You might remember a little while back I wrote a piece entitled “Fuck you Virginmedia” when my ISP of 20+ years decided it didn’t want my business and ignominiously dumped my account onto TalkTalk.
Well that was in February, so you can’t say that I haven’t given them a fair crack of the whip. Having said that, I can’t have been that confident because I’ve never used my TalkTalk email on the basis that if they turned out to be a shower of shit, my gmail account was ISP independent. Changing all the sites that use your email address is a real pain in the arsey-enda.
I’m now with BT broadband. Why? Well, I refer you to another article entitled “Fuck you Intelligent Finance” which you might recall dealt with my bank of over 20 years telling me they no longer wanted to deal with with current accounts and would I kindly fuck off elsewhere. Well, I did and went through the hassle of moving all my standing orders and direct debits. 29 in all. every one of them without a problem except for – you guessed it – TalkTalk.
I gave TalkTalk 4 weeks notice to change my direct debit. They didn’t. They tried to take it out of my old account and it bounced. Then they rang me up and told me I’d failed to pay them. When I tried to explain it was down to them not actioning the letter I sent them a month previously, the operator told me she was too busy to talk me, told me to ring back later and then hung up.
I tried to use ‘live chat’ on their web site to clear up the problem. Guess what? It doesn’t work. So I sent them an email instead. They didn’t read it and sent me a standard reply telling me I hadn’t paid. It’s a direct debit. They initiate it not me. I wrote another email. They sent me the same reply! They did suggest I make a card payment to clear the balance. I tried this. 5 times. Guess what? The screen doesn’t work. At this point I am getting seriously worried about an ISP whose own web site doesn’t work!
I rang them up . The call was chargeable. On the third attempt I actually got someone who seemed to know what they were doing. She took my card details, told me that she would put a note on the account so I didn’t get charged a £10 penalty for a failed direct debit. She admitted that TalkTalk only actioned the change of direct debit the day before they tried to take the money. If this was true, then it should have worked!
A couple of days ago, I got my bill through for this month. Guess what? £10 penalty charge for a failed direct debit. At this point I had already initiated the switch to BT. TalkTalk say that the £10 has been credited back to the account. I’ll believe that when the payment goes out on the 24th…
That was another – chargeable – telephone call. The operator said as I was leaving they had to read me certain terms and conditions. As I was paying for the call I told them to sod off – especially as they had already read them to me the last time I called.
The moral of the story is simple : If you are thinking of getting your broadband from TalkTalk then don’t. They are an absolute shower of shit…
Insult me directly by eMail
Dioclese 
I've always found I can resolve issues with Talktalk by sending communications directly to the boss at Dido.Harding@talktalkplc.com
She seems to have the capacity to get the staff performing properly
I have noticed a habit amongst the IT cognoscenti to slate BT Broadband. I do believe this is just another example of a certain sector denigrating something widespread/popular just to show the plebs how discerning and knowledgeable they are.
I was a systems programmer back in the late '70's and added hardware engineering to my software engineering skills since. I have used BT broadband for over 10 years, and have stuck with them because I have found them very reliable. I have had a couple of problems which were dealt with in an exemplary manner, with follow-up calls to both my mobile and landline to ensure that all was well.
That is only my experience, I know, but I certainly won't change what has always worked well, until such time when it doesn't. I wish you well with them.
To be honest Mr D, it makes you want to burn shit, doesn't it? It always helps.
BT offered me unlimited broadband for £5 a month for the first year and then it goes up to about £16 which is still less than Virgin and TalkTalk were quoting me. As far as I can see I couldn't lose on that deal.
So at the moment I'm paying 75% less and the speed is around 40% faster. I guess it helps keep the cost down that I pay BT for my landline as well and I get a deal on that by paying a year up front. Quids in…
Also remember that if there is a problem on the line then it doesn't matter who the ISP is because BT operate and maintain the line so I'll be dealing with BT anyway but without the middle man.
Companies are not allowed to charge for customer service calls anymore, so if they're still doing it, you can bill them for it.
When you posted the original blog about Virgin, I wrote in the comments that I had a poor opinion of TalkTalk. From what you write today it looks like they are the same old shower of shit I dealt with. In my case I was promised a £35 new customer sign up bonus. Long story short it took fucking months of emails and telephone calls to resolve. I still think they are a bunch of shysters. Ihope you have a better time with “the old firm”.
I hope so too – although I have to say that when the service switched over, I had no internet connection because I had to reconfigure my router. BT sent me an email telling me that they were now connected but of course I couldn't receive it because I had no internet connection because I needed to reconfigure the route. See the logic bomb here? Happily as soon as the connection dropped I connected via a hot spot and got the email. One thing for BT – they give you nationwide hotspot connection at no cost to you. The next logic bomb was that because I didn't want a home hub, they wouldn't tell me how to configure the router. They said ask Netgear. Netgear said ask BT. Thankfully I found a web page that told me how to do it that was nothing to do with either company! Duh! 45 minutes of frustration, but I got there in the end. Note for BT – just tell people they need to change the login ID to broadband.user@btbroadband.com and you'll save them a shedload of trouble… FYI you'll find it on http://www.filesaveas.com/jarviser/netgearalternative.html#type3
Mr D, please check your spam box and see what happened to my attempted previous comments about ISPs. (Please choose the one with the latest time stamp if you want to publish it).
No sign of it I'm afraid. You can always mail me direct – dioclese@gmail.com
@Angry Ranting Man
Is that a suicide note on his last post yesterday?
Rickie
hmm…seems to have worked this time.
No it's gone again – it was about 300 words – maybe the google platform has a comment word limit?
↑↑↑ Well that worked.
Let's try posting it for you then – got the email…
Entopy wrote :
As far as I'm concerned all the mainstream fixed-line broadband providers, such as BT, Virgin Media, Talk Talk and Sky can now stick their over-inflated and complicated price package deals up their greedy arses.
In 2006 when the South Korean Huewei Wi-Fi company set up shop in Britain as a the moble phone company “3” the same year they quickly went into the dongle ISP business and offered pay-as-you-go or contract dongle Wi-fi with fixed amount download Internet data. Expensive at first (£25 for monthly 15GB of data). A year later when the price came down to £15 per month for 15GB, and my £25 monthly unlimited data fixed line BT contract came up for renewal, I decided to give 3 company a trial. I quickly found that their 5MB per second Wi-Fi download speed and limited 15GB data amount was rather crap and not enough for my needs (downloading streaming video and games quickly ate all my data). I contacted them and asked about the price for a best private deal contract for unlimited data. Not possible they said, but how about 40GB data for £25 per month on contract? Also, they said, a new mast is shortly to be installed in your area with up to 20MB per second Wi-Fi download speed available. I decided to trial deal.
Fast forward to 2015. Year on year, 3 company kept knocking off a few quid (as a loyalty bonus) when I renewed my contract. Today I am on a roll-over contract, and for £8 per month I still get my 40GB of data – with an added bonus of up to 40MB per second download speed nowadays. I hear customers with them who live in the Maidenhead area, where 3 company have their HQ and main transmitters, can get up to 90MB/ps Wi-Fi Internet download speeds. Amazing!
The only negative side about 3 is they have customer services working out of Mumbai, India and they are all taught the hard sell of other 3 products when you have to contact them about any connection problems. But at £8 per month for my enough needs Wi-Fi broadband from them, who am to complain about that?
I thought the same. Let's hope we are both wrong.
No idea why it kept disappearing but we got there in the end…
I have never found myself disagreeing with you ever Ted… so I am shocked to find myself doing so now. I was with BT for 15 years, for the last 2 years my broadband functioned for less than 50% of the time, yet I was paying treble what new customers paid for a better service, they messed up my direct debits so often I ended up with £300 in charges, they told me the malfunction on my broadband was my fault, for 18 months even though it was NOT my fault and I knew it. I lost my rag and complained they then charged me more money and still refused to fix my broadband. The week before my supply switched to the post office they sent me a new hub, and attempted to charge me £50.00 I sent it back with a label stuck over it saying F*CK OFF . I had never missed a payment AFTER I STOPPED THEIR DIRECT DEBITS ANY PAID OVER THE COUNTER. All the missed payments prior to that were their errors. and I ended up after complaints to trading standards having all my bank charges reimbursed and 2 years of broadband payments. So as far as I am concerned BT could be the last supplier on earth and I still would not touch them with a barge pole.