New Talktalk poll; feedback needed, good and bad

A question about : New Talktalk poll; feedback needed, good and bad

What's this all about?

TalkTalk's 'free broadband' package took the market by storm and on paper is a clear winner on price (see Cheapest Home Phones article). Initially customer feedback was very strong, but by July and August reports were coming through that it couldn't cope with capacity - and many users are stuck without broadband.

Therefore last October, I carried out a poll to survey MoneySavers experiences. The results were better than expected, showing that while a very substantial number had suffered problems, they were still in the minority (See previous TalkTalk poll)

Why a new poll?

Four months is a long time for a new service. As this is a very competitive product, its important to know whether its working for people and to see if the product now is more reliable.

Please spare thirty second to answer the above if you have/applied for TalkTalk 'free broadband'

Martin

Best answers:

• If you're thinking of signing up for talk talk...think again. Our experience was terrible, time consuming and stressful.We spent literally hours on the phone, mainly to India and South Africa, trying to sort our problems, but to no avail as most of the time they either couldn't understand us or help. We thought NTL were bad but compared to talk talk they are brilliant and we have now returned to them.
• I would not recommend Talktalk broadband to any serious internet user. Even when we could get online there were certain websites we either could not access at all or had only limited access. As one of these sites was ebay my husband would be furious when trying to bid on items only to 'lose connection' or simply be unable to change page. No problems with phone usage. We went back to Blueyonder and find it absolutely miles better.
• i have had problems trying to get it 4 free. i was told it was not free at the point of signing but it would become free as soon as it came to my area. that happened some months ago. i got the email address for the director from this site last time this was talked about and i emailed him. he told me it would be sorted, i got a refund but they carried on charging me. i have now got someone else's details. i think the director is a little fed up with recieving lots of emails from u guys and has finally put someone on to the job of sorting it.
  don't bother contacting the customer services section with this problem they will tell u that u can't have it for free and where totally unhelpful. go straight to the director.
• i applied for talk3(not international) on the 28/08/06!
  i thought it was a good idea as its Ј20,instead of talktalk phone+AOL internet
  costing Ј35 a month,so i applied saving Ј15 a month......not.
  because they have taken all this time im now paying Ј20,plus,Ј20 AOL-because i need the internet so have to continue paying for until i receive
  my talktalk3.
  i have phone them but because the internet is free with talk3-i have no come-back.
  i have written a letter to a talktalk address in complaint-and asking for the unforseen extra expence to be re-paid, you can guess-i have had no reply
  i will now look for a cheap internet and change back to just talk phone
• delay after delay - wrong product delivered, cut off land line and still waiting on the correct product to be provided - applied when it came out
  only solace is that i pass the cpw hq on the way to work so I flip the bird and honk at them all smoking tabs out the front !
• I'm with talktalk I joined before they launched the free option. It's a nightmare it took them 2 months to send a BT engineer to set it up I had to ring them everyday and no one would listen to me.
  I now work for Vodafone so as soon as I can leave talktalk I'm going to try their broadband it can't get any worse
• been with them for around 6 months
  customer service is very poor
  My connection kept stopping - it was connected but we couldnt do anything
  after trying many times we got through to some guy in Timbuktu who told me I needed to spend money on a wireless router to fix the problem.
  Amazingly when they upgraded the line to the promised 2mb things got better but we still have problems and have been overcharged for calls
  just looking for another provider
  G
• I signed up when it was first announced back in June/July but only because of free international calls on top of national landline ones, my parents live in Spain. I've had a few problems with this, the code you need to prefix int numbers doesn't always work and when you tell them they're not aware of it, but largely ok. I don't intend even starting to use broadband as I've stuck with reliable NTL at Ј35 month cos I know it's the best. I've helped several friends & family to set up broadband who've also signed up and had horrendous problems, phoning for help to sub-continent is a massive joke, as soon as you start to tell them about where you got to with set-up and started to have problems they fall silent as though they can't understand you then cut you off, when you try to get back again a message says "all operatives are busy right now, please call back later". I've found it works better if you use a 3rd party modem or modem/router instead of crap they supply you with, there seems to be less problems with that although there is obviously no support for that, you have to know what you are doing. I know many people who have cancelled their contract because it just doesn't work, if thinking about it, FORGET IT!
• guess wot? we're still waiting for broadband having applied in August. Surprised? Poor customer service, havn't had any form of replies yet! Atrocious. If the account were down to me (its my mum) I'd ditch it. Sky's package is practically the same price - wonder how quick and responsive they are?
• Joined Sept after waiting a month but everything happened when they said it would and service has been fine. No problems so haven't had to deal with call centre.
• Been with them about 6 months now, for land line and broadband package.
  Waited for the intitial rush to die down (monitored projected go live date on their web site before signing up) and got switched from my previous supplier almost seamlessly, if their letter stuffers had been more up to speed!!
  Not really had any other issues, waiting for local exchange to be LLU'd for max. speed to kick in, current speed close to 2Mb/sec.
  Average total monthly bill, with calls to mobiles, £23 - can't really grumble.
• Talk Talk are utterly utterly appalling! It is no exageration to say it is the worst customer service I have ever experienced.
  1) Phone line cut off completely on day of provision of services.
  2) 4 hours being transferred and on hold with no-one wanting to deal with my problem (on my mobile phone as they cut me off)
  3) No broadband connected on the day they said
  4) Complaint totally ignored
  5) Second date provided for Broadband connection but again not connected.
  6) Call centres in India where I could not understand what was being said!!
  Take my advice and do not touch this poor excuse for a company. It is worth paying for your braodband and actually getting a reliable service...still cannot believe how Talk Talk could possibly run a company in this way..a disgrace!
• I thought NTL was bad, but TalkTalk is absolutely diabolical. Ever since we were upgraded to the LLU in September, we have had nothing but problems. My feature pack, (i.e. Caller Display, Ringback, Call Waiting and 3-way calling), either do not work or are erratic. Complained and am now tired of complaining. Asked for my money back. This was promised but still have not received anything, 4 months on. Calls to customer services, telephone faults and broadband faults take ages to get through and even then one is passed from pillar to post which always results in disconnection of the line and therefore one has to redial. The broadband loses connection frequently and they put the fault on the modems. Although they have sent me three (3) replacement modems, there is still no difference. As I did not cancel my NTL supply, I now use NTL for my internet. The only reason for sticking to TalkTalk is that I have free calls to my friends and family in the EU as well as calling my family in USA and Canada.
• at first great, everything started as and when promised, went well for a few weeks then i posted on here that i was having no probs...
  served me right for being smug... for about 6 weeks after that i got limited or no internet connection... spent literally hours on the phone to foreigners who couldn't understand a word i was saying and who obviously just have a script in front of them cos they just kept insisting that i needed to re-install my modem even though i kept telling them "yes but i did that yesterday, like one of your colleages told me to and it still doesn't work!!"
  eventually got sick of phoning and just took my modem into the local CPW, told them it must be faulty and i wanted a new one. After a week of delivery problems and yet more phone calls i eventually recieved 3 for nowt! (anyone want a cheap modem? )
  couple more teething probs with the new modem, but since xmas everything has been running ok (fingers crossed/touch wood/pray to God I haven't jinxed myself now )
  main saving grace is that its cheap, and thats all i wanted, i don't need BB and can go without if its playing up.
  bottom line, if you need reliable broadband avoid TT like the plague.
  and customer service is abysmal, unless you get through to the nice scottish bloke in tech support, he was great
• Hi all,
  We had been thinking of trying talktalk and signed up for Option 3 when accosted in Sainsbury's last summer. Free Broadband they claimed :-)
  Since this was costing Ј20 per month ie Ј11 more than BT landline and we still had our Ј20 per month NTL broadband - we were keen to have the broadband up n runnin'. Months passed - after numerous phone calls one day in November they told us we'd "gone live". Of course without the modem we'd ordered months earlier no-one here was going anyway let alone live.
  By December with many hours of phone calls behind us we gave up the ghost and cancelled our contract!
  This expires on 10 Jan 07 so we'll see what happens then as we plan to go back to BT phone service.
  Just my twopennuth,
  K
• The problem with these sort of threads are that they are not representative. Those with axes to grind are the one who will generally post with very few from those for whom it just worked. So it is with any issue.
  IME TalkTalk is absolutely fine as long as you don't have any problems. If you want service then you have to expect to pay for it. Something this cheap is only going to be available if you are prepared to talk to a computer to get it.
  I've used TalkTalk successfully for months. I don't have LLU speed and my connection is only 512Mb. I occassionally have problems with the DNS not resolving addresses very quickly and the email system gets overloaded on a regular basis every time they get a flurry of new sign ups. I wouldn't waste money calling their support line unless Broadband has been down for days. I've found that connection problems go away after a few hours if you just wait for them to fix it.
  However mostly it is 'good enough' to work with - and certainly as good as any of the other cheap providers and some of the more expensive ones.
  So if you are lucky enough not to get tangled in their provisioning system, and don't have any problems then it works just fine.
  And whatever you do with any broadband system don't use one of the USB modems that connect to your computer. That is the fastest way to ensure your computer will be taken over by some Evil Spammer somewhere and used for nefarious ends (I don't rate the Windows firewall). Run the ADSL connection through a separate router/firewall; something cheap like a Netgear DG834 works just fine.
• I Have Been With Talktalk Since August-never Had Any Probs. It Works Fine For Me--I Have Added A Free Acc, From Aol For Emails Using Talktalkbroadband So I Have Had Great Success .maybe I Am Just Lucky Or--as An Old Wrinklie--I Dont Use A Lot Of Tecnology. Just Plain Emails And Google Search. Anyway It Works For Me. Good Luck To All With Probs.Perhaps the Car phone Warehouse Shop people could help you out. Worth a try
• Well TalkTalk took over onetel my broadband provider. They did this just as I was upgrading the speed of my connection so everything stopped while the new owners took over.
  Since then I have had nothing but hassle with them. If I want ot upgrade to a better connection speed I need to committ to another 12 month contract which I did not need to do with Onetel as I have been with them for about 5 years. Then when I asked if I could keep my email address but get the talktalk offer (as talktalk own onetel why not I thought?) but absolutely not - you lose your email address. Onetel only have offers now on their site for talktalk but you lose your email address so what is the point! - I have a lot of stuff with my email address on it for work so it would cost me a lot to change and also I dont see why I should change it when talktalk own onetel.
  Trying to "talk" to anyone who can even understantd me let alone my problem has proved impossible and I really have given up. We are paying way too much for phone and broadband with a slow service but I have lost days trying to sort this out. I would sacrifice some customer support to get a cheaper deal and keep my email addresses but if thier this dreadful then it makes more sense for me to shift altogether so I am sorting out a general address with google to allow me to move whereever I want without this type of problem occuring. I do wish you could keep your email address just like you can move your mobile phone number now if want.
  Rant over
• My TalkTalk Broadband frequently disconnects and then sometimes takes ages to re connect. Sometimes it so slow I give up altogether. I was billed for several months before they would agree that I was in a "free" broadband area. Billed me £29.99 for a "free" mini modem. When making calls abroad using a third party carrier, they charge me about 15 -20 pence per minute when the "call checker" says 1p or 2p per min. Every person I talk too or receive an email from at TalkTalk gives me a different answer.