New Talktalk poll; feedback needed, good and bad

Have been with talktalk since before the 8mb service was introduced. Switched to free broadband with talk 3 international as soon as it was advertised. Upgraded just before Christmas and internet went down for almost 3 weeks. Rang talktalk 5 times in this period, kept getting fobbed off at first as I don't use their modem and they didn't want to give support. However, i asked my brother to speak to them (IT consultant) as he knew the jargon etc & they looked into it more. Still took them too long to sort out and we ended up being charged interest on credit card because we couldn't access our internet only bank to transfer funds into our bank account to make payment.

I've had problems before with talktalk too but this one took the biscuit. VERY POOR Customer service & rarely get to speak to someone who understands English clearly or who can speak English clearly!

I'd STRONGLY recommend against talktalk ... having had the phone for about a year and it's been OK (not great but OK) I signed up for broadband in November. This wasn't just another mire of delay story but when I called to CHECK that it was going live on the day they'd told me, 3 different people told me it was and I should immediately cancel my old ISP to enable this. So I did, and guess what ....???
To cut a long story short, I was without broadband for about a week, spent AGES on it and on expensive phone calls, eventually got a good 'goodwill' whack out of them, and up and running (though service itself is no way 8MB speed and both broadband and phone have had several 'outtages' in the few weeks) BUT this was achieved only by sitting in a carphone warehouse shop and saying I'd not leave, and would call the press when they called the police (very calm but lots of chutzpah and time wasted!), and there is no way that the saving is worth the hassle!!
THE MOST APPALLING CUSTOMER DISSERVICE AROUND!!!

It does seem that some people have TalkTalk broadband installed without problem and are pleased with the service, and I genuinely am happy for them.

However, I suspect that, in these cases, TalkTalk has simply re-provided the standard BT package, with nothing else for them to do. In the same way my TalkTalk telephone service has worked perfectly from day one - it's simply a re-provided BT service that BT charges Carphone Warehouse to provide.

The problem comes when something goes wrong. If it's some simple consumer-type problem then TalkTalk technical 'support' can fix it, because they simply read the appropriate troubleshooting script over the phone. Such as the debacle when TalkTalk forgot to save the username+password in the Huawei modem configuration script (fine when user first sets up but won't connect after re-boot); a simple problem that's easy to fix over the phone (at 10p per minute of course).

If it's not something straightforward then TalkTalk support simply doesn't know what to do, so they give you any old lie to get rid of you. I was sceptical when I heard that from others, but it really is true. Just read my site https://www.mytalktalkhell.co.uk and see how many different methods they have of telling you that a 2nd line support engineer will phone back (when my experience is that a 2nd line support engineer WON'T phone back). Everything on that site is true and I've tried not to exaggerate.

I sincerely hope TalkTalk will recover and give everybody the service they've paid for.

For my part, I've taken legal advice and am about to join the queue to take this appalling company to court.

One last thought to leave you with - in a recent blog, Charles Dunstone mentioned their project to move ALL their voice customers to Carphone Warehouse's private voice network in 2007. That's PHYSICALLY moving ALL TalkTalk phone lines away from BT at every BT exchange and diverting on to TalkTalk's private network. The good Charles admits in his blog of 13 Nov 2006 that "I am afraid that, inevitably, this process is not fool proof and, in spite of their best efforts, the engineers do occasionally make mistakes."

Shivers down the spine, anyone?

kfn1502 wrote:

The one thing I am REALLY annoyed about is that since the 'upgrade' I am no longer able to use the 18185 override code so ALL calls must go through the TalkTalk line which is much more expensive than the 18185 option. A friend of mine has had the same experience. She phoned TalkTalk and they said there was no block on the phone, it must be a 18185 problem - which I seriously doubt. We'll call them in the next week and try to sort it out - probably won't have much joy given the not-too-good customer service which exists.

Has anyone else had this problem with using an override code? If so, have you been able to sort it out (and how did it get sorted)?

I'm afraid that's one of the drawbacks of moving your line rental from BT (see HERE).