Ok, a nice long whinge about trying to get Talk Talk phone and Broadband - unsuccessfully so far.

I had a choice between a fantastic offer by Virgin and getting talk talk. I chose talk talk because of the high call costs on Virgin - so while my first year bill will be more, it will be more than recuperated by the 2nd year. Free local calls (including 0151 and 01244 as well as others) on Talk Talk was very attractive

4/2/2010 Phone Talk Talk and order Phone and Broadband - get told an engineer to visit and have to pay £59.99 connection because I do not have an active line. ETA about 1 week for phone and 3 weeks after for broadband. £59.99 to be on first bill. Engineer to probably arrive on 12th

4/2/2010 Received txt confirmation of order.

5/2/2010 Received txt to say engineer to call on 16th

11/2/2010 Received confirmation letter dated 6th to say engineer to visit on 16th

12/2/2010 Received confirmation letter dated 4th!!! to say they want the £59.99 paid up front but the order is still being progressed.

13/2/2010 Phoned to try and pay £59.99 but couldn't find a department to accept it - went round 7 different people, most departments had no record of me at all, in passing I found out that my order was cancelled and I would have to raise a new order, ended up with Openreach who stated they have no record of activity on my address. At one point I was transferred to O2 which got us both confused, they must both use the same call centre - ????

15/2/2010 Start again .... Raised new order and paid £59.99

19/2/2010 Received txt to confirm new order

21/2/2010 Received txt to say an engineer doesn't need to call and that phone will be active midnight 25th. it looks like they suddenly discovered I wasn't a newline - so why do I have to pay £59.99 when standard connection is normally £29.99 but at the moment is free.

26/2/2010 Received txt to say my phoneline is now active and giving me my phone number. No it is not, where I used to get a little click when I connected phone, there is now deathly silence.

27/3/2010 I can't afford to keep phoning Talk Talk on mobile so fill in their website contact form. No confirmation of this was received.

2/3/2010 Filled in another contact form on their website, got confirmation back.

7/3/2010 Received email reply back from contact form, they have no record of me or my telephone number.

11/3/2010 Phone finance department to say you took money off me but I have not received anything in exchange, they found out payment is placed against the first account I opened which was supposed to be dead and closed. They put me through to Newlines who submited a report to Openreach to get it sorted - eta 15th. They are very worried this will not be sorted before the broadband date of the 18th. They also explained that as I am classed as newline until 18th is why customer services will not know about me.

13/3/2010 Received welcome pack giving me my account number, telephone number and date that broadband will be connected 18th. There is no longer any mention of free local calls(one of the main reasons for me joining) and the connection fee seems to have gone up to £69.99. Also received broadband modem etc through post.

I am waiting with baited breath for an Openreach engineer to call on Monday the 15th - the odds of this being sorted before my broadband date of the 18th is looking very remote.

I have had similar experiences to this with the following companies/bodies

BT (to a worse degree)
Tiscali (to a worse degree)
United Utilities (to a lesser degree)
Npower
ScottishPower
CSA (to a lesser degree)
JSA
ESA

I consider that the use of 0870 numbers and cheap offshore call centres has aggravated these problems. There is a possibility that the cost of the calls more than pays for the cheap offshore call centre, hence they may actually profit out of your problems - the more and longer the problems - the more profit.

Not my experience! See 'caller id on my home phone' thread, yesterday.
Maybe mine was a simpler case - changing from 'f2s + BT landline' to talktalk 'Essentials', consisting of bband and free landline phonecalls (exceptions as detailed).
I did the change by their website last September and it all went smoothly, no mention of me having to get a MAC number, which has been a source of hassle apparently. The router came within days and installed easily and the changeover was seamless on the day appointed.
The 'welcome pack' was in words of one syllable, which suits me.
I went from a useless 230kB to 6.8MB downloading for £8 less pm!
TT's account is far easier to understand than the pages and pages of BT's.
Talktalk was the only LLU isp on my exchange so the choice was obvious.

Call me a happy bunny!
It's strange how the experience can differ!

Bri

Sounds like a nightmare d.d.
I'd be going off my head. Grr proper mickey mouse firm. United utilities were the same. Gorms in a call centre altho customer services were v. Helpful.

My mum had a very similar experience with talk talk, just cancelled the contract in the end. very poor company.

Talk Talk excellent for me and my family, no complaints. Im with Bri on this one.

DD I don't know if this is any help but this is a website which gives the 'proper' number for 0870 numbers so you can dial at lower cost from your mobile

http://www.saynoto0870.com/

Cheers for that, thanks.

Thanks softy, I use that site all the time, but as my landline is not functioning yet, mobile calls are still pricey.


To others, you can only judge a customer service department when things go wrong - I had fantastic service off Tiscali (and its predecessors) for many years - but then my internet went down and it too 5 months, 30 phones calls and numerous emails to put right, then I had years of wonderful service again.

Anyone getting Talk-Talk Essentials (or even already have it) - beware the wording for "free local calls" has disappeared off latest documents and the website. The page with areas that constitute local calls is still present but I couldn't find a logical link to it.

Had a lot of problems with Talk Talk, if you have to use their helpline, god help you. It's in India and they just use cue sheets. You have to phone three times before they put your through to technical support.

As another couple of weeks have passed, I thought an update on my saga is due.

I assumed, that my account would have left the "New Lines" department and be passed to "Customer Services", I also assumed that this means I would be back to scratch on getting my problems solved - how right I was, all without the use of a crystal ball.

20/3/2010 - attempted to register on the Talk Talk forums using my account number. Wouldn't accept my account number, sent off a whinge-mail.

22/3/2010 - Forum guys emailed to confirm that there is no record of my account number on their database (which is the customer-services database.

29/3/2010 - Sent off all my details to forum guys because they said they might bodge me in.

30/3/2010 - Phoned "New Lines" - they confirmed that I no longer come under new-lines and that I have been passed to customer-services, tried to make the usual funny noises about the fact that I am not on their database, she said she would sort that out.

30/3/2010 - Phoned "Customer Services" - YESSSS, I am on their database, they said an engineer had been out to plug me in at the exchange - ignored my comments that this had supposedly happened four times now, seemed very surprised that I didn't have a working telephone line, they started to go on about my broadband but then realised that no telephone means no broadband.

30/3/2010 - Phoned "Technical Services", they tried some very interesting ideas like "have you plugged a phone in and listened for a dial-tone", took me a while to clean up the debris after rolling about the floor smashing everything in sight. She said an engineer will be sent out - and did end up laughing herself when I said, "just like the other four I suppose". After a few more inane tests, she has put it through to the escalation department - where no doubt the process will start yet again. In the mean time she offered to redirect my landline calls to my mobile, after I confirmed this would be free I agreed. Life's not that easy, whilst she may have switched the redirect on, she hasn't switched the talktalk answer-phone off, which I guess takes priority, as my redirect isn't happening.

53 days after order placed.
42 days after the first date my phone should have been working.
33 days after the second date my phone should have been working.
12 days after my broadband should be working.

NOTHING! I am just about to register on the Talk Talk forums - I will probably be under the user name DumbDumb or similar.

I am still with the GPO which seems to be working fine.

Better with Virginmedia!

Mine is a BT Openreach problem, they are doing the engineering concerning the line and basically are trying everything in their power to avoid coming here and acknowledging there is a problem..

I wish I could afford their call charges, if it was just broadband I was after then you would be undoubtedly correct.

Utter lunacy!!

3rd Report due to progress

31/3/2010 Got a txt off engineer to say it should be sorted but to txt back if it wasn't. It wasn't so txt'd back.

31/3/2010 Got a phone call off escalation team, is your phone working now as they had not heard from the engineer, I told her it wasn't working when I left home. As I wasn't at home, said I would be back by 5, she said she would phone back at 5:30 - she didn't.

1/4/2010 Phone call off escalation team ... blah blah blah

1/4/2010 4pm Phone call off engineer at exchange, said everything was leaving the exchange ok. As I wasn't at home I said I would be back in 10 mins, he said he would phone about 4:25.

1/4/2010 4:30pm Engineer phoned back, told him no telephone. He said he would have to send out an external engineer.

1/4/2010 5:05pm External engineer arrives (and another followed him - they were pairing up to clear the jobs at the end of the day). Quick check of line at my end and slapped a trace oscillator on it. Engineers bombed off to junction box and one came back to mine, bit of head scratch and sorted it. They found they had connected my telephone to wrong flat - told me to check my bill.

YESSSSS -I HAVE TELEPHONE AND BROADBAND (Measured at 18Mb/s - and got a 12Mb/s download).

My thanks to the three (Openreach) engineers involved for bringing reality into the world of TalkTalk.

Outstanding problems that no doubt will have to be resolved ...

My phone and broadband started on April Fools day not on the previous dates, no doubt they will not refund me automatically.

As I signed up before 1st Mar, I should have free local calls 24/7.

As I signed up before 1st Mar my new-line connection fee should be £59.99 not £69.99

I still question whether I should have paid the new-line connection fee, it was not a new line and in some small print of theirs I meet the criteria for a reconnection which before 1st Mar was FREE, knocked down from £29.99.

Let the battle continue, but now I can phone them free of charge, the odds are a bit more balanced.

BTW I am planning to get a 0870 number and provide this as my phone number for all those robbing companies that do that to me. I think everybody should do this, you keep your normal number(all 0870 also have a geographical number, the 0870 is an inbound redirect). The 0870 can cost you nothing, or if there is a reasonable amount of traffic you can even make money from it.

4th report ....

I've being dying for my first bill to arrive, to see how much of a mess TalkTalk have made of my account. They did much better than I thought, I have ended up on the correct calling plan, but ....

Line & Broadband (finally) connected 1/4/2010, Line rental and Broadband charged since 26/2/2010.

24/4/2010 - Emailed TalkTalk to tell them they have charged me rental before they provided me with a connection.

24/4/2010 - about one hour later than the above email sent, talktalk phoned me, understood the problem and said they have refunded the overcharge. Left me speechless, service with a smurf (for a change).

The broadband service is superb, my connection is faster than my internal Wireless network, no significant brown-outs, email servers are fantastic, near instantaneous to download emails (once the idiot in charge got the settings right )