The TalkTalk support-go-round

[familychoice]

We had no internet access for a few days so reluctantly phoned TalkTalk support first thing yesterday.

The first call, lasting about 45 minutes (most of it on hold) ended with the agent unable to run a line test or fix the issue, and so promised to call back 'within 20 minutes'.

After 5 hours later with no call from them, I called them back to find out what was going on, and had to go through the whole half an hour name, age and sexual preference check list before finding they had no record of my previous support call. After an hour or so, mostly on hold, naturally I was passed on to 'level 2' support, and again told I'd be called back immediately as they couldn't fix the issue.

No call back.

Called back again a bit later...blah blah...and a couple more times...before finally being told that there was a problem with the line and I would have to pay £99.99 for them to fix this as it was a BT issue. Asked to speak to a manger who confirmed that there was an unresolved problem on the line and that we'd either have to deal with BT direct (despite the fact we're not their customer, TalkTalk are) to sort out the fault or they would do this for 100 smackers.

So we called BT who ran a test and told us there were NO problems on the line.

Back to TalkTalk who not surprisingly had absolutely no records of any of the previous 3 hours of calls to them, so started all over again. Eventually I got very cross and demanded they sent an engineer to fix the issue. I was then put on hold for 30 minutes, and when they got back told me they didn't have an engineer that covered our area, which is 1 mile from the county town. Half an hour later they found one, but repeated warnings that we'd have to pay £50 or £99.99 if there was a problem with the line.

We were on the phone for about four and a half hours yesterday.  During one particularly long call we had to change phones a couple of times as the batteries had run down

Switched on this morning and all working fine so rang support to cancel the engineers visit (otherwise I'd have to pay £7,000 for a callout fee). "I can't cancel the engineer that's another department". Despite my protestations that they were the ones that had booked it obviously it was then up to me to contact another department to cancel this.

Etc.

[Jem]

Are there any products or companies you don't end up having problems with FC?

[sickpuppy]

I think everyone has problems with TalkTalk. In the kingdom of poo telcos they are king shitty, leader of all that is crap.

[Steve Lampkins]

Maybe they were just testing a particularly harsh configuration of this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13309720

[familychoice]

Are there any products or companies you don't end up having problems with FC?

Not many! The old iPhone saved my bacon while I was offline email-wise so I'm pretty chuffed with that purchase

[Dom]

Maybe they were just testing a particularly harsh configuration of this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13309720

Damn, I was gonna post that.

/goes back under his rock

[Dom]

I was going to sign up with TalkTalk when I move into my flat, simply because Plusnet (while pretty good) offered rubbish on-peak bandwidth limits whereas TalkTalk seemed to be better in that regard. Plusnet have changed their tune since then, and now offer much better monthly limits, so if you can break your contract with TalkTalk and switch providers without having to sacrifice your first born, I'd do it.

They actually respond to support requests on their forum and Twitter too.

[familychoice]

I was going to sign up with TalkTalk when I move into my flat, simply because Plusnet (while pretty good) offered rubbish on-peak bandwidth limits whereas TalkTalk seemed to be better in that regard. Plusnet have changed their tune since then, and now offer much better monthly limits, so if you can break your contract with TalkTalk and switch providers without having to sacrifice your first born, I'd do it.

They actually respond to support requests on their forum and Twitter too.

They couldn't give us a date for when the engineer would call, so we could have been offline for weeks - in fact when we moved here and tried transferring our account they kept us offline for 3 months and it was only after a whole day on the phone that it got sorted.

I'd decided that if it was still offline then I'd ring and get a mac code today, but as it's working I'll leave it alone - next time it goes off though I'll close it. I've heard good things about Plusnet, so they were on the list.

[m00min]

When me and the OH moved into our first place BT managed to cock up the line, as it was their fault they forwarded the new number for free to my mobile. Guess who the first call was from?

Talk Talk: "Hi, would you like to sign up for our interweb thing?"
Me "Lady, I don't even have a phone line yet. Also, I wouldn't touch Talk Talk with a shitty stick."

My boss had fun with them too. She found herself without a connection one morning. When she phoned them they told her she'd canceled and it would take ten days to reconnect, the same amount of time as if she'd signed up somewhere else so that's what she did.

[Mike@TheWhippinpost]

Yeah, and try ringing the sales line - straight through.

Let's face it, they're all as bad as each other. They have all these analysts, graphs and real-time displays showing call volumes, and despite all these years of call centre operations, it's worse, not better.

They know what's happening, so they must be doing it deliberately.

All this blocks about privatised companies being more efficient, blah blah blah - sure, if spending half a working day doing their job for them, unpaid, is what they mean, I guess they are.

[robwhizz]

Might be worth ringing up for a MAC code anyway.

I used to be on unlimited broadband in my old house, with Pipex. I moved house a couple of years ago and it took them a couple of months to get broadband on. Pipex got bought by Tiscalli, and then TalkTalk and stopped offering unlimited bandwidth. For some reason my account always showed an error when I looked at my bandwidth and I could download over the 30Gb cap, so it didn't bother me.
In the last year or so my connection has been terrible. Can't use iplayer, youtube is dreadful, and downloads are pathetic. Also, my bill now clearly shows a 30Gb cap.
I live in a village with only BT wholesale at the exchange. The only ISP willing to offer unlimited was BT. To get BT broadband though you have to also have BT phone line. I currently have mine with sky and it's cheaper than BT. The numbers on the website look good until you go through the order process and BT stick on line rental at something stupid like £13.75 per month - I pay less than that for line rental and unlimited calls together.
Tried Sky, TalkTalk and a few others and nobody would give me unlimited. TalkTalk wanted £45 per month for 80GB cap!
I phoned BT and the woman simply replied 'oh' when I told her they were more expensive than what I was currently paying. I asked if I could have just broadband and she said no. A brainwave hit me. I asked if I could just have broadband if I was a company. She said yes.
So, I figured I would have unlimited business broadband and stick the bill through the company.

I ring up Pipex (part of TalkTalk who quoted me £45 pm with cap) and ask for my MAC code. Chap asks why I'm leaving. I explain that I only have BT wholesale as on option and nobody will offer me unlimited. He checks the line, agrees with everything I say and then says "What about if I make you account unlimited?"
So I say I'm not sure how can offer that when your parent company can't.
He replies with something about special circumstances where he can offer it. Then offers to reduce the bill to £15 per month!

Of course I took him up on the offer.

[Mike@TheWhippinpost]

Now this winds me up, robwhizz - I have the exact same problem with regard to bandwidth; hence why I'm still (relunctantly) with Virgin. It does unlimited, although it throttles at peak times if you go over some unspecified limit.

But what reeeally winds me up are the BT phonecalls and mailshots begging me to come back, offering ridiculously low rates (the last one was £5.99/mth) ordinary customers don't get. The bandwidth cap, though, is sommat stoopid like 10Gb so still no good.

So in addition to the efficiency blag, described above, there's also the subsidy blag so often-used by this Govt to argue privatisation: "Why should one sector of society subsidise this sector..."

But it's OK that privatised companies do it, and hide it.

[Dom]

TalkTalk wanted £45 per month for 80GB cap!

I think Plusnet offer 60Gb per month for £11.50 per month. If you want to add their "pro" add-on (which prioritises the otherwise low-priority traffic, like P2P etc) then that's another fiver. So £16.50 a month for 60Gb on-peak, unlimited off-peak (midnight - 8am) and all traffic types prioritised.

Now this winds me up, robwhizz - I have the exact same problem with regard to bandwidth; hence why I'm still (relunctantly) with Virgin. It does unlimited, although it throttles at peak times if you go over some unspecified limit.

I think it's about 7Gb per day during on-peak hours. At least it was last time a friend of mine let me loose with his 20Mb Virgin line for 12 hours. They throttled the speed back to 5Mb from 20Mb, but still, you can't complain. I think I managed about 50Gb worth of downloads in 12 hours. If I could get Virgin where I live, I would in a heartbeat.

[familychoice]

I dread to think what we pay, it's something to BT for the line rental, then phone calls and broadband to Talktalk but at their old price which was probably double what you can get it for now.

I've never run out of bandwidth, I think I was on 'unlimited' before and that's supposed to have carried over. To be honest I don't watch any online TV or listen to the radio so it's doubtful I'd go over anyway.

It's working, and at a reasonable speed so as I'm catching up with work I'll stick for now. I'll check out the competition though and next time it goes I'll ing and get my MAC code.

[Jem]

It pisses me off that we pay nearly £60 a quarter to BT and only about £3 of that is phone calls!

[Dom]

I think we're with Tiscali for phone at the moment, and we basically pay nothing as the first hour of every landline call is free. And how often do you stay on the phone for more than an hour? (Unless you're ringing TalkTalk support..)

[Jem]

I can't think of the last time I stayed on the phone for more than 5 mins, let alone an hour.

[Steve Lampkins]

Never had a landline of my own.




And my employer pays my phone bill anyway.

[Matt]

Im with Sky, never had an issue with them in 3 years, it costs me £5 a month for unlimited internet - so my bill with 2 tv packages (basic) HD (+£10) and line rental and calls is around £50. I get good speeds too because everyone else is on cable

[familychoice]

Im with Sky, never had an issue with them in 3 years, it costs me £5 a month for unlimited internet - so my bill with 2 tv packages (basic) HD (+£10) and line rental and calls is around £50. I get good speeds too because everyone else is on cable

We could have 'free internet' as we've got a Sky telly thing but we're 'out of the area for special'

[Matt]

Im with Sky, never had an issue with them in 3 years, it costs me £5 a month for unlimited internet - so my bill with 2 tv packages (basic) HD (+£10) and line rental and calls is around £50. I get good speeds too because everyone else is on cable

We could have 'free internet' as we've got a Sky telly thing but we're 'out of the area for special'

Free is not unlimited tho

Its to do with your exchange I think.

[robwhizz]

We could have 'free internet' as we've got a Sky telly thing but we're 'out of the area for special'

You're probably in the boat as me. Exchange only serves a small number of house holds, so there is no value in Sky (or anyone else) putting equipment in there. You are then stuck with BT Wholesale.

Pop your postcode into SamKnows to find your exchange and see what's in it.
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search

My exchange serves just 650 residential and 50 commercial. My folks' exchange serves 23,000 residential and 500 commercial.

[familychoice]

Our connection disappeared over a week ago. Rang TalkTalk, went through all the checks and they 'escalated' it to the next level with a promised call back. Didn't happen, did it all again. Didn't happen so kept on hold for an hour while they 'booked an engineer' (BT as their own don't cover our area). Call back with visit time promised. 2 days later nothing, and they had no recollection of the call. Tried again but their 'tools were down'.

So, after 5 days asked for MAC code. Kept trying support, nothing so signed up with BT. 10gb and free calls for £9.60 per month (only £1 per gb if I go over) and free £90 router. Date if 1st sept for connection (takes longer as we're moving calls back from TalkTalk as well).

Back to TalkTalk support as we're still paying them for a service until then an more if the same. After 20 hours on the phone they reveal that they won't fix the issue as BT have 'grabbed' the line and put their tag on it. Whatever that means.

Will now call BT to see what they can do, but it looks like we'll be offline for nearly a month, assuming there are no issues on connection day.

Smart.

[familychoice]

Using my phone to post so it's automatically taking my beautiful prose and spellchecking it into meaningless drivel.

[Steve Lampkins]

Wow, what did you do in a previous life?


Hope you get it sorted double quick.

[familychoice]

Wow, what did you do in a previous life?


Hope you get it sorted double quick.

thanks Steve. To be honest I've given up worrying about it, after all the hacks, no phone or web connections, server problems, software issues, dying hardware, violent non-paying clients and all the other delightful things that have popped up over the last few months to make my working life so delightful i'm taking the hint and seeing if I can sort out a new career, part time until it takes off. It'll mean less/no money for a while but I've earned bugger all this summer anyway.

I'll still support existing clients but lifes too short to spend it on the phone to support.

[familychoice]

Not sure who I was last time but I do get flashbacks of only having one ball.

[Dom]

[+1]


Wow, that's pretty sucky. I can't believe all these things constantly happen to you! I'll have no internet at home for about three weeks as of next weekend, but that's just because I have to wait that long for a BT engineer to install a new line. Well, the line is there but there's no dial tone. I've got a horrible feeling that I'll wait three weeks for an engineer to come out, only to find that BT could have just flipped a switch at their end.

Still, that's nothing to complain about compared to your woes! I hope everything is sorted out soon.

[Charisma Bypass]

Payg mobile dongle.  May be problematic if you live in the sticks, but they are useful in an exergency.

[familychoice]

Thanks for the replies.

Tried BT and they can't speed things up. They checked my postcode ANC also confirmed that there isn't a dongle option available that would work.

Back to Mrs FC's 'jobs to do around the house' list then...