Escape from TalkTalk - where next?

Mr_Oink

Inactive wrote: »

I am sure the very best ISP cannot please all of the people, all of the time, I do not recall ever seeing anybody else having a bad word to say about IDNet on here.

If you consider they have such a tiny user base compared to the likes of TalkTalk, BT, Plusnet et al, that is hardly surprising. The common quote for IDNET is 'Who?'.

You don't measure an ISP on how good they are by what happens when everything is fine - you measure it on how they handle problems. If you only have a few hundred customers your statistics are going to be somewhat different to an ISP with a customer base in the millions.

I'm glad you like IDNET, I tolerate them for their anti-spam credentials, it sure as hell is not for quality, support or price - which are all rather miserable when compared to larger, more professional ISPs.

Mr_Oink

As this thread is all about support - it is worth mentioning this in relation to IDENT and support:

IDNET
0800-1830 MON-THUR
0800-1800 FRI

TALK TALK
Mon - Sun: 8am - 10pm

PLUSNET
Residential Support 0845 140 0200 All day, every day

It's also worth noting that in the last couple of months IDNET have had at least two major outages, virtually cutting off all their customers for many hours at a time. During this period they refused to answer their phone. My own fault took some thirty days, multiple visits from BT, and nearly 100 emails to IDNET to partially resolve, only to come back just a few days later.

If this poster wants good support and service, at a price comparable to TalkTalk, IDNET are *NOT* the place to go. Don't only take my word for it, you can see for yourself from their hours of operation.

Inactive

Mr_Oink wrote: »

If you consider they have such a tiny user base compared to the likes of TalkTalk, BT, Plusnet et al, that is hardly surprising. The common quote for IDNET is 'Who?'.

You don't measure an ISP on how good they are by what happens when everything is fine - you measure it on how they handle problems. If you only have a few hundred customers your statistics are going to be somewhat different to an ISP with a customer base in the millions.

I'm glad you like IDNET, I tolerate them for their anti-spam credentials, it sure as hell is not for quality, support or price - which are all rather miserable when compared to larger, more professional ISPs.

You slag them off, yet you stay with them, strange because unlike most ISP's, IDNet only have a 30 day contract, so you could easily leave and go to a " larger, more professional ISP ".

I think the truth is, you cannot find better.

Mr_Oink

Inactive wrote: »

You slag them off, yet you stay with them, strange because unlike most ISP's, IDNet only have a 30 day contract, so you could easily leave and go to a " larger, more professional ISP ".

I think the truth is, you cannot find better.

You mistake telling the truth for 'slagging off' - a common mistake for people who have not suffered their appalling service.

As for staying with them, I do this for three reasons which are constantly under review. First, they are mostly spam free - which is important to me. Most other UK ISP's have a notable spam problem. This has started to deteriorate with IDNET, but still remains better than other ISP's (probably because of their obscurity). Next, moving IP blocks around is a bit of a PITA. Especially when you are dealing with commercial whitelisting services that don't communicate well. You point out they have a 30 day contract (as do ZEN), but FTTC customers are actually on a 12 month term - so that is a little misleading.

As for finding better - don't make me laugh! I'd be hard pushed to find a worse price,worse service, worse performance, worst support hours and worst support than IDNET have shown me this year. They also have NEVER apologised for the outages, errors and woefully poor support. I suspect that If they had a larger customer base they would have been on BBC's Watchdog by now!

This is all rather off topic, but the crux is this; As far as the OP is concerned IDNET would be a bad choice compared to his current TT package on cost, quality and hours of support. It's really that simple. I'm glad you are a happy IDNET customer, really I am, I wish I shared you joy for the hideous monthly fee I shell out.

unsure

Out of interest,
It transpires after an hour with daughter's techie friend on the case starting from scratch, the problem was that the new TT settings included encryption above the level supported by either laptop operating system (XP and Vsta). Once problem was identified it took him about 5 mins to sort... since TT tech support asked for and were given OS details can't help feeling they should have been able to figure it in similar time. I doubt I'd have ever figured that one out. Now stuck with situation that for a few hours we've had the best and most stable connection for month after TT followed my suggestion (...not their tech support''s despite several conversations ) that they send us one of their current routers coupled to daughter's friend's ability, which TT tech support failed to match. So no corrupted cards, no need of expensive engineer's visit and very definitely no cigar for TT!
While it's all working well temptation is to stay for sake of an easy life but the little voice in the back of my head says get out while you can because there will be futher problems in future and these people will not be competent or willing to help. Thanks to all here for their time, help and opinions. I think I'm off to Plusnet.

NeverEnough

We also had a lucky escape from Tiscali/TalkTalk and have been very happy Plusnet users for the past 18 months, including a house move, where Plusnet really tried hard to deliver the best service. No-ones perfect, but at least Plusnet speak English and try to help.

Mr_Oink

Here's the funny thing. Lots of folk slate Plusnet (they even nicknamed them 'Pusnet'). But I only ever had great service from them. Granted that this was in their F9 days. Since they fell into the hands of BT they have gotten quite a kicking on USENET. If you become a big ISP with massive amounts of customers it follows that complaints will statistically rise.

If you are a tiny ISP with a couple of thousand customers you just don't have the base to be measured in the same ball park.

All ISP's are 'good' until something goes wrong - that's when you measure them.