Finally got an option of a cheap broadband package where i live ( to break the monopoly of BT). It is only £3.25 a month, which is a saving of £10 a month on what i pay now, but it is with TalkTalk, who i have heard bad things about. Should i switch to them or avoid like the plague?

I’d maybe try letting a bit of pressure from the tyres for better grip – or cut your losses and get a 29er

oh! sorry – I thought this was a cycling forum ?????

lol,

but i’m sure Stan would agree that it’s from Yorkshire so must be good 😉

In my experience Talktalk gave a rubbish service and were a nightmare to deal with, AVIOD!!!

Oops bit of temporary dyslexia there…meant to write AVOID!!!

with TalkTalk and have been for some years, the broadband is great, service from order to installation was faultless.

heard plenty of bad things online mostly about their customer service – never used it so dont know, everyone ive known use them has been pleased

my netbook and their router seem to fall out a lot recently, but for the price, 8M down, 40GB a month, phone line blah blah <£20/month whats not to like.

Talk Talk customer services are the worst. Ever. Threatened us with court action over an account we closed and they ‘actually’ owed us money, which we got as a cheque in the end and then they still carried on threatening us with ballifs and the like, even though the staff couldnt work out why we were being victimised. Terrible people.

Have been with Talktalk for years and have never had any issues. The couple of times I’ve had to contact them they have resolved issues pretty quickly. I now have their fibre optic package, and again, no complaints.

In short, no. They have consistently been ranked the worst for customer service by some huge margin.

My personal recommendation… PlusNet.

Who funny enough are owned by BT, but are cheaper and provide a better service.

Been with them nearly two years now and I can’t fault them. From Jan 1st they offer unlimited downloads to all customers now too.

Plusnet hands down great customer service and quick to rectify any problems.

Been with TalkTalk and had nothing but real problems,
– foreign call centres
– Poor customer service
– poor and slow with any faults
– waiting times when phoning 20mins at best
– would not provide with mac code when wanting to leave, took about 4 weeks to get and that was after Plusnet intervened.

Been with TalkTalk for a few years, no problems. Nothings really gone wrong though, which is when you really notice the customer service stuff.

Another plus 1 for the ‘been with them for years and been happy but heard terrible stories’ brigade 🙂

When it works its great but any problems and it gets ugly.

I work for an internet telephony company. The guys who run it used to run a large internet ISP which was sold in 2002. Whilst my knowledge of these matters is negligible they wouldn’t touch TalkTalk with a bargepole. FWIW they all use Zen for their home broadband.

Grim bunch. Pay a few quid more to plusnet.

Same problems as Bren2709 so I’ll repeat:

Been with TalkTalk and had nothing but real problems,
– foreign call centres
– Poor customer service
– poor and slow with any faults
– waiting times when phoning 20mins at best

+ our connection seems to be getting slower & slower….

Here’s a nicely written and erudite description of one person’s dissatisfaction with Talk Talk.
She’s nearly six foot tall, and wears steel-toe work boots for her day job; I think she could happily kick their asses!
http://www.kategriffin.net/2013/01/07/dear-talk-talk/

I will find it hard to see past bt from now on afer my recent experiances trying to fix my parents phone/ internet.

Phone went dead one day

Phoned orange informed them they said they would fix

3 weeks later i went home – still not fixed , dads going wild phoning them every other day.

Then day before the statutory 30 days they have to fix it before they have to pay compensation bt openreach appear and say we had been disconnected at the box up the pole. Raging – how ever nice man at bt fitted a new line from the box to our master socket so internets never been faster.

In contrast to my own line which went dead one day – called bt and it was fixed before mid day the next day. Council had cut through the line in the roadside with they flail when cutting grass.

Worth the difference in price – parents have now switched after the impact it had on my dads business – you dont believe how even a builder relys on the internet these days for ordering and banking

Virgin have just massively hiked the cost of ours so I need to look around. Talktalk points noted above – thanks!

I won’t touch BT with a bargepole given their Ryanair pricing approach – all the hidden extras that keep on getting loaded on (18 quid a quarter just for the honour of paying them!!). I do have an (unproven) suspicion though that BT customers get priority in line-related repairs, whereas others get bare minimum.

Will look at Plusnet.

“18 quid a quarter just for the honour of paying them!!”

is that the fee that applies if you opt out of DD payment ?

That’s the one. Buried away somewhere.

not really , was informed of it on the phone when i signed up. Just signed up to the DD

not as dishonest as the energy companys who hike up your DD on the offchance you might start using double what you used last year.

“yes but the idea is you build up a credit to use over the winter period when you will use more energy” – “whys that then” , “heating & lights” …… “urm im on oil heating and dont have my house like blackpool , id like the build up of credit to be in my account please”

Yeah, I made the mistake of signing up one of those too – part of what has given me my huge mistrust of DDs. I prefer to be in charge rather than the other side…..

oh – another thing. Looking at the router names availible here im one of 2 on BT in my “street” of 8 houses in nowheresville aberdeenshire.

had one of my neighbours round over xmas and he was asking why i had apple tv – was it not pointless if i couldnt stream rented/bought media from the internet – he took his back as he couldnt stream it just jerked, had to give it half an hour to buffer – he was on o2 as it was cheap.

my apple tv streams smooth and clean on HD rentals within seconds. – i only get 3meg on speedtest.

Cheers for the advice. What gets me is that where i live, BT own all the lines etc, and as such other companies have been unable to undercut BT as they use their network. Tried to go with Plusnet, but the £3 deal they offer on their website would cost me £15.99 due to the BT thing. Its only now that other companies are able to offer cheaper deals. I haven’t had any problems with my BT broadband, but they are expensive! Have not gone with TalkTalk in the end and have just signed up with Primus. This gives me the same deal as i was getting with BT, but at £140 per year cheaper!

After signing up for Talk Talk broadband a few years back I will NEVER use them again and I will NEVER even step foot into a Carphone warehouse shop either.

Rubbish service, rubbish customer service, a total disaster from start to finish.all the while we were meant to be getting their broadband I had to use dial up due simply to speed and reliability.

Went with Sky after we managed to jib Talk Talk off and they have been superb since day one with very good reliable broadband (so its not the phone line)

I have talk talk and certainly wouldnt recommend it. At peak times of the day the connection is either really slow or just drops off entirely and I have to reconnect. Using the internet after 9pm seems to be the answer. Swapping back to bt even though its a few quid more.

“At peak times of the day the connection is either really slow or just drops off entirely and I have to reconnect. Using the internet after 9pm seems to be the answer.”

had this at o2 . Id phone them up and miraculously without doing anything at my end the speed would improve.

the next day it would be dog slow again – after about a week of this , they then blamed my computer- works laptop that works wonderfully on everyother network except this o2 one…. think not.

bt is expensive but its shown its worth when ever ive had issues.

Go to samknows.com, put your phone number and poistcode into the broadband checker and see what LLU based services are available.
Despite not liking Murdoch et al I rather like my Sky broadband.
Unlimited, not speeds not throttled at peak times like TalkTalk and Virgin.
I do this sort of thing for a living BTW.

Switching to LLU though can rule you out of fibre if and when you get it near you. Unless they’ve LLU’d the fibre now.

Sky is unlimited not throttled etc yes, but like NTL (now Virgin) they’re subject to their own capacity limits. So long as they keep investing it’s fine. Used to find with NTL it would be oversubscribed and everything nose dived.

Also they have certain limits for what I need and think they require you to use their own equipment, though was a while back I looked at them. Plus have to sign up everything to Murdoch. I’ve got his TV but I’m loathed to put my phone line and broadband in there too.

Currently experiencing there amazing customer service first hand, reported a fault 3 weeks ago, all they were interested in was replacing my router! After more calls telling them it hasn’t changed they admitted a fault, then had to wait 10 days for an engineer as they forgot to book him, and he turns up, says “yeah, you got a fault on the bt line” not my problem, and buggers off, talk talk then forget to escalate it, so this evening I enjoyed my 30 minute rant, still not working, but I felt better……

Now waiting on a succession of BT engineers to turn up and do nothing….

Even if you lodge an official complaint, they do nothing…

Rubbish…..

Im led to believe that SKY will be offering LLU Fibre, but I suspect it will just use the BT fibe connection from the nearest cabinet in the street, whilst retaining the LLU bit for the exchange switching stuff.