Helping a friend.

Hello all,

I'm posting this for a friend who has been having lots of problems with talk talk, even before the Covid problems and am after some advice for him as he's not very tech savvy and is currently busy working delivering food to the vulnerable.

He's been with talk talk for approx 12 month on a 18 month contract, was quoted "up to 50 mbps" and get about 3-7mbps but the speed is not the problem, it's the packet loss and instability that's getting absolutely ridiculous and it's been like this since day one apparently!

I managed to get him set up with a monitor and was shocked at the results.
HIS MONITOR

So far he has posted on the talk talk community forums but was ignored (over 2 weeks now) with other people getting near instant replies. Has been sent new filters and router (SAGEMCOM FAST 5364 that replaced the very same model he originally had) after finally getting hold of live chat but had to haggle in order not to get charged. He's running everything wired, no power line adaptor's and doesn't have more that 2 wireless devices connected.

His exchange is https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/exchange...

Any advice i could give him to help get this sorted or getting the contract cancelled would be much appreciated as in my opinion they are just taking advantage of him.

Thanks for reading a wall of text.

Has your friend tried connecting his router to the hidden test socket or via a filtered VDSL Faceplate?

Okay, so he's getting 3-7 Mbps, I don't know how that's not supposed to be a problem. That's way off the promised speeds he's getting.

If he's not getting a minimum guaranteed speed, he should be able to quit TalkTalk penalty free without having to pay the remaining contract.

Are you saying your friend has been on a 3-7 Mbps connection for the entire 12 month time??? If this is the case then I don't understand why he didn't quit before.

Did he have problems with his previous provider? It sounds to me like this is a wiring issue. The up to 50 Mbps may be sign of a very long distance to cabinet/crosstalk.

But still 3-7 Mbps suggest something more serious. Did he try connecting his router to to another device to see if he gets the same issue? Also he should make sure to update his network adapter drivers.

By instability does he mean instable connection such as frequent drop-outs? It could be noise on the line. He can check his phone to see if he hears noise. He can dial 17070 to make a quiet line test. If there is noise, he has to contact the ISP to send in an engineer for investigation.

Edited by BLaZiNgSPEED (Tue 28-Apr-20 02:57:36)

1st off they should get all the line connections data fron the router, sync speeds, attenuation, noise margins, connection/modulation type etc, etc. They will need to login to the routet to do that.
Get all that and post back, we can then see if its a connection issue or might even be they are on standard ADSLx.

Post deleted by iefbr14

Edited by iefbr14 (Tue 28-Apr-20 08:00:06)

Ok, I have just had a quick look on the TT forums (entering via your user id). A couple of issues .......

Your friends first post on the forums was April 8th. Posts (within threads) are answered in date order (within each OCE's workflow), which at the moment can be a few days. Probably redundant to suggest that this issue should have been escalated a long time ago if it has been "going on for months".

Unfortunately if new posts are added to threads before an OCE has picked up a thread for action then it is moved to the back of the queue, weird, but that is the way the TT system works. So by adding your post on the 10th you have accidentally delayed a response from the TT teams.

It is taking a while, but probably the worst thing you can do is "bump" the thread again, as that will move it to the back of the queue again.

EDIT - a probably nothing to lose alternative. Get you friend to start a new thread pointing to the old thread and ask if it has been overlooked. So you raise the issue, without effecting the timestamp on the original thread.

Edited by iefbr14 (Tue 28-Apr-20 11:40:59)

Post deleted by Redayejedi

First off thank you all for the replies.

He has been contacting them since day one and they have been fobbing him off with saying there is no problem. I have just got off the phone with him and have since found it that his replacement filter and router were never sent but the filter and router he is using is brand new anyway.

He is connected via filtered socket.

The biggest problem is frequent drop-outs, take Discord for instance, he will drop and connect an average of 30-50 times a night talking to us and can't even get a single game session in without time-out.

His PC is on a fresh install of windows 10 with everything up to date.

His cabinet is a good 10 minutes walk apparently, he is at the back of the estate.

He has gone off now to do the quiet line test and to gather his router stats. I will also get him to do another post on the TT forums pointing to his original thread.

Once again, thank you all.

In reply to a post by Redayejedi:

I will also get him to do another post on the TT forums pointing to his original thread.

The advice was not to do this.
It puts him to the back of the queue again as they answer the oldest posts 1st.

a probably nothing to lose alternative. Get you friend to start a new thread pointing to the old thread and ask if it has been overlooked. So you raise the issue, without effecting the timestamp on the original thread.

quoted from above, if he makes a new thread pointing to it, it shouldn't be a problem. It's been 19 days....

here are his router stats Sorry about the quality.
Stats

Actual Rate [Kbps] 9721 555
Maximum Rate [Kbps] 11098 555
Noise Margin [dB] 9.80 7.80
Attenuation [dB] 31.20 0.00
Power [dBm] 10.10 10.10

Edited by Redayejedi (Tue 28-Apr-20 20:49:19)

Needs the stats relinking.