changing isp to Carphone Warehouse / TalkTalk / Opal Telecom a good idea?

Hi there.

I am fed up with CarPhone Warehouse in all their guises vis-a-vis broadband.

I've been with their company AOL UK for a long time, and have been artificially restricted to about 1Mb speeds by what I'd been told were currently insurmountable distance to exchange problems. In fact that's one of the reasons I'd got the price down to £9.99 a month plus my BT line rental, but when the contract expired last August I was open to a better deal.

On the 6th December I received an unsolicited call from CPW offering a "30 day trial" on TalkTalk2i with free broadband. After sounding them out on ease of transfer from their other company AOL UK, I agreed. They indicated an early telephone line takeover followed by broadband early in the New Year.

A letter arrived stating 20/12/2007 for landline swap, and 10/1/2008 for broadband. The letter said that a CD would be sent to me just prior to BB go live date.

There was some doubt about the landline transfer as I received a BT bill which seemed to suggest that the BT contract was continuing. I alsothen read the personalised booklet that had arrived from TalkTalk in more detail. I discovered a warning that "Your first bill may be more than expected" which said that I could expect a £29.99 Connection Fee. I instantly saw red and got on the lne to Talk Talk. Whilst I was sorting that out (they agreed to credit the £29.99) I also agreed that with regard to broadband the question of MAC key would be handled 'in-house' (as both my new provider and old one are CPW companies).

Anyway, the landline was soon sorted, the credit showed on my first TalkTalk bill, Christmas and New Year came and went. So did the 10/1/2008 Broadband Go Live estimate.

I logged on to my TalkTalk account and found a message that the Go Live Date was now "End January". In mid-January I called and asked if they could be more accurate since they didn't give an exact date now. They couldn't say. They said they would contact me if they needed a MAC key. I said well your colleagues said they would sort that out. They said OK well we will contact you if we need to.

Then a few days later I casually did a Speedtest.net test and discovered that I was now getting speeds over 2Mb. First time in 4 years. But still on an AOL UK IP address.

About a week ago I noticed that the connection was becoming unreliable and slower again and visited Speedtest.net again. I discovered I was now on an Opal Telecom IP address.

My first thought was "Who the hell are Opal Telecom?" Google is my friend and I soon discovered that they are a CPW company. My next thought is that "I must have been transfered - maybe my AOL login details in my modem/router are clashing with the new network" so I tried removing them.

Instant no internet!

I put the AOL login details back in. Internet worked.

I called TalkTalk. They had no idea what had happened,but they did say something about my line having been "unbundled". "You need MAC code" they said in unnecessarily poor English. I told them that their colleagues were sorting that out. "You got CD?" No I hadn't got CD.

"You not connected to TalkTalk. You still AOL customer." What'sOpal Telecom then? "You need MAC code." No, I don't. You do perhaps. Would you please sort it out?

We agreed that they expected it would right itself in a few days.

Meantime I had noticed by the end of last week that around 8 in the evening the connection was dropping out continually. Never happened before. Very annoying. Speedtest said my download speed was down to 200K at one point. I gave up. I was away at the weekend and now I am back I've seen the same thing this evening.

I'd had enough. I called TalkTalk and told them to cancel everything and roll everything back to how it was before I received the 6/12/2007 unsolicited call. "You need MAC code, then everything be alright". Forget it chum, I've seen and heard enough - I want out and I want a refund of the wasted subscription where I have been paying two CPW companies for the same service for a month now. I want to cancel like I said at the beginning of this call. "You need MAC code - you not get it then that's your choice". At that point I agreed that India obviously wasn't capable of providing the service I required.

I will try to contact UK Customer Services in the morning.

Meantime has anyone got any opinions on whether I should try to stick with it, or revert to my original deal with AOL + BT?