TalkTalk on Watchdog

TT featured on Watchdog last night, couple of people being billed and hounded by debt collectors long after they had left, all say how difficult it is to contact the company. (Seem to have heard this before somewhere). TT mouthpiece said they strive to give great service blah blah blah but these difficulties arose because they had to integrate seven billing systems after takeover of Tiscali.

Too bad Watchdog prefers to use its airtime with a boring pursuit of one rogue trader instead of publicising an issue which concerns hundreds, maybe thousands, who have problems with TT following these takeovers. When TT works it's fine but given its latest price rises how long can we excuse its shortcomings as those of a budget provider?

Sorry forgot to quote link to brief report
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/watchdog/2010/09/talk_tal...

The recent 50p rise, partly explained by the ~30p a month rise in the wholesale costs of full LLU from Openreach. Was talking on BBC Radio about this for both customers of BT Retail and TalkTalk last week.

The mess that was Tiscali and its various previous purchases will be difficult to resolve, seem to recall saying something about this when it all happened. It was no uncommon for their to people on retention deals, that TalkTalk may be wanting to get rid of now.

The issues of TalkTalk levels of phone support are ongoing, and its not just this ISP, we see many ISP's with problems. It is unclear if the ratio with TalkTalk is worse, but the impression one gets is that length of time to resolve can be worse with TalkTalk.

There is the direct [email protected] people can now try, but I would suggest the TalkTalk Members forum if people have not already tried it. Alternatively we can usually prod the right people (as we can with many providers).

TalkTalk is still clearly a budget provider, the line rental and broadband for £20 is still one of the cheapest deals. Particularly if bought during an offer period.

But TalkTalk are a budget isp. I am now saving over £20 a month on combined BB and line rental with TT. I have been live for a week. Am surfing, gaming and downloading at the same speeds I saw before, and while I know the report was about billing, I am sure there are hundreds of people who have billing problems with other isps...

And not just isps. It's there in all walks of life. I have been incorrectly billed by other companies in the past.

Glad to hear TT is working for you as it does for thousands of others, including many of my friends. When it works it's fine and I myself would have gone with them if my BB hadn't been cut off.

My original posts referred to the hundreds of former Toucan/Tiscali/Pipex customers who still have big problems resulting from the TT takeover. Mr Saffron mentions TT dropping those on retention deals; I was paying £23 a month, more than the £20 he quotes, and was happy with my service. Then Pipex cut it off and charged me a £30 line termination fee.

I wish you happy surfing with TalkTalk.

£20 is talktalk essentials product, no information on what your pipex package was

Pipex provided package of up to 8mb BB (actually 2-4Mb), line rental, unlimited anytime calls. Now paying about £27.50 to BT for the same package, near enough (BT gives 0845/0870 numbers in 'free' calls, but international and other calls are much more expensive and carry connection fee of 10p or so). Since connection six weeks ago BT has performed well, faster than Pipex especially in evenings.

Called BT support after first week, heart sank when Indian call centre answered. Told him I was getting only 1.5Mb with profile of 1500, said no problem, within 20 mins tried speedtester again and got 5.5Mb, profile raised to 6000. Happy enough as we are a mile from exchange and have 30m overhead cable from pole, with 30-yr-old socket and wiring in the house!

Hi All,

We have a specific thread on the TalkTalk members forum in relation to this issue which can be found here.

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

Regards

OCE_Mark

Post deleted by billford