I recently signed up with talktalk, but I strongly recommend others should not make the same mistake.

The broadband connection is VERY unreliable, and the telephone line quality variable.  Sometimes overseas calls are unintelligible.

I have spent hours on the phone trying to get some improvement from talktalk but there is nobody willing to do anything helpful. 

I now have the problem and cost of trying to move to another supplier.  Don't do it.  Avoid talktalk.  Find another supplier, even if more expensive.

 

I 100% agree, i literally have nightmares over talktalk, I cant even begin to tell all you folks out there what this company has put me through, if you here the name talktalk run run run away, Talktalk should be put in the dictionary with the following after it, The ultimate Industry plague company, utterly incompetant, no knowlege about anything company scurge!  

I have been with TalkTalk for almost 18 months they say that broadband is free when you get their international 3 deal. This is not free I have to pay an extra £10 per month. the service is digusting, over the last three months I have lost over 702 hours of internet time. I am not truly internet as the maximum is 586 kbps. last month something went wrong again!! belive it or not I was charged almost £40 + in services charges because I had to ring up to get on the internet. Please be careful when signing up. AOL have joined talk talk and have caused all sorts of email problems. I am a computer technician and have great difficulty in sorting out their problems.

I'm coming to the end of my TalkTalk nightmare (hopefully), unless there's a sting in the tail. A friend of mine was with AOL for years, and recently switched after AOL went downhill. His service became increasingly poor, support became more difficult to contact, and the overall experience was pretty frustrating. He's a high downloader, and was getting shafted with the fair usage policy, long before he should have. He knows all about my problems with TT, and when I told him they'd joined forces, he said "That figures."

I think he's with Plusnet now, and is very happy with them.

hamish3:I have been with TalkTalk for almost 18 months they say that broadband is free when you get their international 3 deal. This is not free I have to pay an extra £10 per month. the service is digusting, over the last three months I have lost over 702 hours of internet time. I am not truly internet as the maximum is 586 kbps. last month something went wrong again!! belive it or not I was charged almost £40 + in services charges because I had to ring up to get on the internet. Please be careful when signing up. AOL have joined talk talk and have caused all sorts of email problems. I am a computer technician and have great difficulty in sorting out their problems.

 

Hi Hamish,

 

The prices and availability checker on the website clearly state whether you will be on either free or chrageable broadband.  Also this is stated on your initial contract if you had to sign one.

 

The service offered is as stated Up to 8mbit but this all depends on if your exchange has had talktalks equipment installed, otherwise you will be going through BT Wholesale's IPstream service which is up to 2mbit.  If you want to message me your account number ill check if we have you set to the maximum speed for your line.  If you have incurred charges for loss of service talktalk will compensate you at a rate of i believe £1.50/day for loss of broadband as per the policies on there front page, it may be worth a read to see if you can claim.

 

AOL are very much run as a seperate business along with the customer services, they are the same people who work for AOL and TalkTalk in the seperate businesses but just owned by a different umbrella company (carphone warehouse) 

talktalk is a complete joke when i was with bt i was getting 7.5meg broadband now with tt my broadband speed is just about on a par with dial up

Talk Talk are a complete nightmare! I orginally had my phone with them and decided to get broadband too, the whole broadband set up from beginning to end was an utter shambles! I was given all the wrong information and I was never sent my password and 'live' date, I had to call them regularly to find this out! I think they have their call centres in India, so half the time there is a language barrier problem! Then when I finally went 'live', I couldn't get the wireless connection to work after using their set up CD, I called their technical team and was told they couldn't help with wireless and that I would have to call an independent help team to set this up and I would have to pay £25 for this help! I asked to speak to a manager who was less than helpful and was quite happy when I told her that I would be taking my business elsewhere! To top it off I was charged a connection fee even though I was already a Talk Talk customer, they said they would only refund this is a stayed as a customer! As you can imagine, I wasn't impressed and have now gone back to BT!

If you are thinking about transferring to Talk Talk - DON'T!

Hi,

I have had broadband with TalkTalk for 22 months now. Once they put there own equipment into the local exchange everything improved, before that they just piggyback on BT. Its not perfect but appear to be the best i my area (Worcester). I run my own pc business and customers from ALL broadband suppliers have problems. SKY appears to be the worst for getting a connection to the server. Other problems are with Orange, BT, et al.

Please don't think that because there is a problem in your local area that its widespread.

I get about 2600 kbps downstream and about 500 kbps upstream which is fine.

You can get people from talktalk to help but often you need to ask to speak to supervisor/manager.

Talktalk even paid for BT engineer to sort out problem with one of my customers lines.

best of luck.

Its interesting that the previous contribution says that thing have finally improved because, at last, I think (hope) my service has now become useable.

But it should not be necessary for me as a customer to be obliged to make endless calls to some indifferent person in India about the appalling service. It wasn't just the unreliable connection that made me furious, It was thier indifference.

I know they try to cut operating costs to a minumum, and so use cheap services and call centres overseas, but how can somebody in India solve my problem locally? Of course, they actually did nothing at all. After about two months I was finally able to speak to someone in the UK, but only as a result of persistance. It seemed very clear to me that talktalk had me signed up on a contract, and so didn't care.

So now it doesn't matter how good the internet connection becomes, their customer relations is shockingly bad and I am dissatisfied. Own goal talktalk.

I suggest to have a look at speedtest.net and find out who offers better connections in your area.

Talk Talk is hopeless. I fought them for two years. Eventually, Carphone Warehouse told me to contact the Geek Squad (0800 049 4335). They sent over a bloke who set up my wireless connection and sorted everything out. I have had no trouble since, though I think the service is slow as I can never watch a You Tube without it stopping a third of the way through. The visit cost me £85. However, I now use them and do get all my calls free 24/7 and they say this costs the £10 not the broadband. So I was unable to take them to court under the Trade Description act. I too have lost count of the hours I spent on the poone and that music is now actually causing me nightmares.

I agree that Talk Talk is a disaster but add Tiscali to this as well

I have been a subscriber to the full talktalk landline/broadband package for more than two years and I also pay line rental to them rather than BT. Service and operation has been excellent and, pricewise, there is nothing out there that can touch them. (And like most folks I've been around the block with various providers and if you want a real nightmare try Toucan). I've had connection and quality issues on only two occasions and both were down to BT line and exchange problems which talktalk engineers quickly pressed them into investigating. When BT upgraded our out-dated local exchange talktalk got speed up immediately and I've clocked 4.5 meg on occasions which is virtually unknown in my area in the west of Scotland. The back-up from talktalk's engineers was superb with a constant stream of telephone and text communications between them and myself, to keep me fully in the picture, as they tracked and identified the problems. On the last occasion a few months ago a BT Openreach engineer, dispatched by talktalk, found the problem was a rusting connection box outside my house where the telephone line comes in and it was was immediately replaced. (talktalk picked up the tab for this work as part of their service). The first time, more than 20 months ago, was a BT failing at their exchange. To compensate for the temporary poor service, which was outwith talktalk's control, I was still compensated with two months free subscription. My broadband line is stable and consistent and, in fact, is always connected. And well after the repairs were completed talktalk kept in touch with text messages for me to confirm that everything was still ok. All broadband service providers will experience problems at some time, such is the nature of the business, but three members of my family (and quite a few friends) are delighted they took my advice and switched to talktalk.

I totally agree with the above statement. I had issues and problems but I pressed the right buttons and called the right people. Its like everything nowadays we are quick to criticise, but there are actually people around who do want to help you. Top marks talk talk. We had our rocky ride but you came through it and got there in the end. A very good service, great value for money and will continue to use.

Thanks Simon

Hello,

If anyone who has an issue with their service would like it investigating please contact me via the talktalk forum.

Stephen Fell

www.talktalkmembers.com

That's all well and good when you have the time to press the right buttons and get through to the right people but you shouldn't have to 'go round the houses' to do so!