Talk Talk: what do you think of them?

hebron

Hi
I was thinking about changing my broadband/phone to Talk Talk, but I am a bit worried about their reputation. Have they improved of late, or are they still having troubles? What is your experience of them:good or bad?

Thanks

asbokid

That surge in customer complaints about TalkTalk was largely related to the poor migration of customers from Tiscali when TalkTalk bought out the ISP.

Specifically, TalkTalk poorly executed the integration of old Tiscali customers into its existing billing system. That resulted in a lot of incorrect invoices being sent out to former Tiscali customers.

However, the TalkTalk service has been fine for us, and for a friend we recommended.

So far, TalkTalk has provided a consistently higher bandwidth (~15Mbps) which is much better (and much cheaper) than our previous provider, Demon could ever offer.

We've had no outages to date in the 4 months we've been with TalkTalk.

Customer services by email have been fine, if a tad slow. On average it has been a 24 hour turnaround from request to response or action.

The supplied DLINK DSL-2680 router Firmware Version: v1.08 Hardware Version: A1 (wifi and ethernet) works as expected.

We pay £23+VAT for TalkTalk Business 24Mb broadband and that includes line rental.

johnnyblount

To be truthful my family had little problem with Talk Talk for a good while but as said above when they expanded the troubles began and it was only when the troubles began that we all had problems with customer service.
Fine for many people if it works ok but if you get issues it can be extremely frustrating getting anything sorted and you are locked into a contract , they dont seem to care or didnt , they may have improved although , friends of mine are still having big problems but cannot leave easily .

Sometimes after youve had issues maybe in certain areas , its only when you leave or take a no contract ISP that you realize how much better it can be and line issues they told you you had get sorted just by moving.

Everyone I recommended to TT has either now left or are trying or waiting to it got very frustrating and time consuming just trying to speak to someone none of us ever ever had a 24 hour response to any emails , any that we did get were much longer than that and cut and paste jobs with little help .

metrobus

Take a look at this months Which magazine it will tell you all you need to know.

They have by far the worst complaints record of any major ISP.

They are pathetic with very slow speeds and the throttling of peoples speed seems a common action.

If I was you I would stay well away, last week I was getting 0.3 meg when I am paying for upto 8 meg,and if you are in contract they do not care a to ss when you complain.

MrsTinks

Firstly I'll declare my "interest" in this as I DO work for TT - not the consumer side however and I was "legacy" Tiscali Business - just so you can judge for yourself
We hit a lot of trouble with the migrations and merger of systems - we've just had a huge restructure with lots of people leaving the business and now all the back end stuff is in the main complete the big "thing" in the company is definitely focusing on customer service, fixing the problems for the customers and sorting the problems we've had during the merger...
I think the review in "which" was probably fair, but it's something that is being looked at realistically internally and taken onboard by every level (including our CEO!) and it's getting better.
My honest (biased possibly... although I don't get a bonus depending on how the company etc does so it doesn't matter a jot to me personally lol) opinion is that right now and moving forward we're no better and no worse than any other ISP. That is 100% my personal view and not the view of anyone including MSE or TT

asbokid

The DSLAM equipment that TalkTalk has installed as part of the LLU agreement in BT exchanges is often much newer than the DSLAMs that BT installed for use of its own customers.

All of TalkTalk's DSLAMs support the ADSL2+ standard offering up to 24Mb/s. However, much of BT's kit is limited to ADSL(1) which can only support 8Mb/s.

Since many ISPs are providing internet services using BT IPStream kit, including BT's aging DSLAMs, those ISPs may also be limited in terms of bandwidth to 8Mb/s.

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/telephone_exchange.htm

p4girl

I like them!!!! Changed from BT about four years ago, changeover was smooth, broadband here is good, especially as we have four different computers online each night!

We've had two problems, both to do with the line into the house. Phone was down, but broadband was still working - so I got on the online forum to report it, and the service reps who monitor the forum were both quick and efficient.

Bills are easy to understand and I like the fact I can check bills online.

It's a yes from me!:T

Sooler

hebron wrote: »

good or bad?

Yes ... apparently they provide both, but which one you get will be a gamble.

Solely your decision whether to take the risk , are you prepared for the consequences?

hermum

I switched to them a couple of months ago & wish I hadn't. Firstly I tild them that I had to be ex-directory, when all the bumf came through, it said I had requested a directory entry. I called & emailed straight away & was ignored, or they maybe responded to the wrong email address, as they had my name spelt 3 different ways in 1 letter.
I was put in the directory & when I called to complain I was told that I would have to pay to have my number changed due to their incompetence. It had already cost 80 or 90 quid not the £30 advertised to join them.
My 2nd bill there was a mistake in the billing that was going to be put right before my DD came out, funnily enough it wasn't.
Unless your provider is terrible or much more expensive I'd stay put.
They cut my Mum off a few weeks ago, when she called up to report a fault they said that she'd cancelled, (she hadn't) they then wanted to increase her monthly charge greatly.

hebron

Very interesting points. many thanks

i8change

The graphs in the link below give you an idea of how Talk Talk compare.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4652-talktalk-most-complained-about-telecom-provider-in-uk.html