Can I leave TalkTalk?

fletcher89

Ok so I was with Sky for two years with my phone and broadband and didn't have a single problem once, but in a bid to reduce my monthly outgoings I stupidly jumped ship to TalkTalk as it would save me almost £15 a month. I moved at the start of September and all was fine to begin with up until just over a week ago, first noticed it Wednesday 21st. It started with really, and I mean really, slow internet, with some pages taking a very long time to load and others not loading at all, I just got a screen that said 'page not available'. Then it got worse and I either got a message from Google saying my connection was unsecure or a message from TalkTalk saying my router wasn't connected to the internet and to follow these simple steps to get back online, but after following the steps it still wasn't connected. So I rang TalkTalk who told me there wasn't a problem with my line so she couldn't tell me what was wrong and suggested it was because I was connected through the WiFi. I have always connected my computer to the modem through WiFi due to the location of my phone socket and it has never been a problem before when we had Sky. So the woman said she'd change some settings and that would solve it. It hasn't. It is hit and miss if I can get on the internet at all and I am college student who needs to do research for my assignments. Rang TalkTalk twice more to get told same thing, no problem with line and that they'll change some settings, but it isn't working. Yesterday when I rang I told them that if they didn't sort it I was leaving and the man on the phone told me if I did leave I'd have to pay the remainder of my contract which amounted to just over £200, something I cannot afford. Can anybody advise me on this, because my internet barely works, TalkTalk can't see a fault and I can't leave unless I find £200 and I feel a bit stuck. Thanks

HappyMJ

It could be a router fault or a crowded wi-fi area. Asking customers to try the network cable directly plugged into the router rules out a problem with the wi-fi. If they can see your router and the connection between the router and TalkTalk looks fine then it's probably a problem between the router and your computer.

It may be annoying to use the cabled network connection permanently but for fault finding purposes you'll need to plug the laptop in to the router.

If you could use a different router that may rule the router out. The standard TalkTalk router isn't exactly the best router on the market. The signal between the router and your computer may not be strong enough. A neighbouring wi-fi connection could be overpowering yours and your laptop may want to connect to the neighbours instead. The wi-fi channel might be constantly changing causing dropouts. It could be any number of reasons. It's not necessarily a line fault.

fletcher89

TalkTalk are useless, they haven't told me any of that, just that my line is fine. Just can't believe it's left to me, a complete tech numpty, to try and solve the issue unless I can find £200 to get out earlier. Thanks for replying

HappyMJ

fletcher89 wrote: »

TalkTalk are useless, they haven't told me any of that, just that my line is fine. Just can't believe it's left to me, a complete tech numpty, to try and solve the issue unless I can find £200 to get out earlier. Thanks for replying

Frustrating isn't it but it's not just TalkTalk. I was on a customer site with a router that had failed. No lights, no power, nothing. On the phone to BT to get a replacement and they were convinced it was a line fault so sent an engineer to the exchange. I couldn't convince them the router was not working at all...no power....not going to work...ever. Had to give up talking to them and find a replacement router for my client.

What I tend to do if the wi-fi is intermittent is open a command window. Start-Run-CMD (press enter) type ping -t 192.168.1.1 (press enter). You'll get ping responses back and if you see dropouts you'll see lines saying timeout. Leave it running in the background and when the internet appears to go down switch the screen to the CMD window. If you see timeout's it's a problem at your end. Wi-fi connection problems can be quite difficult to resolve remotely. I'd ask for a new router if possible.