Is there anyone having problems with 'talk-talk' ISP? I have been using it for about 6 months since the change over from Tiscali, not happy with the permformance of it as it's very slow and sometimes it wont contect on the internet, I am now looking to change to a new ISP, and wondered which one I should aim for.

Thanks

Frying pan, fire.

Here's what you do. Go to http://www.samknows.com. Plumb in your phone number and postcode and it'll tell you what LLU providers are in your area. Pick one (or list here and I'll tell you which is best).

LLU gets you away from BT Wholesale. This is a) cheaper and b) usually better.

What have you done to improve it?

Cable is the way forward.

I had exactly this problem (a search will find my thread) – dropping connection all the time, very slow service at peak times (around 100kb at times, barely better than old dial up) which had been going on for ages. I rang up and complained, was passed on to someone else to complained to who sucked his teeth and told me I was probably riddled with malware. He recommended I ran malwarebytes & spotbot S&D and see if that helped. I do this regularly anyway so did not follow his advice then and there however within 24hrs I had 4mb service 24hrs a day and have not dropped connection once since (2 months ago). I can only conclude that they have the ability to upgrade the service at my local exchange relatively easily or some other IT jiggery pokery as the difference is night and day.

LLU gets you away from BT Wholesale. This is a) cheaper and b) usually better.

I have to agree that anything provided by BT but through another company seems to be horrific. As someone without an LLU local exchange we went with the cheapest option (tiscali) and we were very very sorry for having done so. Aweful, horrificly low speed considering 400 yards from exchange and syncing at 6.5meg. Switched to BT, using a quidco deal that knocked the overall cost down to about £17 a month with line rental(!) and now get 8 meg sync, unadulterated speed to about 750kbps transfers even at peak times, and flawless customer service so far.

BT is more expensive, but as yet at two properties I've had nothing but good experiences. Most of my friends in the area have the same view, though it seems STW hates BT for some reason.

What I can suggest, if you havent already tried it is to use the talktalk customer forums.

http://www.talktalkmembers.com/forums/

You can register with your phone number and they can run diagnostics on the line, changing to different profiles to help issues.

All I can say is that they are very helpful on there and appear far better than talktalks phone support.

I'm using AOL, which is gradually being merged into Talk Talk along with Tiscali. It used to be crap and expensive until they started harmonising their systems and now after much complaining to them and theatening to change suppliers its ok (usually gives me speeds limited by the connection, not the ISP) and slightly cheaper than most. Never had it drop the connection except on a couple of occasions when their authentication servers went down. Might be worth having a good moan at them before you go to the hassle of moving?

They are indeed fairly helpful [talktalk forum], but all they do is force the standard tests through that you would take 20 mins to get to on the phone. They don't provide anything more. Trust me I tried for the best part of 12 months. Any complaint I made they asked me to provide 4 speed readings throughout the day (I work, I can't get a noon speed – sorry we can't help you) and if I had to go away with work for more than a few days they close the post and start a new thread. The whole company is a joke. When I first joined Tiscali it took them nearly a month to connect my line, in the end it was done in an hour when I demanded to have it raised to a request to BT to look in the exchange. BT cleared it instantly, phoned me multiple times to confirm and check, and then left a little compliments card etc. I was so pleased with them that I actually wrote to BT to thank them and highlight the guys good work.

I'm using AOL, which is gradually being merged into Talk Talk along with Tiscali.

Messiah on a velocipede, are they really? I suppose that's not a bad thing, getting all the crap in one place.

Messiah on a velocipede

I like that…

All part of Carphone Warehouse now. No doubt others will get bought up and assimilated soon, no small ISP is safe.

Just check that Smknows site, it doesn't mention half the providers just a few and not the best by far. The ISP I use isn't mentioned, I get 30Gb peak limit unlimited off peak and £20 per month not cheapest but fantastic speed and no stupid 18 month or 12 month contract like those on Samknows recommended. In conclusion seem Samknows just advertises certain ISPs so is worthless.

Swings and roundabouts I suppose. You will always hear from more people that have had problems than from those that don't.

I've not had any real issues with them in 6 years. The two occasions I've needed something changing was when the exchange throttled my connection to 1mb. I ask them to change the profile back and they do. As for disconnections, I really can't remember the last time I lost the line. For £17 quid a month inc phone calls I won't complain. My Missus pays 3 times that for BT. Muppet 😀

…and no I don't work for TT:D

The ISP I use isn't mentioned

Who's that then? Are they a LLU provider?

Get a 17meg connection pretty much all day. Not had any problems with Talk Talk inc customer service. No companies are perfect. I know others who have had problems with Talk Talk but for the money I'm not complaining.

Another happy talktalk customer here, no issues to speak of.

Who's that then? Are they a LLU provider?

ADSL 24 and I may have missed the point of LLU but given the service I get why would I be worries about LLU?

fibre optic virgin is the best i have ever used i have tried BT,orange,tiscali,Aohell, talktalk and none of them compare.

We left Talk Talk about 4 years ago because they were crap. I used to dial up to get on the tinterweb because it was quicker and more reliable.

been with Sky ever since. Much much better

Ooh and it would seem they're a LLU provider now but no up here.

Just a quick post
I contacted them to let them know my father had passed away, the person on the phone said to me…..
" can you prove it! You had better send us a death certificate"
I passed the details onto my solicitor to sort it out.
I received a court summons last week for my father, they ignored the contact from me and the solicitor letters.

I will never ever use them after this, shocking customer service.

Matt

Zen, not the cheapest but you get what you pay for IMHO

ADSL 24 and I may have missed the point of LLU but given the service I get why would I be worries about LLU?

I thought I covered that in my first post? To wit:

LLU gets you away from BT Wholesale. This is a) cheaper and b) usually better.

Basically, all conventional ADSL is BT Broadband, rebadged and resold. If you move between providers, all you're really changing is the support and billing, the end product is essentially the same.

LLU basically means that the provider installs their own equipment inside BT's exchange. This means that they can immediately pass on a cost saving to you, as they don't have to pay BT for BT Wholesale. Additionally, it's a different product, so you immediately get away from BT's sometimes highly contended routers. An ISP can upgrade your ADSL line independently of BT and offer features that BT don't.

[ADSL 24 are] a LLU provider now but no up here

That would be why they don't appear in a list of your local LLU providers, then.

Zen, not the cheapest but you get what you pay for IMHO

No arguments here, I was with Zen for 'traditional' ADSL before I moved to Sky's LLU offering. No complaints at all about them, they were great, but I could get Sky TV and a faster, uncapped ADSL connection for £2 more than I was paying solely for ADSL with Zen.

(plus, Zen are geographically within kicking distance if they cocked me about like the once-great Pipex did)

None of the ones offered to me a service as good or cheaper and all has stupid long tie in contracts of 18 months and the like. So they haven't offered a so called saving, poorer service and you stuck with them. Yeah worth looking at but no more than any other ISP.

Not had any issues with Talk Talk so can't comment on their customer service but I've no complaints at all about our internet connection.

I think it's <£20/month for phone & broadband. The broadband is fast and never seems to drop out. And it was easy to set-up.

I'm currently going through the Ombudsman (OTELO) process with TalkTalk because they kept billing me after I left them.

They sent 2 letters admitting they were in the wrong and still kept chasing me for money!

Utterly useless. Now with BT.

No TT issues here, found customer support better than Orange, who couldn't provide a service at the end of my contract time but wouldn't allow me to change etc. Speed wise, could be better but does what I need it to do, which is just internet surfing, music downloads etc.

Just a quick post
I contacted them to let them know my father had passed away, the person on the phone said to me…..
" can you prove it! You had better send us a death certificate"
I passed the details onto my solicitor to sort it out.
I received a court summons last week for my father, they ignored the contact from me and the solicitor letters.

I will never ever use them after this, shocking customer service.

Matt

Sounds familiar – somebody I know rung TT to say their husband had died and they needed to close his account. TT call centre droid insisted, several times, that they could only speak to him as he is the account holder. His wife had a full on eppy down the phone on them!

cxi – i had same with Tesco fckn internet last summer when my Dad died. They asked to speak to him, i said "He's dead". "Oh, i need to speak to the account holder" "OK then hang on" and i left the phone for a minute just hanging on the cord while i went outside and screamed. Then i came back and said "was that OK, did they get what you wanted?", the bloke was a bit stumped so i said "Mate he's dead, thats why you couldn;t hear him". I eventually sorted it out via a solicitors letter but my goodness it was quite hard work.

i said "He's dead". "Oh, i need to speak to the account holder"

Offer to go round and kill them, then they can have a chat.

In seriousness, that's a pretty poor state of affairs. I regularly get cold callers asking for my grandfather (he died over 20 years ago). When I say "sorry, he's deceased" then occasionally they have the grace to sound vaguely apologetic, but mostly they just plough on trying to sell me timeshares or debt consolidation or some other happy shit I don't want.

Actually, far too often they don't appear to understand what "deceased" means. Usually when accompanied by an accent last heard in an episode of "Mind Your Language" whilst claiming that their name is "Dave".

But that's a rant for another day I fear.

Tiscali/talk talk tossers.
Internet speed went right down to 160KBPS.
After several attempts to remedy this, including sending me a wireless hub thing which i never received, i had no choice but to cancel.
They then refused to give me the MAC code despite speaking to 3 different "advisors".
Now waiting 2 weeks for the line to clear before starting again with another ISP.
Utter tossers.

They are terrible. My mate just cancelled with them in the 30 day period. Because every time his phone rang the Internet disconnected. Tried everything different socket, different filter, cable, computers, router, in the end cancelled went with sky and no problems so far…

If you dislike TalkTalk now, you should read this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/26/talktalk_stalkstalk/

Also Zen are a high quality provider of no-nonsense internet connections.

They are terrible. My mate just cancelled with them in the 30 day period. Because every time his phone rang the Internet disconnected. Tried everything different socket, different filter, cable, computers, router, in the end cancelled went with sky and no problems so far…

nigh on exactly the same story here too.

Thanks all for replies, will look into it, def want get out of 'talk-talk' 😡