In reply to a post by Myth:

one step up from budget isn't premium.

True, but they are quite a few steps up. The mainstream ADSL2+ ISPs are Talktalk, Sky, Plusnet, BT, O2 and BE, with BE being the most expensive and TalkTalk the cheapest. I would consider IDnet "niche", and far from mainstream, but I accept BE can look cheap if we were to include niche.

On a side note, I don't get caller display, and 1571 stuff works, but I am definitely on full metal path. Does this sound normal?

On TalkTalk MPF? If you aren't getting it, either they haven't enabled it on your line or your equipment isn't compatible.

Edited by Oliver341 (Tue 19-Feb-13 14:49:45)

@woweebert

The fact is that with both company's current phone line, calls and broadband package (with half price for 12 month offers) the price of talktalk is £18.20 and Bethere is £19.50 a month, wow a £1.30 price difference between budget and premium. So no there really is no excuse as to why talktalk are so bad in comparison when paying nearly the same amount.

Maybe you are happy with poorly performing company's that you class as "BUDGET" but i have used many other "budget" company's in the past, for example budget airlines and they have all managed to not mess my order up, get me on the plane and on time and sort out any questions i have had when speaking to them. And the price difference between a budget flight and 1st class flight premium flight is actually a big difference unlike broadband.

Amazon is one of the cheapest places i buy things from...does that make them budget and rubbish?....nope i've found them to be fast and have amazing customer service

see where you went wrong? maybe you just need to set your standards a bit higher and realise that even if something is budget or cheaper than something else that does not mean it has to be terrible in comparison

As for the ADSL connection, well who says i caused a "commotion". The ADSL speed issues i mentioned was me simply asking for my profile to be made the same as what i had on BeThere in which i provided them the speed difference and connection details, SNR etc. And guess what the main reason was that i did that?...it was for TT's benefit so that i could better compare TT and BeThere as fairly as possible. The fact that it took days for them to activate me on the forum so i could post the request and then a further 8 days for them to even respond is not my fault and just highlights the difference in customer service, As with BeThere you can make changes to your ADSL profile in seconds yourself from your members area, or call them, or just send a support ticket. Quite a difference. I remember reading about one guy who tried to get TT to change his profile, he just kept getting passed to different people of which none of them knew what he was talking about and instead kept wanting to change his package lol.
so no it seems that profile issues with TT can't just be "fixed with a Email" as you claim.

Also i waited well after the 10 day ADSL training period before i ran the speed tests on TT so that i wouldn't have a "ridiculously high SNR margin that they connect all new customers with".

So as you can see this is nothing about "they wont jump through hoops like my last ISP" nonsense you mentioned, i was going to do this difference topic no matter how TT turned out....if they were faster and had better customer service than BeThere than this same thread would be here parsing TT. This is simply as fair a comparison as i could get between both of them and my truthful experience of it, as it is something i wish more people would do to help people make more informed choices of if they should switch ISP or not and the differences between them.

definitions

well, probably agree to disagree, I still say you wouldn't call a Ford premium just because they are the higher end of the popular makes, and even though Bentley are niche, I still think premium also describes them.

What I forgot to say to the OP is regarding the reselling of the BT FTTC product.

Is it right to say that TalkTalk's MSANs are now the equipment of choice, or at least better than Be's DSLAMs when it comes to linking up the new BT FTTC products to the backhaul?
I think Andrew said that to me not so long back

Be has a network capacity topology upgrade underway to cope growing use and fttc market and very likely that their Dslam is older model without fibre input capability.

Talktalk starting a little later with their rollout made some better or lucky choices

I am also of the opinion that no matter how budget you feel you are, employing people wherever they are in the world and however cheap, is a financial drain if they don't do any work.

Having a job as a customer service rep and not giving any service to the customer is plain ridiculous, they should be fired. Let the phones ring longer.

The problem arises with stats. Which stats the bosses want to see, and how that changes practices to manipulate stats AT THE DETRIMENT OF THE CUSTOMER.

I actually got fired for not manipulating a certain stat which would have cost the company money if I had done it. Needless to say I took them to court, and I won.

If you get through to customer services and ask for something, that should be the last chasing you need to do. From that point on the company needs to do something. If the company doesn't have the staff or the systems to action what you need, don't pick up the phone. At least the customer knows they still have to make first contact

In reply to a post by Myth:

well, probably agree to disagree, I still say you wouldn't call a Ford premium just because they are the higher end of the popular makes, and even though Bentley are niche, I still think premium also describes them.

I think you should consider Audi, Mercedes and BMW before you get to Bentley.

@Myth

I completely agree with you, I'm sure TT could be making more money if people didn't have to ring them multiple times for hours to try and get something done.

If they just trained them better to be able to answer a call and with better systems to sort it out right away it would mean less calls coming in which means they need to hire less people, which saves TT money in the long run and it means the customers are much happier.

win win?

Edited by Leki (Tue 19-Feb-13 15:22:53)

Out of interest, why did you move from BE to TalkTalk?

thats what I mean about stats. You can bet that the stats show the Indian call centre(s) are doing a fantastic job at answering quickly and having a high % of resolved calls.

what is means to us is that they answer quickly, put us on hold, answer another, come back to us, ask us things we might not know and therefore can hang up, say ring back tomorrow, say ok we'll call you back etc etc, and then they hang up and log it as resolved. Their company then gets a big bonus and TT think they are doing a great job outsourcing to this company.

@Oliver

for fibre....i'm close to my cab so knew i could get good speeds on that, i wish BE had fibre but i'm planning on moving back to BE for fibre if they offer it and when my contact with TT is over.