TalkTalk Customer Poll

HeatherM17

Since my fiance got Talktalk at his house I cannot access my emails at all (hotmail) or use msn messenger. Phoned up helplines and they were absolutely useless. Kept going round in circles advising me about firewalls and security settings (which I had already checked). Internet connection is very, very slow in general and some other sites don't work at all either.

Thank goodness I'm with Virgin at my house... much better in every respect!!

cbrown7

Few issues but only niggles really.

My connection usually runs at over 4Mb/s since LLU, sometimes speed drops due to high noise levels but a disconn and recon or modem/router restart normally fixes that.

I pay around £21 a month ALL IN for calls, line rental and broadband.

BT keep telling me (via postal mailings) that I'm not getting value for money from my present supplier - how would they know!! They are more expensive, even with their introductory offers.

For that money I don't have a problem with TalkTalk.

malinou

I was 5 months without Broadband. I spent about 60 hours on the phone and made 12 visits to the Carphone shops being told different things. I was told I could make free phone calls abroad, as I did not have the internet and I was not told I had to dial a special number I made phone calls which were charged. I had an accident on the way back from one of the shops because I had been one and a half hour arguing with them.

Now I am connected but I have been without the internet for one week. And sometimes I have to give up as the connection is unsatisfactory or does not work at all.

Their call centres.. They were a joke. They told me the same thing over and over again, promising a connection for a certain date and then telling me I had not been told that at all.

I will never never go through them again. Even though it is cheap and I cannot afford to loose money,it is not worth the trouble.

jonboysez

I recently subscribed to Talk Talk's broadband package beacause of the supposedly great deal they were offering, but against my better knowledge - I had heard about the horror stories about long phone calls trying to contact the helpline etc etc but being quite computer literate I thought it would not affect me as I would be very unlikely to be calling the helpline. Oh what a mistake! I never got round to even installing the broadband router! Talk talk's engineer routed my phone line through their equipment in my local BT exchange (about quarter of a mile from my house). My phone stopped ringing when receiving an incoming call, and when I made a call myself I often got a crossed line with someone who lived near me who had also just changed to Talk Talk. I informed Talk Talk and was texted back that the fault had been fixed - but it had not! I contacted them twice more each time they texting back that the fault had been fixed, but they never fixed it and my phone would still not ring when receiving incoming calls. In the end I cancelled my contract under their cooling off rules - they sent me a bill but I refused to pay it telling them that they had not fulfilled their contract to me - the bill was cancelled as far as I am aware. The only good thing to come out of it is I got a modem for free. I changed my phone line back to BT and now get my broadband from Plus.net and its been great so far - 2 months no problems whatsoever!

blueparasol

Generally fine - haven't had problems anything like the scale of some of the above. Like fluffyduck, I couldn't get their modem (useless Speedtouch one) to work at the beginning - complete waste of time, but everything fine once I reverted back to my own (and I didn't have to put up with the rubbish that comes with the CD). Had some downtime recently owing to installation of new equipment in the exchange; fine when the engineers were dealing with it, but the customer service were hopeless as usual. Main gripe I had with this was the quality of their admin - ticket numbers went missing/weren't entered/entered wrongly, vital info ditto, so I kept having to go over the same ground each time; I was even told several times I'd never reported the problems before despite having two different engineers visit both me and the exchange! However, they did at least call me back almost every time.

As others have said, there's no point ringing customer services. I've never needed to use Dunstone's own email - I've found the email on the site usually seems to get someone who knows what they're talking about, although I've had to be firm about it a couple of times when I've had fobbing-off answers, particularly when it was clear the correspondent hadn't read a word of my email - got an apology for that, though!

Plus points:
1) It's cheap (obviously!) - there really is no other package to touch it for this.
2) Now very fast since equipment upgraded (was 2.2, now close to 6).
3) Calls to customer service are now free.
4) Don't really seem to have the problems with disconnecting/loud phone noises others have mentioned (BTW, if you're having the latter, try sticking a microfilter into all your phone sockets, even ones that aren't being used - and yes, I know they aren't supposed to need them, but trust me, they probably do).

Minuses:
1) Any of us loyal customers who joined early had to fork out £30 for a modem that's now free - not very fair, IMO.
2) Customer service generally still rubbish* and tech support not much better.
3) Very misleading info about their new packages on their website - the ones that include mobile calls don't include broadband!! (*This is one time that customer service came up trumps - guy I got hold of explained it all to me and gave his honest opinion that the new packages weren't worth getting, and would result in no broadband, loss of all connection for 10 days, and fee for getting reconnected to a broadband line.)

I do feel sorry for all the people who've had such awful problems. I just can't understand why TT can't get a bit of joined-up thinking going on between their departments - the service really shouldn't vary so much between customers (not even between places, it seems, which would be understandable) Also, it's really time they sorted out their call centres - like pretty much everyone else, I've found the English/Scottish/Irish/American/Canadian people (mostly engineers) I've talked to have been totally on the ball, but I'm afraid the Indian ones have been almost 100% useless, with the exception of the chap with the packages info. Unfortunately, as the person from Carphone Warehouse said earlier, this is probably the price we pay for cheap deals.

Conclusion? Wouldn't recommend them for complete novices, and definitely wouldn't recommend using their modems. There are others on the market that are far easier to set up. However, as they do save you a heck of a lot of money, it may be worth anyone who's a novice/having problems going and using some of that money to get in a local techie to set it all up. Once it gets moving at all, the problems, if there are any, seem to reduce.

poi

I was an early adopter, switching from the morons at NTL.
Terrible delays in activating both phone and broadband. Drop out on both phone and broadband.

I managed to get out of the contract early on the grounds they weren't providing the contracted service. I told them I was switching back to BT, so TalkTalk cut me off rather than transfer my line!

I'm paying more, but at least my service is reliable, and much faster. TalkTalk was 2M, BT is 4.5M.

Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

jo.bradley

Talk Talk Broadband services leaves a lot to be desired. I found that every time there was a tecnical fault somewhere in the country (not anywhere near where I live) I lost my connection, this then meant a long time on the phone to technical support. There customer service leaves a lot to be desired also. I Have been told by customer services that there is nothing stopping us from moving to another company if we are not happy, and I was never promised a fault free service. I was told this after the same fault occuring time after time. Talk Talk are a constant headache.

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jo.bradley

Too early to judge!!!

emjay653

Originally had a BT line with 512 BB supplied by TalkTalk. Didn't have a single problem, so was suckered into moving everything to TT. The move completed without a single hitch. Quickly dumped the speedtouch modem they sent and replaced it with my own wireless router.

For a couple of months everything was fine, then the problems began. I lost my BB connection, so called the Indian helpline. One of the first questions was, what modem do you have, and as soon as I answered that I was using my own, it was "Sorry, we don't support that. Goodbye". I then had to hunt around for the modem they sent and connect that up. After doing so, I called them again, and this time it was try uninstalling the modem/reinstalling it, to which I replied it happened before I'd even installed the modem, but nope they weren't interested in my own modem, so I duly did this, several times in one call, still no BB. Went through all the usual hoopla, take the faceplate off the master socket, plug only the BB modem in, etc and still no modem. At which point it was "Ok Sir, we'll get someone from Tech Support to call you back within 2 days". 2 days later no call, so called them again and went through the same rigmarole, even down the 2 day Tech Support. This went on repeatedly throughout December, so I had no BB connection for an entire month!! It eventually came back to life in Jan (I think Tech Support must shut down in Dec for a month).

Worked ok for another couple of months, then my phone started ringing constantly, not the usual intermittent ringtone. Phoned TT again, and was told it my phone and try another. Tried another, same issue, so back on the phone, "Yes Sir, we'll get an engineer out to have a look within 2 days, but may cost you if we don't find a fault". As I knew there was a fault, I told them to go ahead. I was told 2 days. 2 days later and the fault was still there, "Yes Sir, an engineer will be sent out within 2 days". 2 days later and still the problem persisited. Phoned again and this time was told "Yes, our engineer found a fault at the exchange and will fix it within a couple of days". About a week later it was fixed. Great says I, until I noticed my BB was quite slow. Checked it out and it was running at 512Kb, so back on the phone to my "pals" at TT. "Yes Sir, you're line can't handle anything faster than 512k", to which I told them that it had been working fine at 2Mb until they'd screwed up the exchange. Was then told that they could up the line, but I may experience packet loss. Told them to go ahead and that's where I currently stand, several months later down the road, with a BB that for no apparent reason drops off the grid and has to be rebooted.

I now advise anyone I speak to, who is considering a new ISP, to avoid them like the plague.

GazzaBryan

Have been a TT broadband customer for over 2 years and overall have been very happy.

The only real problem I had was when I moved home and this was originally done through the Indian call centre.

I managed to find a number that gave me access to English call centre and they resolved the problems promptly.

I have reccommended to a number of family and friends who have saved money and been happy with the service.