

My usual suggestions are to look at Zen or Easynet ..... But you have to be prepared to pay for the quality and knowledgeable UK call centres !

If you think being a TT customer is bad you should experience the cancellation procedure!!
Long waits to talk to their 'customer service' people. Taking a firm line on my intention to cancel resulted on either the call ending or being transferred to technical without my agreement or being sworn at.
This whole thing took many hours but the final insult was they would not let me keep my telephone number even though I had it for a number of years before I was with TT.
My advice..... Stay away from these people!!!

You might want to check out these guys? Allegedly they only serve businesses, but you can always make one up / put your name with "inc." at th end...

Demon is a Vodafone brand. Avoid accordingly.

Much like BT and Plusnet, be weary of incumbent providers milking legacy brands.

I've been with Eclipse for 12 years - absolutely no complaints at all. They are Exeter based, their tech people (no scripts used!) are also Exeter based on a standard charge phone number and really know what they are talking about. On the few occasions when I have had a slow connection - I'm miles from the exchange so slow anyway - they have sorted it efficiently and I've never felt rushed in dealing with them.

Certainly not the cheapest by any stretch of the imagination but you get what you pay for. I also have a domain name hosted by them which I only use for a more personalised email address and the transfer of that from GoDaddy to them was handled without any problems.

Edit: Having not been on their website for ages it seems that they now don't offer residential contracts but do offer a Home Office option at the same price as I'm paying for residential.

Bloody hell, just when you thought things couldn't get any worse.:ouch:

Evanelpus

Yup. I've said on here before, the fewer contracts you have with BT, the better your life will be !

Based on a lot of experience, I actively avoid all parts of the BT omnishambles (retail, wholesale and openreach) as far as possible, and thouroughly encourage others to do so so !

BT Retail in particular should be avoided like the plague, and that goes for any brands such as Plusnet that they've got their sticky fingers in !

I have one friend still with TalkTalk. She couldn't get through the labyrinth to escape, so puts up with it. She expects to move soon, and will be set free.

Our rural abode is Openreach wires or nothing. I've found them OK. When it goes wrong (and the telephone or Internet provider manages to contact Openreach - the customer can't), the team who come are knowledgeable and competent.

I've had experience of BTInternet and PlusNet. PlusNet is owned by BT, but run at "arm's length". No complaints there. I think BT has two problems: the Yahoo connection, and the script-based Indian call centre. Contacting the BT UK call centre usually gets the problem solved.

Having been in telecoms most of my life, and most of that competing with BT I think some of the views on here about hem are a bit extreme.
I use BT for phone line and high speed broadband, well the UK concept of high speed.
Generally I get a good service but I do pay £10 month for UK tech support from people who can speak English (well Geordie English) but are helpful and competent. BTs normal customer support based in India is useless and frustrating.
Perhaps it’s because I know the buttons to push I get a discount or added features on all aspects of my BT service and the only really bad thing is BT Mail which they have botched up transferring from Google.
BT are not the cheapest but not prohibitive , the problem in UK is the scandalous but typical lack of consumer focussed regulation which means companies can advertise dishonestly, spend all their promotion money on new customers and do not give a toss about existing ones unless forcibly reminded. Also unless you are a Virgin customer all ‘last mile’ network belongs to BT anyway and although through Openreach the service for fixing faults is meant to be the same irrespective of ISP you can guess what happens in subtle but important ways in practice

I have been a TalkTalk customer for many years (phone and standard Broadband). Four months ago we moved home, only just over a mile, and wanted to keep the same phone number. Initially TT said that it couldn't be done so I told them that I would change to BT. TT then agreed that it could be done and it was all set up. The move then got delayed, as they do, so I had to cancel the arrangements and then go through the whole rigmarole again which was frustrating but did work.

We moved on a Friday and would have to wait until the Monday for an Openreach engineer to come and reconnect the line. He arrived on time but warned us that it could be a day or so before everything worked. Five minutes after he left I had a phone connection and Broadband. Both BT and TT had done exactly what they promised and done it most efficiently.

Keef "and the telephone or Internet provider manages to contact Openreach - the customer can't"..... Yes you can, Try 0871 050 5318

BT Openreach for BT customers, AND the free phone number... 0800 800151

Openreach external network team, AND the free phone number.... 0800 0232023

Might help.

I'm with mixture on this.

I pay more for Zen. Sometimes I look wistfully at what other providers charge and consider moving.

But over the ten years I have been with them, they've been rock-solid. If it costs an extra fiver a week, it's money well spent.

Well, either you were extremely fortunate, have not really done that much business with BT, are wearing rose tinted spectacles, or otherwise you had some office minions dealing with BT.

I've had *A LOT* of dealings with all corners of BT, I know others who have had *A LOT* of dealings with BT, I know lawyers who have had *A LOT* of dealings with BT .....and the stories from all corners are the same !

Appalling post-sales support (I've just finally got BT to resolve a *VERY* simple line issue after 4 months of ping-pong), loss of about 80% of porting requests, unintelligible processes and the inability to produce a credit note are amongst the many issues with BT....

There is very little good to be said about BT.

Yes, but the point is that 99% of the time, the problem is not on the physical copper !

Hence the need to have either (preferably) a decent LLU provider such as Easynet, or otherwise a BT Wholesale based provider such as Zen who won't take bull**** from BT.

Mixture
Certainly no rose tinted specs nor minions.
BT do have problems-all big 'phone companies do because they have millions of customers and when things go wrong organisational inertia and lack of enterprise makes them hard to fix.

I can understand your frustration in the circumstances you faced but I could make the comment that your view is impaired by red mist much as you inferred that mine might be rose tinted.

All I meant to point out was that BT are not uniformly rubbish and are a viable choice for a lot of people, I agree that not that many faults are caused by the local loop but it can help with one party dealing with the whole service chain.
And just to be clear I am not carrying any torch for BT but I think you have been unfortunate with your problems with them rather than it representing things overall-if you want really bad service try Telefonica in Spain or FT Orange who charged me for 4 years of internet service without ever providing it or answering any complaints about it either

Not at all. As I said, I've openly compared my viewpoints with others. So no red-mist.


And that, my friend, is why you don't deal with the incumbents who suffer from the problems you describe ! BT just happen to be the worst of the incumbents I've come accross.

I think we should agree to disagree and leave it at that.

My bad, I thought they were still independent :sad:

BT Openreach cannot provide a connection to various properties yet alone anyone who dares choose an ISP.......

BBC One - Watchdog - BT Openreach

What one needs with BT is the phone number of the Chairman's secretary.

Other than that, getting them to do stuff is, in my experience, (and we are all talking about our experiences here, aren't we??) marginally less difficult than dealing with Apple.

But I've never had the phone number of their Chairman's secretary.

Its not always the golden token you make it out to be, especially if you're dealing with Wholesale and Openreach problems rather than Retail.... and by the way, its not the Chairmans office you're talking to, its the HLC Team (high-level complaints team), i.e. specialist call centre.

Getting back to the title of the thread, I see nothing here to alter any semblance of TalkTalk's reputation aside from the one quote saying they were lightyears better than BT (which is tantamount to defamation...or 'famation' if there is such a word?)

Companies like this are what bargepoles were invented for.

Well said, Mike. My email is STILL down. TT announced a resolution last evening at 1900. Not for me it wasn't. I have tried everything. Setup emails again but nothing. Its all very well them saying its over but how can it be. Loadsa complaints on Google and I have started to change to Gmail - not sure yet if it is out of the frying pan into the fire but who the hell can you trust to give you a service. Come Thursday it will be 7 days without an email facility. You could drive a train through TT and they wouldn't know it No good asking Openreach they can't reach far enough.


I started a change to Outlook but the complications were a nightmare. Gmail don't help with GOOD instructions but I like puzzles! NOT.


Oh well, tomorrow is another day. And I might just start sending TT some invoices for my time!

I don't like Google's user interface, but it is reliable and stable. I have a Google account which I use for stuff which is less important and I don't recall it ever being unavailable.

About a year ago, I moved onto a new house for which a postcode had not yet been allocated. I had been a TalkTalk customer for seven years. I rang them and explained what was happening. Their Indian call centre could not understand the concept of not having a postcode, so it was a difficult conversation, but they agreed they could sort things out. Long story short, they didn't. I could get no sense out of their so-called customer support team (they did not answer my recorded delivery letters), so I contacted the Ombudsman. They eventually agreed a resolution and advised me. Three months later and I've heard nothing from anyone, so I contacted my MP. Again, long story short, TalkTalk had sent the cheque to the wrong address and it had been sent back, but they didn't bother contacting the Ombudsman, but all this only came to light after the MP intervened. The whole situation took nine months to resolve. :ugh:

PPRuNe Pop: I invoiced them for the money I spent ringing their 0800 numbers from my mobile phone and they paid up - eventually! It might be worth calling the Ombudsman.

Well, what I was saying is that if you were locked in a room and forced to choose between a contract with TalkTalk or BT in order to secure your release, I would choose TalkTalk any day of the week !

Wise words from the Bhudda of Bracknell ! :E

(a) Avoid all incumbent operators (BT, Vodafone etc.)
(b) Avoid all large operators (TalkTalk etc.)

Go for the mid-sized ones, like Easynet, Zen etc.

About ten years ago I signed up to Pipex broadband, and I was automatically changed to TalkTalk after the take-over about three years ago. I hope I don't regret saying that during all this time problems have been very few and far between. I do sometimes consider an alternative ISP, especially after reading threads like this one, but it's difficult to justify when the internet just works! Since FTTC recently became available in our area, I've also considered upgrading to fibre, either with TT or another ISP, but it's difficult to accept the increased cost (which I could comfortably afford) when the existing ADSL speeds are still more than adequate for our modest needs. Another prompt was a recent notification from TT that my monthly payment is about to increase from about £15 to £20 per month, and I winced at a 33% increase. However, it is still some £3 a month less than when I first started with Pipex about a decade ago. My package was, and still is, totally unlimited.

Another drawback to changing ISP is that the majority seem to insist that you also change your landline to them. I don't wish to do this because I'm quite satisfied with my exisiting BT telephone package. Sorry if all this goes against the flow, but I can only report as I find.

I do hope that PPRuNe Pop's problems are sorted soon, and just for comparison my TT emails have not so far been affected.

One thing BT has going for it is its free openzones. Doesn't matter where I go in the UK I can always find one in most streets.

Yeah, its all funded by the mugs who sign up for BT Broadband !

When you sign up for BT Broadband, what they don't tell you is your router and the bandwidth you're paying for will be used to provide Openzone services to the public in your vicinity !

Oh yes they do and they provide instructions on how to disable the functionality on your home hub. It's simple to do, even without instructions.

Oh dear! I can always find a dog turd in the street, doesn't mean I'd chose to use it though.

Cut it anyway you like, a lot of people think BT's product and after sales support is third world, which by coincidence is where their customer service is based! I've had nothing but bother with BT since I joined them and can't wait for my contract to come to the end of it's time. Not sure where I'm going but am sure that BT can go and :mad: themselves as far as I'm concerned.

To all happy BT customers, beware the ides of March, your time will surely come:(

It's 'free' for anybody else who joins Fon.
Buy a Fonera Router for a £25 once only fee and plug it into, say, your TalkTalk Router and you've got exactly the same Openzone access plus similar access in Europe and elsewhere.You can also set the Router so you only share as little as 512kb of your bandwidth

You could always just get an Amex card and get free Boingo wireless on that instead.... then you don't need to open up your router to freeloaders.

Mixture, are you aware that judging by your posts here on anything to do with the internet or computers, you seem to be forever angry?

I use BT and the requirement to allow other users to access your router was/is clearly explained if you decide take the option to partake in the facility yourself.

huh ?

I simply don't see why I should be allowing a whole bunch of people I don't know to use a broadband connection I'm paying for ... hence the reference to freeloaders.

Sometimes seems to me that mixture would complain that his KitKat was covered in chocolate.

It's an optional and mutually beneficial service. You don't have to partake if you're not willing for your own reasons.

But they are not freeloaders, as you so charmingly put it - they too are paying for BT services to get access, so it is actually a reciprocal arrangement which can benefit both parties.

However, as I think you have me on ignore, you probably won't see this :)

Free Boingo for Amex Platinum but the annual card fee is £450