I thought you wanted faster upload speeds also?

HI All,

The Follow up call after using the TT Availability Checker is a condition of using the check itself. As most people who check what speed TT can offer are in some way potentially interested in the service, then a follow up call is made.

If non customers wish to opt out of any marketing calls they can do so either via email or using the Contact Us form on the TalkTalkMembersForum website (as non customers cannot register for the forum) where opt out can be completed. There is also a written address such requests can be made, in the Code of Practice on the TT Website.


Regards

Mark
TalkTalk Online Community Department

Mark,

Or alternatively just call 0800 049 1374 and not use the speed check, then one can speak to a sales person at a time that is convenient rather than get a call back at possibly an inconvenient moment.

The sales person should be able to confirm full LLU availability etc. and one should also be able to request no further marketing calls if it was simply an enquiry. Having to send an email, use the Contact Us Form etc. is surely a ridiculous arrangement?

I did it, spent an hour on the phone sorting this out, Talk Talk say i will have faster upload and download speeds, they quoted me 8.9mbp/s download and a 1mbp/s upload speed, so yes it is supposed to be faster.

I'm annoyed at losing free international extra as i make calls to North America every day, i argued long and hard with the salesperson and then his manager about this, i said i wouldn't take out the broadband if they charged for international calls to the USA, no budging, i ended up giving in after twenty five minutes of heated debate on the matter, so thats £3 extra but they quoted £21.80 inc the international calls and broadband for the first 12 months, after which it will be £23.30 including line rental.

Thats still saving me a whopping amount of cash each month and if their claims of higher speeds are true and no throttling, then great, i asked about it and told them i like to stream HD movie trailers at Apples site and play online gaming and backup my website with FTP etc etc, they said no throttling as long as i stay within my 40Gig limits, well they would say that, i hope they are true to their word but we'll see, i hope i haven't made a mistake.

Now i gotta go check out the thread about people being charged for cease orders on their line when switching from ADSL to LLU, since i'm already with Talk Talk for the phone i can't see why i would pay a cease charge though. ( not with BT )

I agree about the sales calls, their online checking facility should not be harvesting peoples numbers to pester them for sales chatter, not without informing them in advance that it does this, it should have an opt out, i wonder if thats all legal.

Edited by deleted (Thu 03-Nov-11 15:33:39)

hi 42m,

We offer Online Engagement options to customers we communicate with via online media. This is the reason I did not suggest calling the telephony sales team, to provide a matched method to the one we are using at present i.e. Online.


Of course calling TT to make an enquiry is an option and it circumvents a call from the sales team (as your already calling them), marketing opt outs can be requested if necessary at this time.

TalKTalk1969 - In regards the migration if you join the TTMF Forum we can look into any details of the transfer you are querying. The TTMF Forum allows us to complete data protection checks so we can access your account.

In regards the Availability checker it does clearly state the following:


Please be aware that if you use the speed checker, TalkTalk will call you to discuss your broadband requirements.

This is in clear White Text (on a dark background) above the "Check Speed" Button and just below where customers enter the phone number and postscode.

As such this is the most prevelant placement for a message notifying customers that a further call will be received for the purposes of discussing BB requirements. If you wish to use the avaialbility checker you agree to receipt of this call. There is however no obligation to use the checker on the TT site and as 42m has advised above there are alternative options to check your speed via telephony support (although I did not refer to these as we provide matched contact methods for online engagement as explained above).

Regards

Mark
TalkTalk Online Community Department

Would 40GB be enough for you if streaming HD videos?

I do a fair bit with HD 5Mbps and 8Mbps VBR stuff and it soon eats into a usage allowance - upload data and download data is normally added together. Some ISP's have off peak unlimited usage and others even offer unlimited uploads as part of their package.

All this you probably know but it's worth taking into consideration...

Yeah, i don't download whole films, just trailers and not that many a week, they're not that big.

Maybe view the occasional Youtube video and BBC, ITV or Ch 4 Player, once again i don't think they're huge files and its only occasionally, the biggest file each month is backing up my website which is near 3 Gigabyte in size, i'll do that at off peak hours with Talk Talk just to make them happy and to avoid any possible issues.

I like playing Resistance: Fall Of Man online gameplay which is the Playstation 3, once again i don't think that eats up too much data.

Really with Zen i was using between 8 Gig and 12 Gig a month, i had gone onto their lite product but lately have just been sneaking over the 10 Gig limit so was paying for additional usage by buying boosts, i decided just last week to upgrade to the 50 Gig plan and pay £7 more, then i got a shock and discovered i had LLU from the Carphone Warehouse on the line, i didn't expect that, so i decided to ask about that here and then today i called Talk Talk.

Of course uploads now count as data where before with Zen they didn't, that should be fine too, i'll probably struggle to use 20 Gig a month, not a real heavy user but sometimes i like to watch some HD trailers and maybe stream a few Youtube vids, maybe in the future i might upload some HD footage from my camcorder if i truly have a faster speed, at the moment 448kbp/s is real slow for uploading as some of that footage can be big.

With the money i will save i am now planning to treat myself to an extra pack of cornflakes a week, i might even push to an extra bottle of milk too, i might even ditch my website which costs me £33 a month and put it on Google blogger for free with just the domain name costs to pay, the economy really is that bad that i need every penny right now.

Here's the good news:

My cousin uploaded a 116MB video last night, at about 9.30, to vimeo.com - we didn't bother to monitor the speed because it was obviously going really well. So we went and made some tea, drank it and when we returned to the pc the upload was done.

He's on TT essentials LLU with no broadband speed boosts

Thats good, i wish YouTube and Vimeo had higher quality settings, i shoot at 28mbp/s and 1080 50p and then they convert at 4.5mbp/s and suddenly great looking footage has lots of artifacts all over it and becomes real poor looking, i think its going to be years before true HD quality footage is available on those services, of course a higher setting would see crazy large file sizes and we would need much faster connections to view the material properly, maybe in the future it'll happen.

The big thing for me is that additional boost to the upload speeds, thats what has me excited, i think upload speed is often neglected by people but if you have a website or like to upload footage online then more speed is always better.

Edited by deleted (Thu 03-Nov-11 18:40:12)

vimeo's encoding always looks OK to me - obviously at a reduced quality compared to the source camera files although generally I don't see any blocking due to compression.

Generally I find compressing/resizing to H.264 (or x264) 5Mbps VBR, 2 passes, 720p gives good results on vimeo. They will compress again, of course, to H.264 ~2500Kbps VBR 720p but they will use 2 passes for "plus" users.

Actually my cousin's video, that he uploaded last night, was a WMV 5Mbps VBR 720p file and vimeo made a very good job of it and he's not a "plus" user so probably didn't benefit from a 2 pass transcoding.

Edit: vimeo also allows the downloading of the original uploaded files so one can use a much higher bit rate for those uploads if one wants to make them available for download.

Edited by 4M2 (Thu 03-Nov-11 19:05:10)