Talk talk customer 'service'

Goldiegirl

My internet provider was previously AOL, but I was taken over by Talk Talk. My phone line provider is BT.

The set up had been working fine - until Monday.

I was online, on MSE in fact, at just after 3pm on 7th June.

All of a sudden, the Internet dropped out, but came back within 30 seconds.. I just thought it was one of those things, but it kept on happening.

At first I wondered if it was weather related. There had been storms around, although only a bit of rain in my area. I checked the website, and they said there were service issues in places like Cambridge and Southend. I'm in north Kent, and Southend isn't that far, as the crow flies,

But, after 24 hours of putting up with 30 second drop outs every 15 minutes if I'm lucky, 2 - 3 minutes at its worst, I'd had enough, and decided to phone them.

That's 27 minutes of my life I won't get back.

I had a feeling that it wasn't going to go well, when the technical operative hadn't heard of my router, a Netgear model. ( I think it was because it wasn't issued by Talk Talk.

We did the usual things like switching the router off and on, and she 'restarted' the broadband from their end. All to no avail - the same think kept happening - the Internet light goes out, the Dsl light goes out, the dsl light comes on and Internet light comes on, and I'm good to go for another 3 minutes.

So she said they would put a watch on my line, and I'm have to wait for 10 days monitoring before anything else could be done!

So it appears I have 10 days of limping along with Internet drop outs every 3 minutes,

This seems very poor too me - is this the norm for Talk Talk. I'd heard adverse reports, but I feel really shocked that they seem to think it's ok for me to put up with this for so long, before anything else can be done.

The worse thing is the feeling of helplessness - it I wait 10 days and call again, I'll probably have to speak to someone else just reading off a card.

I don't really know what to do, to be honest - i would like to get this resolved before I consider whether I want to switch provider, but at the moment I have no idea how I'm going to get this resolved.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

JJ_Egan

Any ISP will monitor a line for ten days or so .
Lot of areas where the service can go wrong from them to and including you .Could well be weather related they have a few BT Open Reach vans digging new holes around my area .
Is this dropout on WiFi or Ethernet connection .

If the Internet is critical to you then you need a business service with service level agreements built in .

Goldiegirl

JJ_Egan wrote: »

Any ISP will monitor a line for ten days or so .
Lot of areas where the service can go wrong from them to and including you .Could well be weather related they have a few BT Open Reach vans digging new holes around my area .
Is this dropout on WiFi or Ethernet connection .

If the Internet is critical to you then you need a business service with service level agreements built in .

Thanks for your reply - it's a reassurance to know that it's normal to monitor the line for 10 days.


Talk Talk have updated their website today regarding severe weather, to include more areas, but my area is still not one of the included ones, but the problem did start at a time where storms were around, but we only had a few distant rumbles of thunder, and a bit of rain, not excessive rain. We've had a lot worse, and the internet has not been affected like this before.


The drop out is on Wifi. Unfortunately, I got rid of our Ethernet cables while decluttering so I can't really check an Ethernet connection. But the wifi light stays on when the internet and DSL light goes out.


Internet isn't critical, but it's inconvenient to have this problem - I guess I'm going to have to limp along for a while and have 4G as a back up.


Thanks for your comments

AndyPK

Interesting. When I was with EE I phoned up to report an issue. Once you get them to realize that there is a fault it isn't too bad.

They monitored the drop outs for a few hours and actually rang me back to tell me it had dropped out x number of times that morning (I hadn't noticed) and then added it to the open-reaches jobs list.

Goldiegirl

AndyPK wrote: »

Interesting. When I was with EE I phoned up to report an issue. Once you get them to realize that there is a fault it isn't too bad.

They monitored the drop outs for a few hours and actually rang me back to tell me it had dropped out x number of times that morning (I hadn't noticed) and then added it to the open-reaches jobs list.

That's put a diferent slant on my thinking - now I'm thinking if EE can notice drop outs after a few hours, why do Talk Talk need 10 days.

I'm still getting regular drop outs - at 9.15 this eveningI thought it'd gone for good, as it was off for 30 minutes. Now I'm back at the normal every 2 - 3 minutes.

I've completed Talk Talk's feedback survey - if they take any notice of it they should be ringing me about what I've said.... Not holding my breath.

iris

We used to have the same problem with BT, but we upgraded to BT Infinity, complete with new router and this sorted the problem out.


Hope you get your internet sorted soon Goldie.

Cornucopia

Unless you live in a very rural location, then it's unlikely to be weather related.

I would suggest getting hold of an Ethernet cable, as it would be useful extra diagnostic info (despite what the lights say). You can sometimes get them in poundshops. Also, you probably eventually will want one company for landline and broadband, if only because it will make problem-reporting easier and may reduce the overall cost.

I can recommend Talktalk fibre, on which I have had flawless service for 2 years now, not that far from you. I pay £27.70 pm for landline & fibre BB, including free calls all the time.

onomatopoeia99

JJ_Egan wrote: »

Any ISP will monitor a line for ten days or so .

Mine doesn't, if I ring them up with a fault that appears to be on the line they'll get Openreach out in the next couple of days. But they don't make me restart my router / computer or any other nonsense either.

Whether the "engineer" that turns up in a BT van is competent is another question entirely. Though the last one was and actually replaced the line from the pole to the cabinet (previous five said "nothing wrong with it mate" after running a two minute test), so I'm slightly better disposed toward OR at the moment.

TalkTalk

Hi Goldiegirl

If you would like us to take a look into this for you please contact us on twitter (@TalkTalkCare) or via our community pages on our website.

Thanks

Vicky

Goldiegirl

Thank you to everyone who has responded to this thread - I think I MAY have got to the bottom of what has happened.


My husband and I were just commenting this morning that the broadband connection seems to be holding up this morning. At that precise moment, the postman put a letter through the letter box. It was from Talk Talk, with 'important' written over the front in big red letters.


The letter, dated 2nd June, said that there'll be works at my local exchange on 7th June, and there will be a slight interruption to my broadband service!


So, it seems the letter telling me that there was going to be a problem arrives the moment the problem appears to be resolved. Not exactly the most timely of communications!


It also begs the question why they chose the slowest method of communication available. They know my email address, so they could easily emailed me with this information. It would also have been helpful if information could have been put on their web site. It would been even better if the people that I spoke to on the phones were aware of this, so I didn't have to waste time on a fruitless phone call.


I'll continue to monitor my modem, so I'm not assuming this is over yet, but I'm encouraged that the connection seems to have been steady since 9am this morning.


But it's been a wake up call - I'll be looking around at other providers, and maybe it's time to get fibre - but it will be unlikely to be with Talk Talk, after this disappointing experience of their communication and the 'service' agents.

AndyPK

Assuming it's the post offices fault for not deliverying the letter.

Maybe you have communication by email turned off or maybe they think emails would be ignored.