Talk Talk worst customer service ever!

[The Joker]

Is you phone and internet via a BT phone line though?

 

No, both are (were. . .) supplied through good old' Yorkshire Cable

[JFKvsNixon]

No, both are (were. . .) supplied through good old' Yorkshire Cable

 

Phew!!!!!!!!!!!

[nicolapalmer]

No Matter which provider you are with you will always incure or hear something you dont like.

 

But where are the comments when everything is working fine ?

 

I have been with talktalk since the beginning and NEVER had a problem with the call centre but every discrepincy i have had be it with billing etc it was dealt with effectively.

 

This day you have to go by your own experiences ( well thats what i think ).

 

I myself have had issues with other providers with tv services but again i dont say dont go with them and so on as the experience maybe different with yourselfs.

 

Patience is virtue with the off-shore call centres as being abrupt dont work ( i have also ad 1st hand experience of this).

 

thanks Nicola

 

---------- Post added 10-04-2015 at 13:16 ----------

 

Virgin Media swapped our Broadband to Talk Talk too, but my OH has an EE mobile so we decided to go the whole hog and have the full package from them instead....2 weeks of incomptency and bare-faced lies from them, a neighbours account linked to ours, failed delivery of router and TV box...hung up on by Customer Services...I filled in a monitoring form to Ofcom because their service had been appalling....can't wait for Virgin Media to put their Fibre Optic system in place as we'll be going straight back to them.

Make notes of phone calls with thim, e-mail their complaints dept and tell them you've filled in a Monitoring Form to Ofcom...Ofcom wont at take actual action for your personal case, but the form alerts them to malpractices which they will monitor and then investigate if there's regular complaints of the same nature.

 

Good luck, x

 

Again a prime example in this quote

 

EE have been voted the worst customer service by ofcom for the coming year. But you havnt had any issues.

 

Thanks

[TrickyDickie]

I've been with talk talk for years, just recently I took out a landline and broadband. Very efficient, can't fault them. It's as been said, everyone has had different experience, but from my perspective I recommend them.

[tzijlstra]

Same for me TrickyDickie, has it occurred to the OP that the trouble could in fact stem from poor delivery of your data by Virgin to TalkTalk? A lot can go wrong with the transfer of large data-sets, not that this should excuse TalkTalk.

 

Having dealt with Virgin in the past and knowing a number of people that work for them I can safely say that Virgin Media is not brilliant in the customer service stakes either.

[Longy67]

Same for me TrickyDickie, has it occurred to the OP that the trouble could in fact stem from poor delivery of your data by Virgin to TalkTalk? A lot can go wrong with the transfer of large data-sets, not that this should excuse TalkTalk.

 

Having dealt with Virgin in the past and knowing a number of people that work for them I can safely say that Virgin Media is not brilliant in the customer service stakes either.

 

I think it's fair to say most company's customer services dept can be pretty poor sometimes, nature of the beast, having said that, we have been with Yorkshire Cable (1995) and all the other incarnations right up to Virgin Media and can honestly say we have never had a problem with them, all our issues have been dealt straight away and with a courteous manner...

[tzijlstra]

I think it's fair to say most company's customer services dept can be pretty poor sometimes, nature of the beast, having said that, we have been with Yorkshire Cable (1995) and all the other incarnations right up to Virgin Media and can honestly say we have never had a problem with them, all our issues have been dealt straight away and with a courteous manner...

 

Fair enough, here is something to consider though (Long, as it still riles me thinking back on it):

 

When we moved to our house in Hillsborough (a new build) I insisted on fibre, Virgin were the only ones supplying it at the time. I contacted them, got a pleasant sales-chap round to discuss the options, signed a piece of paper with the promise it would be installed within 3 days and he left his mobile number in case of issues "Contact me anytime!".

 

The day after I got confirmation that the tech-team would come round in the morning, could I please make sure I was in. Waited all morning, nothing.

 

Rang the sales-guy, didn't know who I was or anything about the order (same guy!), had to remind him a few times before he caught on, said he didn't know, I had to contact the tech-helpline.

 

Spent 2 hours on my mobile trying to get through (didn't have a landline of course), finally got through, didn't receive any clarification, just a courteous, we will call you when we know more.

 

2 days later, nothing. Rather peed off with the situation I rang the sales-guy again and demanded that he'd give me an answer, he never rang back even though he said he would. At that point I arranged a BT engineer to come round and installed BT. End of the month, bill for Virgin with a nice letter saying I hoped I enjoyed all the great content on offer and did I want to expand my package.

 

Contacted them again, took me two days to get through to the right department and finally be told that the tech-guys had been, but couldn't install because, wait for it, "we had new tarmac in front of the house".

 

I asked why they hadn't bothered knocking on the door: "they were very busy that day". Well, they hadn't been busy at my place! Told them that I wouldn't pay as I didn't have a connection - got switched to yet another manager, had to explain the whole malarky again.

 

Month later, bill from Virgin, with a warning that I had to pay last month's bill as well OR they would disconnect me.

 

I sent them a letter, explained that if they did not take me out of their database I would contact trading standards. Within 2 months I got a "renew your contract!" and a "special offer for returning customers!" and a "Great deal for mobile phones!" letter, contacted trading standards and Ofcom to file an official complaint and only then did Virgin actually comply with my request.

[swarfendor437]

People need to be aware the other part of the scenario - are Virgin customers that are being transferred to TT on 'Unbundled' exchanges? Was their data carrier via BT Exchange equipment or Virgin's? This is where things go awry and unless you have worked in the IT industry or know how the 'backbone' works you won't know the whole story. I am still with TT despite a substantial price hike on Value Line Rental - they threw in You View Box, Router and Power Line adapters - only used the YouView Box which has now replaced the redundant i-Can box. Do get buffering but don't want to get tied in to fibre as changing supplier if need to would be more difficult. Only had minor glitches in service - some of the Loyalty team need re-training!

[ShefStealth]

*snip*Do get buffering but don't want to get tied in to fibre as changing supplier if need to would be more difficult.

 

All UK ISPs that provide fibre over BT PSTN lines are actually supported by BT Openreach and are reselling a BT Wholesale product, NGA WBC or NGA WBMC. Sky wanted Ofcom to allow fibre unbundling, but that hasn't happened. It would cause a lot more chaos to allow other ISPs to install DSLAMs into street fibre cabinets. Fibre cabinets are already struggling with internal capacity constraints due to space (they support a maximum of 288 lines per cabinet).

 

The Fibre market is basically at the same stage now as what ADSL products were at circa 2004, prior to LLU coming on stream i.e all ISPs used to resell BT Wholesale's DataStream and IPStream products which provided the connection from a CP through BT's ATM backhaul back to the ISP's POP and its own backhaul. The only difference now is that BT Wholesale allow their Fibre circuits to have some control over them via a VULA process, which basically allows the ISPs some control over the performance and characteristics of a circuit but doesn't allow them to be physically unbundled (which saves BT the chaos of cab access!)

 

South Yorkshire should be especially aware of the drawbacks and challenges that LLU Fibre would bring for cab access, as we already demonstrated numerous problems when Digital Region was around, and they had access to physically seperate cabinets due to SLU. You'd basically have a situation where by you have SLU but without the seperate cabinets. BT Openreach engineers would be waiting on sites for 3rd party engineers to attend a cabinet or vice versa. I don't often defend BT, but in this situation I'm actually siding with Openreach/Wholesale and defending them for the minute on this - the fibre market isn't mature enough yet to have worked out the potential problems that would be bought by full Fibre LLU.

 

To this end, you should not have any issues with going with whichever Fibre provider you wish, as all ISPs should be able to do Fibre Migration (Works like ADSL migration with a MAC key) as they are all using BT NGA WBC/WBMC products anyway. This is of course with the exception of Virgin Media's Fibre which is a physically separate network.