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The difference between TalkTalk and BeThere for broadband...
leki
Posts: 13 Forumite
If anyone is interested in seeing how TalkTalk compare with another ISP (bethere.co.uk) for the exact same ADSL2+ broadband service on the same line then i made a comparison of speeds, pings and customer service before i switched to TalkTalk.
In short:
BeThere.co.uk
Download speed: 950 KB/s
Upload speed: 135 kB/s
Pings to gaming servers: 11ms
P2P speeds: Always full speed
Customer Service: Great
Talktalk
Download speed: 690 KB/s
Upload speed: 98 kB/s
Pings to gaming servers: 34ms
P2P speeds: Sometimes came to a complete stop at peak times due to throttling
Customer Service: Terrible (more on that later)
As you can see that is quite a difference for the same product and shows the difference between a good ISP and a bad one.
My many years with BeThere i did not have to contact customer service much, but when i did my issues were always resolved fast and efficiently. With TalkTalk it is a different story so lets start at the beginning.
I ordered (through topcashback) line rental, essentials package and fibre with talktalk, There was a half price essentials offer on at the time but on the online checkout the half price offer was not showing on the total price, so i used the live chat to speak to a sales adviser who told me that was normal and the offer would be applied to my welcome package and bill. I also asked about p2p throttling on the fibre broadband and was told that fibre is not affected as much as the ADSL and so would only drop by around 2Mb at most and i was estimated to get 60Mb. Sounds good right? well no as i later find out that i am being charged the full amount and also talktalk do throttle fibre just as much as ADSL. So either the sales "advisers" lie to you to get the sale or they dont have a clue how things work.
With TalkTalk you can't just sign up to fibre, if you are a new customer you have to first get TalkTalk line rental and ADSL before they start an order for fibre. Although you can order fibre at the same time as your main order and they will automatically start the fibre order once you are connected with phone and ADSL....or so they tell you.
I get sent my welcome pack with fibre modem and had my phone and ADSL activated with TalkTalk, however when i log into my members area i couldn't see anything about my fibre install date. I had heard from other people that TalkTalk customer service was bad but I decided to give them a ring to find out when my fibre would go live as it is just a simple question i thought. After 5 times calling TalkTalk and over an hour with the phone, being put on hold, getting hung up on, passed to different people, the end result was that basically they had no idea what was going on, couldn't tell me when or if i was getting fibre and couldn't place another order for fibre. TalkTalk just seemed to only care about asking me the pointless security questions at the start of every call to "confirm" i was the account holder....anyway the last guy i spoke to said maybe just wait until tomorrow and then try ordering fibre again is the only thing he could think of. Luckily that did work the next day, although it was a good thing i did try to enquire when my fibre would start as if i didn't it would never have.
Having vowed never to ring talktalk customer service again i thought i would give the talktalk members forum a try to see if they can sort out my other issues like ADSL speed and ping and being over charged for the service as i had heard from other people that the talktalk members forum was much better than ringing them. Well it took a few days for my login to the forum to be activated before i could post and then it took a further 8 days to respond to ADSL speed issues by which time it was pointless as i had just been activated on the fibre. My billing problems got answered much quicker and after having to PM more info confirming security questions i got told they will look into the billing issues and they will post back when they have updates for me. Well it's been over a month now and i have not heard anything back and i am still being over charged.
Although they were happy to ring me up recently to try to get me to switch to talktalk for my mobile phone service too.....no chance.
I also did not get any cashback through topcashback as talktalk did not track it so i am having to try and file cashback claims for that which i am sure TalkTalk will try and get out of paying.
If you want good ADSL broadband and a company that can get a simple online order right with good customer service then TalkTalk is not the company you want to go with.
If you want to see more detailed info on the speeds of Bethere and talktalk ADSL then see below:
BeThere:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2392818473.png
http://www.pingtest.net/result/74431589.png
Talktalk:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2425270475.png
http://www.pingtest.net/result/75304625.png
In short:
BeThere.co.uk
Download speed: 950 KB/s
Upload speed: 135 kB/s
Pings to gaming servers: 11ms
P2P speeds: Always full speed
Customer Service: Great
Talktalk
Download speed: 690 KB/s
Upload speed: 98 kB/s
Pings to gaming servers: 34ms
P2P speeds: Sometimes came to a complete stop at peak times due to throttling
Customer Service: Terrible (more on that later)
As you can see that is quite a difference for the same product and shows the difference between a good ISP and a bad one.
My many years with BeThere i did not have to contact customer service much, but when i did my issues were always resolved fast and efficiently. With TalkTalk it is a different story so lets start at the beginning.
I ordered (through topcashback) line rental, essentials package and fibre with talktalk, There was a half price essentials offer on at the time but on the online checkout the half price offer was not showing on the total price, so i used the live chat to speak to a sales adviser who told me that was normal and the offer would be applied to my welcome package and bill. I also asked about p2p throttling on the fibre broadband and was told that fibre is not affected as much as the ADSL and so would only drop by around 2Mb at most and i was estimated to get 60Mb. Sounds good right? well no as i later find out that i am being charged the full amount and also talktalk do throttle fibre just as much as ADSL. So either the sales "advisers" lie to you to get the sale or they dont have a clue how things work.
With TalkTalk you can't just sign up to fibre, if you are a new customer you have to first get TalkTalk line rental and ADSL before they start an order for fibre. Although you can order fibre at the same time as your main order and they will automatically start the fibre order once you are connected with phone and ADSL....or so they tell you.
I get sent my welcome pack with fibre modem and had my phone and ADSL activated with TalkTalk, however when i log into my members area i couldn't see anything about my fibre install date. I had heard from other people that TalkTalk customer service was bad but I decided to give them a ring to find out when my fibre would go live as it is just a simple question i thought. After 5 times calling TalkTalk and over an hour with the phone, being put on hold, getting hung up on, passed to different people, the end result was that basically they had no idea what was going on, couldn't tell me when or if i was getting fibre and couldn't place another order for fibre. TalkTalk just seemed to only care about asking me the pointless security questions at the start of every call to "confirm" i was the account holder....anyway the last guy i spoke to said maybe just wait until tomorrow and then try ordering fibre again is the only thing he could think of. Luckily that did work the next day, although it was a good thing i did try to enquire when my fibre would start as if i didn't it would never have.
Having vowed never to ring talktalk customer service again i thought i would give the talktalk members forum a try to see if they can sort out my other issues like ADSL speed and ping and being over charged for the service as i had heard from other people that the talktalk members forum was much better than ringing them. Well it took a few days for my login to the forum to be activated before i could post and then it took a further 8 days to respond to ADSL speed issues by which time it was pointless as i had just been activated on the fibre. My billing problems got answered much quicker and after having to PM more info confirming security questions i got told they will look into the billing issues and they will post back when they have updates for me. Well it's been over a month now and i have not heard anything back and i am still being over charged.
Although they were happy to ring me up recently to try to get me to switch to talktalk for my mobile phone service too.....no chance.
I also did not get any cashback through topcashback as talktalk did not track it so i am having to try and file cashback claims for that which i am sure TalkTalk will try and get out of paying.
If you want good ADSL broadband and a company that can get a simple online order right with good customer service then TalkTalk is not the company you want to go with.
If you want to see more detailed info on the speeds of Bethere and talktalk ADSL then see below:
BeThere:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2392818473.png
http://www.pingtest.net/result/74431589.png
Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.241.131] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=244
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=244
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=244
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=244
Ping statistics for 212.58.241.131:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 11ms, Maximum = 11ms, Average = 11ms
Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.241.131]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 8 ms 99 ms 99 ms 192.168.1.254
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * 7 ms 10.1.3.234
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 18 ms 12 ms 12 ms 10.1.4.249
6 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms bbc-linx.pr01.rbsov.bbc.co.uk [195.66.236.103]
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 12 ms 12 ms 11 ms ae1.er01.rbsov.bbc.co.uk [132.185.254.46]
9 14 ms 13 ms 13 ms 132.185.255.60
10 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 212.58.241.131
Pinging 85.236.100.76 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 85.236.100.76: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=121
Reply from 85.236.100.76: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=121
Reply from 85.236.100.76: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=121
Reply from 85.236.100.76: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=121
Ping statistics for 85.236.100.76:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 11ms, Maximum = 12ms, Average = 11ms
Tracing route to lon039.multiplay.co.uk [85.236.100.76]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 89 ms 99 ms 99 ms 192.168.1.254
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * 7 ms 6 ms 10.1.3.234
4 * * 13 ms 10.1.3.214
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms 195.66.236.224
7 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms lon039.multiplay.co.uk [85.236.100.76]
Trace complete.
Talktalk:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2425270475.png
http://www.pingtest.net/result/75304625.png
Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.241.131] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=26ms TTL=243
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=26ms TTL=243
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=243
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=243
Ping statistics for 212.58.241.131:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 26ms, Maximum = 27ms, Average = 26ms
Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.241.131]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 21 ms 19 ms 20 ms host-78-148-224-1.as13285.net [78.148.224.1]
3 21 ms 23 ms 21 ms host-78-151-225-101.static.as13285.net [78.151.2
25.101]
4 21 ms 20 ms 22 ms host-78-151-225-108.static.as13285.net [78.151.2
25.108]
5 26 ms 27 ms 27 ms xe-11-1-0-rt001.the.as13285.net [62.24.240.6]
6 26 ms 27 ms 27 ms host-78-144-1-61.as13285.net [78.144.1.61]
7 26 ms 27 ms 27 ms host-78-144-0-147.as13285.net [78.144.0.147]
8 26 ms 35 ms 26 ms host-78-144-3-47.as13285.net [78.144.3.47]
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 26 ms 27 ms 26 ms ae1.er01.rbsov.bbc.co.uk [132.185.254.46]
11 27 ms 26 ms 31 ms 132.185.255.60
12 27 ms 26 ms 27 ms 212.58.241.131
Trace complete.
Pinging 85.236.100.76 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 85.236.100.76: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=119
Reply from 85.236.100.76: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=119
Reply from 85.236.100.76: bytes=32 time=35ms TTL=119
Reply from 85.236.100.76: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=119
Ping statistics for 85.236.100.76:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 34ms, Maximum = 35ms, Average = 34ms
Tracing route to lon039.multiplay.co.uk [85.236.100.76]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 21 ms 20 ms 20 ms host-78-148-224-1.as13285.net [78.148.224.1]
3 21 ms 21 ms 21 ms host-78-151-225-101.static.as13285.net [78.151.2
25.101]
4 21 ms 21 ms 21 ms host-78-151-225-104.static.as13285.net [78.151.2
25.104]
5 28 ms 28 ms 27 ms xe-11-1-0-rt001.sov.as13285.net [62.24.240.14]
6 28 ms 29 ms 36 ms host-78-144-1-65.as13285.net [78.144.1.65]
7 29 ms 27 ms 28 ms host-78-144-1-141.as13285.net [78.144.1.141]
8 34 ms 35 ms 34 ms 195.66.236.224
9 35 ms 34 ms 34 ms lon039.multiplay.co.uk [85.236.100.76]
Trace complete.
0
Comments
-
A very interesting read! Im stuck with Talk Talk for another year but i will be changing ASAP just because of how terrible their customer service is.0
-
If anyone is interested in seeing how TalkTalk compare with another ISP (bethere.co.uk) for the exact same ADSL2+ broadband service on the same line then i made a comparison of speeds, pings and customer service before i switched to TalkTalk.
In short:
BeThere.co.uk
Download speed: 950 KB/s
Upload speed: 135 kB/s
Pings to gaming servers: 11ms
P2P speeds: Always full speed
Customer Service: Great
Talktalk
Download speed: 690 KB/s
Upload speed: 98 kB/s
Pings to gaming servers: 34ms
P2P speeds: Sometimes came to a complete stop at peak times due to throttling
Customer Service: Terrible (more on that later)
As you can see that is quite a difference for the same product and shows the difference between a good ISP and a bad one.
Most TalkTalk users have never experienced better broadband.:doh: Blue text on this forum usually signifies hyperlinks, so click on them!..:wall:0
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