Hi. I signed up for the TalkTalk deal in May and was told it would go live by the end of June. Then when the confirmation email arrived I was told it would go live by the end of July. Well, we're just about there and I'm still waiting!!!! Has anyone else had to deal with a delay like this? I've got the telephone service but I've not even got the broadband yet and I'm already considering switching!

Hi Lucas

Your experience with Talk Talk is not unusual and I'm sure we might hear more comments from other people about delays to getting their broadband service. I'm afraid to say it's not Talk Talk's fault but the sheer weight of people applying for the product which is causing the problems.

The important thing is to find out what Talk Talk are doing about your case before you decide to switch away. If they respond back with a fair answer and some kind of realistic timescale to get broadband then I'd hang in there. If not then it does seem to make sense to switch to another deal but you will get stung £70 for doing so.

Is there anyone else out there who has had problems applying for Talk Talk or even switching away from it early?

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Jason Lloyd

moneysupermarket.com

Couldn't I potentially switch now? Surely there has to be a get-out clause if you have not even received the broadband! TalkTalk are a joke.

I had the same. Passed on my mac no. middle of june and only just recieved the broadband. Was also told B4 signing I would expect upto 5mbps, only getting 2.3. I will get the upgrade in 2008! a coincidence thats when my 18 months is up. What a selling point eh?
Should have stuck with AOL. Much easier and customer services 110% contactable.

I'm with TalkTalk and to be fair they've been pretty decent. I wish I had waited longer though as it seems there are a lot of cheaper products emerging. You have to know the right time to strike!

I want to switch but I don't want to wait forever for a new service. Is this the same situation with other good deals out there?

Yes and No. Some of the better deals usually impose a minimum 12 month contract and some like Talk Talk or BT Total Broadband are 12 or 18 months, (with the 18 month deals being the market leading offers).

However there has been a series of new products launched recently which don't impose any sort of contract on you at all.

PlusNet has launched a range of new broadband/phone products which have a 1 month rolling contract. Whilst this is very flexible be aware they will still charge you a cancellation fee if you switch away inside a specific period.

EFH Broadband have some cracking broadband only deals on a 1 month rolling contract and Virgin.net are also offering broadband products with no contract committments.

Perhaps the best approach is to switch to a deal with no contract and wait until new more competitive deals come out on the market before making a decision.

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Jason Lloyd

moneysupermarket.com

Hi

I was with TalkTalk for a year, intially I signed up because I had the phone service and wanted to take advantage of the free modem and sign-up. I wish now I had just spent some money and saved myself the hassle!

To start with I signed up for a 512 connection... only they provided a 1mb connection. Not a bad deal I thought, only the download speeds I achieved where quicker on my old dial-up to Freeonline. That was though if I was lucky enough to actually get connected, so much to "Always On Connection". About 6 months in I bought an ADSL Gateway Router in the hope that the connection speeds would improve.... They didn't!!

So I finally tried to cancel after my 12 months was up, firstly they asked why I was cancelling. I told them I wanted to upgrade to a 2Mb connection and I could get it cheaper elsewhere, they told me they would match the offer if I would stay. I decided to give them a chance! I knew though it was to no avail when they guy came back on the phone and informed me that my line would only allow a connection of 512 due to its length! Alarm bells rang at this point since they had been providing me with a 1mb link for the past 12 months. I turned down their offer and requested my MAC code. They supplied me the wrong one! The company I was migrating to (Freedom2Surf) told me to contact them and request a new one telling them that the original one had expired. TalkTalk told me that a MAC code couldn't expire! To cut this part of the story short... It took me calling BT Wholesale and posing as a TalkTalk employee to find out that Freedom2Surf where correct and that TalkTalk could issue a new MAC code. A very snotty email later and hey presto one new MAC code.

I've now been with Freedom2Surf almost a year on a 2mb connection (I can't get any faster because of the length of my BT phone line) and if you're prepared to go out and buy your own hardware (gateway router or modem) I would highly recommend them!

Also a friend was also on TalkTalk and he had his connection cut off by them because he left it connected overnight downloading a Windows Service Pack.... they told him he was having a detrimental effect on other users bandwidth.

Finally as well as using MoneySupermarket checkout http://www.adslguide.org its very established and been going for years now!

Hope this helps

Hi Bagdermonkey

Thanks for your post it was extremely useful, and thanks for the plug for ADSL Guide. We agree it's a very good site and one we'd reccomend users visiting to get a more informed view of the market.

Keep your comments on Talk Talk coming in, I think there might be many more!

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Jason Lloyd

moneysupermarket.com

I'm a Talk Talk customer and I had problems when I originally changed from BT Yahoo Broadband.

I applied in May and was told my phone would be switched on the 15th and my Broadband in July due to demand for the service. Although disappointed for the delay, it was understandable due to such a great offer. My phone switched over without any hassle and around the 7th July I had a recorded message telling me that my MAC number was needed to proceed with my broadband change.

The original order of things should be receiving start up pack (modem, cd etc), receiving date of changeover and actually changing over but the order got reversed. I was switched off from BT, told by Talk Talk staff when I phoned them that they hadn't switched me off and spent 7 days complaining to BT about a problem that was nothing to do with them before a letter from Talk Talk arrived informing me of the date, a week previous, for my switch over. 2 Days later my start up pack arrived - a total shambles.

Now despite these problems we have all had, you can't get away from the main reason most of us have switched over - cost. I don't believe any of us have switched for the single reason of better customer services, it's a cost and speed thing only and I for one am saving at least £20 a month with Talk Talk as opposed to BT Yahoo.

I also feel the Broadband Table shown on this site does not reflect an equal starting point for all users. The price shown for BT does not appear to include the line rental fee whereas the costs for the Talk Talk service takes care of the line rental fee to BT for you within the price.

My old costs for phone and 2.2Mb broadband was :

BT Yahoo Broadband £29.99
BT Line Rental & Low User Bill £13.00

Total Old Bill £43

New costs for phone and 2.2Mb upgrading in March to 8Mb or whenever BT get there finger out and improve exchange :

Talk Talk with option 3 £22

Total New Bill £22

Thanks for your post UKspace, and in terms of what you say about the best buy tables you've made a very valid point.

First of all the best buy tables you see on our site at the moment are an interim solution to what we eventually intend to deliver to our users and it's a bit of a learning process for us. Consequently we had to come up with a way of displaying broadband products by comparing apples and oranges alongside each other which as you can understand is very hard!

To do this we had to make a few assumptions on the part of the typical broadband user.

First of all over 90% of all broadband products are available on the BT phone network so for us it made sense to display products set up without the BT line rental fee because most people would be paying BT for their fixed line phone connection anyway. Also broadband providers market their products, (as in display their prices) without the BT line rental fee included so we're displaying what the broadband providers want us to display in terms of pricing.

For those providers where you don't require a BT phone line and pay the £11 a month rental fee, (NTL/Telewest, Be/Talk Talk/ the 16Mb Sky Broadband package/Homechoice) we decided that we would list their monthly subscrition costs the same as all the other broadband providers to create a fair comparison between what the consumer actually pays each month which we think is the most important factor that leads to a consumer making a purchasing decision.

If that means they don't pay a BT line rental fee then we decided we would mention it in the product comments section for the moment until we've worked out a way to display all of these different products and their various pricings which we're working on now.

Don't get me going abot Free Broadband - I think the way that uSwitch have handled this is probably how we'll go by seperating out the free broadband offers into a standalone table.

Cheers

Jason Lloyd
Broadband Channel Manager

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Jason Lloyd

moneysupermarket.com

Talk talk IS rubbish !! Before switching to them any email enquiries to them was answered promptly on a 24 hour turn-around. When the service was 'active' I had a technical query re the broad band, as it was not connecting when a double phone socket was used into the bt phone plug. This was 8 weeks ago, till today no response. The phone bill had discrepancies in it- till today NO response, despite 5 emails, and 4 letters (one even to Mr. Charles Dunston, the owner of carphone warehouse).
I have filed a complaint to Ofcom, and pass the complaint to the trading stardards too. I have cancelled my account and challenge them to take me to court. The contract cannot be one sided. They did NOT provide a service for which they are charging, ie it comes as a package (international calls + broadband).

I really thought that the carphone warehouse group was not a 'money-grabbing' company & have more respect for their customers, but as can be seen from the above, they are acting like a back street shop and have total disregard for anyone expect their bank balances.

I would advise anyone even contemplating of switching to talk talk to remember the saying "If it's too good to be true, IT IS. There is nothing Free"

Hi
This is spooky i am having the exact same problem we are now upto 9 weeks of having no broadband i am just about to cancell my direct debit and cancel everything.

I totally agree with everything you are saying. They are like a back street shop.

TalkTalk is a fast growing service. It isn't working as well as it should. Anyone, who has an 18 month contract could say that the company is in breach of contract and cancel without penalty under the terms of the Sale of Goods Act. However, for £20.99 a month you get Talk3 International and calls throughout the EU, North America, Australia and New Zealand plus broadband. They promise broadband up to 8Mbs. My broadband is often down to 300K and should be much faster than that! But they are installing new equipment in the telephone exchanges to speed things up. Some problems, for example I had a problem this week and TalkTalk switched me to another server - but I also got hit by a virus - that wasn't their fault. So check everything before blaming TalkTalk. For the money - I get a reasonable service. Definitely better than BT. I know some people paying double what I have been paying for a similar service. If your connection is a little slow with TalkTalk, disconnect and re-connect; you probably have a dynamic IP. When you DC they assign you a new IP! That often solves the problem. I know very few people on the Internet that use their web space. I use mine on TalkTalk. It's only 15Mb and Blueyonder is 30Mb, so TalkTalk could do better. Space is cheap and most users aren't using it anyway. So if anyone from TalkTalk reads this - more space please! Online communities are very popular right now and more web space would help us set up an online community of TalkTalk broadband users. My website is www.mike10613.talktalk.net if anyone wants to see what you can do! I also make free 3 hour calls to other TalkTalk customers - that includes my local hospital switchboard. So TalkTalk isn't rubbish - just not perfect and could do better!

Registered in May, given 'go-live' date of 12 June and still waiting and meantime I am paying for every minute I am still using my landline connection and 10p per min. to 'try' and get through to their support line. Received modem and filter in time, but it will not connect me to the broadband service. After 2 days of trying constantly eventually got through to the helpline. Tried everything they suggested, including connecting straight to the external socket, but still did not work. Said they would escalate problem to a more technical person! Had one call asking me to call back again, and I eventually got through only to the normal helpline again. So I stopped the connection fee Direct Debit, as I have not been connected! No-one else has tried to contact me, except the Credit Control Department to remind me that the connection fee was outstanding. I phoned them and told them the situation and was told that a note would be put on the account, so that they would not chase again until I was connected. At end of July received a threatening letter about the connection fee - said if they started the debt chasing system it would severely affect my credit rating - blackmail! I got in touch with Trading Standards, who told me to pay the connection fee under protest along with a recorded letter to let them know that I wanted a reaction from them within 14 days or I would take the matter further. Day 12 (this Tuesday) got a phone call on my answer machine asking me to call the helpline again. This time my daughter (who is in IT) phoned them back and they asked her to perform all the tests that I had previously carried out! Of course, it still is not working and she was told that the problem would be escalated and a technical person would call me within 7 days - back to square one! So, if I get no response, I now have the problem of going to the small claims court to get my money back and possibly claim for the cost of my landline calls between my 'go-live' date and now! Meantime, I have signed up for the International 3 package for 18 months. I now want to switch, as I am so frustrated by the whole process. They do not have enough staff to cope and yet they are still advertising to attract more people on the TV to get suckers to sign up for this package and not get broadband, whilst paying for a package they do not really want. My phone bills are now approximately £30 per month dearer due to their high charges for 0845 numbers by which my current ISP is connected! This is not 'free' broadband by any means! My previous provider charged only 2p per minute during the day and 1p per minute evenings and weekends.

I am seriously considering contacting 'Watchdog' - TalkTalk are an unprofessional bunch of amateurs.