What follows is my experience with Talk Talk so far. If any Talk Talk OCEs see this I would be very grateful if you could assist me in this matter. Any advice from anyone would be very much appreciated.
Apologies for the ridiculously long post but here we go:
I signed up to Talk Talk Essentials phone and broadband on the 13th of December 2009 after moving into our new home. The salesman told me the phone line would be activated within a week and the broadband no more than 21 days after that. I received a letter on the 16th Dec telling me to 'get ready' for my new phone and broadband. I felt ready.
In the end the phone line was activated on the 5th of January, 2 weeks later than promised but I was understanding being that it had just been Christmas and all. After the 5th I received no communication other than an order confirmation email on the 7th. No welcome pack and no router.
I waited until the 19th of January before I made my first phone call to customer support. I was asked for my account number which I hadn’t been provided with. He then asked for my phone number after which I was told there was nothing on the system and my account didn’t exist. He said this meant the order was probably still with ‘New Lines’ and I was transferred.
I then spoke to a lady who told me that everything was fine and the order was scheduled to go live on the 27th. When asked why I had not received either my welcome pack or the router I was told that they were having issues with sending them out but rest assured they would be with me in the next few days. She also promised to call me if anything went wrong. I then felt reassured that everything was going roughly as planned.
All this time I had been making do with Vodafone mobile broadband for work which cost me £15 for every Gigabyte used. At the time of purchase this seemed fine as I only envisaged a few week sans internet.
On the 27th neither the router nor welcome pack had arrived so I called the ‘New Lines’ team once again. This time I was told that the ‘order was stuck’ and the IT department were working on it. I was promised an update the next day. The man then said I should probably speak to the ‘broadband equipment department’ to chase my router. So he put me through and once again I was told my order did not exist and was transferred back to new lines where another lady told me that the router would not be ordered until the order left ‘new lines’.
I called back the next day and spoke to another lady who said the order was still stuck, and she couldn’t tell me why or do anything to un-stick it. She told me the best thing to do would be to call back in a week…. A WEEK. At this point I was furious, how can it take a week just to find out why the order hadn’t been processed? I expressed my disgust as civilly as is humanly possible in such situations and was told she was very sorry but there was nothing she could do.
On the 1st of February I received another order confirmation email. Did this mean the broadband had been re-ordered? I didn’t get chance to call back until the 8th February. I explained the whole saga to a man who told me I now had another provisional ‘go live date’ (the 21st Feb) but no firm date. He then put me on hold while he went to check for a firm date. Two minutes later I was hung up on.
I called back and spoke to a lady, explained the situation yet again and was told the same - no firm date. She then looked at the order history and said that previously my order had been in the queue, got stuck (what does that even mean???) and was then ‘de-queued’, but then not put back in the queue. She then said my order was back in the queue but ‘obviously’ it was now much further down the queue as I had been ‘de-queued’ and ‘re-queued’. So I said, “Ok, just move me up the queue where I should be”, but she couldn’t do this, not possible apparently. I demanded a firm date as to when I would receive my broadband but she could only tell me that she would personally call me as soon as she knew.
I am now very much at the end of my tether. I really don’t understand how it can take this long just to process the order. If nothing is sorted within the next week I’m going to have to cancel. Since being without hardwired internet I have spent £75 on the mobile broadband (unavoidable due to working from home). Not good when you consider a years worth of broadband only costs £84…
I want to sign up for the Talk Talk member forums to see if that will get me anywhere but as the order has not been processed I cannot. Even though I have a working phone line and I pay them every month I am apparently not a customer yet.
Again, if anyone can offer any help/advice/personal experience that would be fantastic.
Edited by yddeniks (Tue 09-Feb-10 13:07:05)