talktalk long rant

[Carl911]

Thought id rant on here as I just finished spending over 2 hours on the phone to talktalk without any resolve whats so ever.
To cut a long story shorter,
three months ago I rang talktalk and asked what broadband/phone package they could do for me.
They offered something called 'essential' which is £24.52 p/m.
This was a saving on my existing provider so I agreed to swap over my services.
Several weeks later i get a welcome package outlining my package to be £39.
I immediately rang to report the mistake and they promised that this was merely an error and my bill would be correct.
First month bill is charged at £39.
I ring up and question the mistake and they re-emburse the amount.
Second month the same again.
They then say, my exchange does not have there hardware so i therefore should not have be offered the essentials package which is only £24.52, however as they did , they honour it and offer to reemburse the difference over the next few bills.
Third month, same again, no reduction, and the full amount.
I ring up and say I have had enough and want to cancel the service as one they have not billed me correct once in the three months and have shown no sign of doing so. My service has been terrible, with very poor speed and constant drop outs. on top of that they billed me for a connection charge they said they would not, a service enginner they said would not be charged and now a cancelation fee of £123.36 to add salt to the wound.
Then to further insult me they say i accepted the terms and conditions and they now have done nothing wrong.
The whole service has been done verbally and i have complained each and every time there was a account error and up unto i cancelled today they offer to reimburse there mistake.
Now they have back tracked and say its all my fault even though I know full well I was told completely different on half a dozen phonecalls over the last 3 months.
To say I am angy is putting it mildly.
I will be writing to the data protection office for a full copy of my phone records which should back up all there mis-informed information although I wonder if the important calls will have erased themselves.
My advice to anyone thinking of going to talktalk, either dont as they are worse than useless or else make absolutely sure on your first bill that it is correct. If in any dount, get in writing its been corrected and to the new amount or else cancel your contract in the first 4 weeks.
Unfortunately for me I seem to have to slipped into the helpless idiot consumer that I have been. My nievety has cost me a lot of money, wasted time on calls, loss of connection and frustration.
Lesson learned.

Carl

 

[antihero]

Lesson learned.

Carl

Could have been easily avoided by reading one of many thousand threads on the interweb regarding Talk Talks uselessness.

They are often found in the foyer of my local supermarket trying to recruit unsuspecting individuals into signing up. When i've been collared, I always respond with "you get what you pay for......." then wander off.

I have yet to hear anyone sing their praises.

 

[Nikon Ken]

Carl,

Write to Chief Exec . Email address here.

I would detail all conversations and state that you hold them responsible for breach of contract, as they have not delivered what they promised at the price they promised. Threaten them with all your costs if they don't resolve quickly and to your satisfaction.

Good luck.

Ken

 

[Garry Edwards]

Carl,

Write to Chief Exec . Email address here.

I would detail all conversations and state that you hold them responsible for breach of contract, as they have not delivered what they promised at the price they promised. Threaten them with all your costs if they don't resolve quickly and to your satisfaction.

Good luck.

Ken

Many thanks for that. I'm having problems with them myself and have just sent the following to their chief exec. Let's hope he answers, no other b****r will...

Hi,

I'm writing to you because your complaints dept has ignored the email below, which you can see was sent on the 4th January. Perhaps they can't cope with the number of complaints or perhaps they just don't care about customers. Whatever their reasons may be, I want a full and complete answer, so it is now your problem. Please respond.

Incidentally, since writing that email the problems with your Company have continued; The new router did arrive and intitially it worked, although the connection speed was unbelievably slow. When it stopped working altogether I rang your customer service department, the techie wasn't easy to understand because of his very strong accent but he seemed to be helpful. He explained that the router should have been configured to suit my postcode but wasn't, and I had to set it up manually with his help. The call wasted 54 minutes of my time - I say wasted because even though the router then worked, it was so slow that it was unusable.

A second call resulted in me being told that the previous techie had set the speed to just 0.5Mb, when it should have been 5.5Mb. The techie told me that he had now set it correctly.

It was a vast improvement for a few days but is now very slow once more, so I am still not getting the service I pay for.

Regards,


Garry Edwards
-----Original Message-----
From: garry@photolearn.co.uk [mailto:garry@photolearn.co.uk]
Sent: 04 January 2011 15:11
To: customerservices@opal.co.uk
Subject: FAO HLRT: Complaint about appalling customer service/lies


I have business broadband with you, telephone No. ****, your customer ref: 01043723.

I rang your technical support on the 22nd December because my internet service had gone down. After checks at your end, I was told that the router was faulty and that I needed to buy a replacement.

I pointed out that I was not prepared to pay for a replacement router as the router is supplied as part of your service, i.e. I pay for a service, not a router, and therefore it is your responsibility to supply equipment that works. This was agreed and I was told that a replacement router with 2 filters would be sent immediately and would be delivered either on the 23rd December (if possible) or on the 24th December.

There was no delivery.

Your office was then closed, I finally got through to them again on the 29th December. I was told that the reason for non delivery was that your courier tried to deliver 3 times without reply. This was a lie, I pointed out that not only had I made sure that someone had been here (as we desperately needed the router) but also the front door is covered by CCTV, and the CCTV clearly shows no attempts at delivery. I was then told that it would be sent again, for possible delivery on the 30th December, but certainly no later than the morning of the 4th January.

Meanwhile, I am trying to run an internet based business with nothing more than a very slow (and expensive) service routed through my Blackberry 'phone)

There was no delivery this morning so I rang your 'customer service' dept at 12.04 this afternoon, eventually getting through to them at 12.27. I was told that the delivery is the responsibility of your agent Netlink Direct, and that I must ring them. I couldn't see why I should do the chasing but there you go, so I rang them.

Netlink Direct told me that I need to ring DHL, not them, and gave me the number.

I rang DHL, who told me that they have nothing to deliver to me, so I rang Netlink Direct once more.

Netlink Direct then checked and said that they had no instructions from you, so I should ring you.

I rang you again, and eventually got through, I spoke to someone called Jamie, who was courteous but useless, he told me that it was definately out for delivery and that all that he could tell me was that it would be delivered within the next 48 hours. I told him that I wanted to speak to his manager and he said that he would pass me through, but it seems that his manager declined to speak with me. After a further fruitless conversation with Jamie he finally passed me on to John Donnelly.

Mr. Donnelly told me that it had been re-despatched on the 29th December but had been returned because there was a query with the delivery address. This was clearly another lie, as I had checked, on the 29th December, that you had the correct address. He said that his records showed that the reason that DHL had no knowledge of the delivery was that it had in fact been sent to Home Delivery Network for delivery, not to DHL. He said that he would ring them while I held on. He then said that he had spoken to Home Delivery Network but that they had refused to speak to him as he is not the customer, which I found pretty incredible.

I then rang Home Delivery Network, the person I spoke to was helpful and said that as you are their clients they would not have refused to speak to you. He checked details of the delivery and said that they had nothing to deliver to me. I then asked whether what he was saying was that Opal had not sent it to them, and he confirmed that this was so and that I should ring Opal.

I rang yet again, and when I finally got through I asked for John Donnelly, only to be told that he was at lunch, I suppose that that was possible if he was having a very late lunch. I explained the situation yet again to the woman I was speaking to, she confirmed that the router had not in fact been sent but that she was now arranging for it to be sent and that I could ring DHL in the morning to check progress, She also told me that the reason that it was not delivered on the 23rd or 24th December was not that there was nobody at the address, but because of 'adverse weather conditions' - another lie, as all of the snow had gone before those dates.

Even if this router is finally delivered tomorrow, and assuming that it results in my broadband service finally working again, the standard of service I have received from Opal defies description. I have been consistently lied to by a number of different people, so it is self evident that lying to customers (instead of admitting to mistakes and putting them right).

In addition to the major inconvenience and loss of business due to Opal's incompetence and lies, and the cost of using my Blackberry 'phone because of your failures, I have spent an unbelievable amount of time ringing you and your various suppliers, and hanging on listening to canned music for an average of 15 - 20 minutes each time. This is totally unacceptable and I look forward to your response, and your proposal re compensation for my losses.

Regards,



Garry Edwards

 

[neil_g]

setting routers up for a particular postcode.. thats a good one

 

[Carl911]

Carl,

Write to Chief Exec . Email address here.

I would detail all conversations and state that you hold them responsible for breach of contract, as they have not delivered what they promised at the price they promised. Threaten them with all your costs if they don't resolve quickly and to your satisfaction.

Good luck.

Ken

Thanks, ill add that in.

Carl

 

[Carl911]

Could have been easily avoided by reading one of many thousand threads on the interweb regarding Talk Talks uselessness.

They are often found in the foyer of my local supermarket trying to recruit unsuspecting individuals into signing up. When i've been collared, I always respond with "you get what you pay for......." then wander off.

I have yet to hear anyone sing their praises.

If it had been cheaper that would be something.
I was promised a contract of just under £25.
i have been with talk talk for 3 months and payed a minimum of £60 per month since starting and my calls have only been £5 a month of that fee.
the whole thing is not even funny its so bad.
I used to be with tiscali a few years ago and they were fine, had no problems.
Clearly what ever talktalk did it has seriously effected the quality of what was once a good service.
I went in thinking I would get a rebranded Tiscali service. how wrong was I.

 

[simonkit]

They're a nightmare when it comes to customer service, the Daily Mail certainly thinks so..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-customer-service-2010.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

I recently swapped to BT after having no internet for 3 weeks continous, customer service blamed router/filters & everything else they could think of - since the second I swapped to BT I've had a solid 4meg connection with no issues !!

Simon

 

[boliston]

I think I'd always try and avoid the huge "mass market" providers.
A common theme seems to be:
1) Useless call centre based tech support
2) They get "funny" if you use your own router
3) They lock you in for 12 months
4) They support censorship (remember the Scorpions record cover fiasco?)
5) They throttle connections
6) They run a proxy rather than direct port 80
7) They will likely NAT your connection
8) They will likely interleave your connection
(the list goes on...)

 

[onomatopoeia]

I take the approach that someone supplying voice calls, internet and (possibly) television probably doesn't know very much about the internet.

I use a telephone company for my telephone line
I use a television company for my television
I use a proper ISP for my internet.

I never have the sort of problems with speeds dropping, disconnects, general rubbishness and being mis-billed that get reported a lot on forums. This is not a co-incidence. Everyone using talktalkscali, take note.

If I have to talk to my ISP I get a technical person who doesn't have a script and that understands the internet, routeing and TCP/IP. Also, if you say "shibboleet" to anyone in tech support, they will transfer you to someone that knows at least two programming languages (really - one of the owners announced XKCD/806 compliance on his blog ).

 

[Gremlin]

They're a nightmare when it comes to customer service, the Daily Mail certainly thinks so..

I recently swapped to BT after having no internet for 3 weeks continous, customer service blamed router/filters & everything else they could think of - since the second I swapped to BT I've had a solid 4meg connection with no issues !!

Simon

Yep same here, 2 new routers and several promise of phone calls from their technical that never happened I gave up after a week without the internet and moved to BT
The biggest laugh was them telling me my internet would not work with the wireless router I had and I needed to refit the original wired one
Strange how on the changeover dat BT mamnage to connect me withut coming anywhere near the house

 

[wibbly]

I take the approach that someone supplying voice calls, internet and (possibly) television probably doesn't know very much about the internet.

I use a telephone company for my telephone line
I use a television company for my television
I use a proper ISP for my internet.

I used to take this view, but in the end succumbed to Sky as the deals they do are very good. For £7.50 I get upto 20mb speed which is unlimited. At any one time as a family we are running. 4 laptops, 2 x boxes and 4 phones all connected.

Initially we had poor connection speeds but spoke to someone in their technical department who ran me through a series of tests which gave me 14mb speed quickly and efficiently.

I've never had any issues of throttling back or downtime. Don't knock it, till you've tried it I say!

 

[Jelster]

I used to take this view, but in the end succumbed to Sky as the deals they do are very good. For £7.50 I get upto 20mb speed which is unlimited. At any one time as a family we are running. 4 laptops, 2 x boxes and 4 phones all connected.

Initially we had poor connection speeds but spoke to someone in their technical department who ran me through a series of tests which gave me 14mb speed quickly and efficiently.

I've never had any issues of throttling back or downtime. Don't knock it, till you've tried it I say!

The difference here is that Sky acquired a proper Internet company with an excellent network in the first place (Easynet who also owned UK Online). They have a proper UK call centre, and Easynet led the way in unbundling the BT exchange network (I worked for them for 8 years).

I don't know what it will be like now though as Easynet did an MBO earlier this year so some of those skills may have gone back with them.

Steve

Sent from my iPad using TP Forums

 

[Galaxy66]

Just to add our experience with Talk Talk.

We left for BT and they carried on billing us, despite many assurances from them that we would not receive any more bills they still came but became more demanding and threatening us with court action. Despite more letters and phone calls to them we were contacted by bailiffs demanding payment!! we contacted the ombudsman who told us word for word what to say in a letter to the bailiffs to delay any action, the ombudsman then took up the case with Talk Talk for us and we were eventually awarded costs and compensation for what we went through.

This was some time ago and it and many other similar cases at the time were blamed on the overwhelming response to their cheap BB and not having the staffing in administration and customer services to handle it.

Seems they have not improved much!.

 

[boliston]

I used to take this view, but in the end succumbed to Sky as the deals they do are very good. For £7.50 I get upto 20mb speed which is unlimited. At any one time as a family we are running. 4 laptops, 2 x boxes and 4 phones all connected.

Initially we had poor connection speeds but spoke to someone in their technical department who ran me through a series of tests which gave me 14mb speed quickly and efficiently.

I've never had any issues of throttling back or downtime. Don't knock it, till you've tried it I say!

Does the download speed ever reduce below 14mb at "peak" times? Some ISPs will actually use this as an excuse to overload their network. The download speed you get should be pretty close to the "BRAS rate" that you get allocated at the exchange. For example I have a 5.50M BRAS rate and normally get about 5.35mb/s and it varies from about 5.20mb/s about 5.40mb/s, but a big variation of more than 10-15% would mean something is wrong!

Also another thing to be wary of is the "ping" speed you get.

I normally get about 14ms-17ms ping, but I have seen some people report connections with over 50ms ping times to a UK based server!

Anything over about 35ms is a good indication that there is a fair bit of latency in the network, and this is often caused by the ISP cramming too many customers onto their backbone network.

Finally, check your upload speed. Some ISPs will publish wonderful download speeds, but forget that both ping & upload are important, but often forgotten aspects of an internet connection.

 

[onomatopoeia]

Good choice of ISP there



I live at least a couple of miles from the exchange, hence the relatively slow speed. Sync speed is 3745/1695, when I first power up the modem it's closer to 4500 down, but over a couple of days it finds its way down to about 3700ish.

(and I could get faster downloads by disabling Annex M, but prefer it this way)

 

[robert1305]

Sorry have to speak as I find, I live in rural Wales, not very good B/B in my neck of the woods,have tried em all and TalkTalk is superb as far as I am concerned, since joining them 2 years ago they have done their utmost to get me the best they can, now I have B/B at 2.7/8mb, used to be 500kb, line rental, phone calls 24/7 and other goodies all for £23 a month, and not one disconnection in the last 8 months. Very happy bunnie.

 

[neil_g]

Sky don't actually throttle connections. However the BT hardware behind the scenes can.

To be honest, although I live in an area that does not have blistering speed, its always consistent.

 

[whitewash]

Does the download speed ever reduce below 14mb at "peak" times? Some ISPs will actually use this as an excuse to overload their network. The download speed you get should be pretty close to the "BRAS rate" that you get allocated at the exchange. For example I have a 5.50M BRAS rate and normally get about 5.35mb/s and it varies from about 5.20mb/s about 5.40mb/s, but a big variation of more than 10-15% would mean something is wrong!

Also another thing to be wary of is the "ping" speed you get.

I normally get about 14ms-17ms ping, but I have seen some people report connections with over 50ms ping times to a UK based server!

Anything over about 35ms is a good indication that there is a fair bit of latency in the network, and this is often caused by the ISP cramming too many customers onto their backbone network.

Finally, check your upload speed. Some ISPs will publish wonderful download speeds, but forget that both ping & upload are important, but often forgotten aspects of an internet connection.

I dont know what a BRAS rate is (although my washing machines bras rate is about 7 per week...)


skys £5 a month package, latency appears to be a bit crap but the speed is pretty good downloadwise

 

[boliston]

Good choice of ISP there
.......

I live at least a couple of miles from the exchange, hence the relatively slow speed. Sync speed is 3745/1695, when I first power up the modem it's closer to 4500 down, but over a couple of days it finds its way down to about 3700ish.

(and I could get faster downloads by disabling Annex M, but prefer it this way)

I would quite like the Annex M, "bolt on" but I don't do enough uploading to justify the extra £12 per month. I might try it out for a couple of months though. I'm holding out for the FTTC upgrade due on 31/12/11

I like the fact that they supply my ADSL, Landline and mobile phone connections all on a single monthly bill, and the £2.40 per month mobile line rental is very good value.

 

[onomatopoeia]

Sky don't actually throttle connections. However the BT hardware behind the scenes can.

Sky are LLU, the only BT hardware in the equation is the telephone line itself.

Even non LLU exchanges, the only things that can cause throttling from within BT are the BRAS rate being set incorrectly for the line (which the ISP can get fixed by raising the problem with BT wholesale) or contention in the IP network, which would affect everyone. If the ISP has not specified (and paid for) a big enough pipe from the BT IP network to themselves then that can also cause contention, but that's within the power of the ISP to fix, by buying a bigger pipe.

 

[neil_g]

Sky are LLU, the only BT hardware in the equation is the telephone line itself.

Even non LLU exchanges, the only things that can cause throttling from within BT are the BRAS rate being set incorrectly for the line (which the ISP can get fixed by raising the problem with BT wholesale) or contention in the IP network, which would affect everyone. If the ISP has not specified (and paid for) a big enough pipe from the BT IP network to themselves then that can also cause contention, but that's within the power of the ISP to fix, by buying a bigger pipe.

i think youre right, i think ive misread something in the past.

 

[tdodd]

I've had Sky broadband for years - pretty much as soon as it was offered. Before that I've been with BT and PlusNet. I'm quite happy with Sky.



£7.50 per month for a truly uncapped unlimited service. What's not to like?

 

[Lynton]

i'm sorry, still looking for the complaint letter, as opposed to the very polite nicely nicely letter to them..........:shrug: