How bad is your ISP

[eagle driver]

Just wondering if there is anyone out there worse than Talk talk ,last Friday 3 rd Aug I was supposed to go live with an upgrade to my internet .Fair dues to them they did text me to say there would be a slight delay but it would not effect my going live
16.42 Internet crashes no internet no phone zip absolutely oh fudge all .
Called customer services told what the problem was and what they needed to do .
They promptly set about asking me a whole series of totally irrelevant questions mixed in without the usual security questions
Prime examples being do I have dial tone when the whole point of the call was that I had no phone service what so ever.
This seemed to confuse them as they decided to start asking me the same security questions again
After ripping into them again I am then asked do I have internet access
While I try to explain to the Muppet on the other end that you have to have a phone line to be able to get internet access things then got a little heated
Told them that obviously did not have a clue what they were doing and I was going to sign off for night ,I even wished them a good night and hung up
15 minutes later they were back on the line wanting to know was I still needing there services as they were about to close .
Yes so far this had started at 16.42 and it was now nearly 22.00
Just replied back good night and switched the phone off
Following morning found I had a text to say as it was now gone 22.00 they could no longer assist me. LOL
Day 2 Saturday
08.20 Phone call from customer services wanting to know did I still need there assistance .
Explained as of yet they still had not one anything to solve the problem told them I wanted to talk to one of tech managers had a lively chat trying to explain exactly what had been going on to date he seemed to think that open reach needed to do aline test and they would be in touch
Needless to say no openreach contact.
Day 3 Sunday
Zip oh fudge all cannot reach anyone
Day 4 A new day a new hope with very little faith
Watch this space.

[eagle driver]

Day 4 Continued Phoned customer services again basically got asked why was phoning them when they had put it out of there hands and given the problem to Openreach ,told them I did not think much of the service and they should pull there finger out was then asked did I want to upgrade it to an official complain which of course I said yes to so now some time in the next week a manager will be in.contact
So faith in talk talk gone, expectancy of this being resolved to my satisfaction none .

[Nighthawke]

It doesn't matter whether they've passed it to Openreach or Paddy McGinty's Goat! The contract is between you and Talk Talk - you shouldn't have to contact anyone else, that is their problem as the supplier. They need to take responsibility. Many companies deliver good service when it runs OK but when things go wrong they can be a real PITA as you are experiencing. Hope they sort it out soon for you.

[gamecock]

I don't believe there's any real difference in customer care across the vast majority of ISPs. Talk Talk were excellent with us, as have Sky up to now. I had a similar problem years ago with AOL. Absolutely no signal so no chance of a connection. After numerous line tests an AOL engineer came out to confirm the obvious and it then became a blame game between AOL and BT. The only way I could resolve it was to cancel AOL and use another ISP (TT). They pushed BT a bit harder and it was found that someone had mistakenly switched off the link to our house by mistake.

[welshandy]

I'm andy's son, James. When I moved into my flat last October, TalkTalk were the cheapest to offer me a line install. Everything seemed fine, router arrived promptly and activation went through on time. Not long after, the problems started. Constant drop-outs and disconnections with no obvious reason as I still had a dial tone. My area is 80Mb Fibre to the cabinet enabled and they told me that they couldn't upgrade me as fibre wasn't available. Call centre staff seemed useless. As someone with a bit of experience with networking, I'd done enough diagnostics at home to know where the problem was but the guy I was speaking to kept asking me to "switch it off and on again" and do all these pointless tasks, refusing to listen to my side of events.

After about 2 months of hassle and numerous openreach visits, I ended up moving to BT who offered fibre and free installation. Despite being 2 months into an 18 month contract, I had the contract cancelled by a senior manager who agreed that I shouldn't have had the issues. My advice is just to keep pressuring them and try and escalate it as high as possible, they'll get the message eventually!

[wolfie138]

oddly enough my talktalk connection went dead at about 11AM on Sat, the internet light went red. was a bit of a pain contacting them, long story short they eventually said [via recorded mesage] that there was a fault external to them and they'd passed it to openreach to sort out, should hear in 72 hours. wasn't happy about that but when i checked at 4AM when i got up through the night it was sorted again.

[100arw]

TalkTalk has been perfect from day 1 - some years ago after they took over from AOL.
Only lost the internet once - and that was a BT Openreach line fault. TalkTalk arranged a prompt repair by Openreach.
As for costs. Never compared it, but TT claim they are much cheaper than other services and give examples of savings.
Unlimited email etc etc so overall I am well pleased.
P.e

[gyvespa]

My opinion.

When anyone asks who they should go with, I reply Virgin Media if available, BT if it’s not.
On the whole both companies run their own infrastructure so they can’t in theory keep blaming someone else.
I have had problems with Virgin, including a dead modem and they’ve sorted them out fairly sharply, although I did have to jump through hoops the first time I contacted them as I’d never done so before (in 10+ years) and didn’t have all the necessary information.
A couple of friends who use Talk Talk wished they’d listened to me instead of saving a couple of quid.
I only wish they would make it cheaper, cheaper is better than faster, they lie about the speed but unfortunately the cost is 100% true.

https://press.which.co.uk/whichpressrel ... sa-ruling/

Unbelievably Virgin were about the only honest ISP !
Your mileage may vary, as they say.

[pnoelw]

I was with Virgin (fibre) for over a year and had no complaints about their service until i moved to Clacton where they don't have any infrastructure. As a result, they weren't able to provide a service but wouldn't release me from the contract without paying a penalty of around GBP100. That left a sour taste. Been with Sky for 15 months now and again no complaints so far.
Noel.

[eagle driver]

oddly enough my talktalk connection went dead at about 11AM on Sat, the internet light went red. was a bit of a pain contacting them, long story short they eventually said [via recorded mesage] that there was a fault external to them and they'd passed it to openreach to sort out, should hear in 72 hours. wasn't happy about that but when i checked at 4AM when i got up through the night it was sorted again.

Lucky guy I am still waiting for someone with a brain to get in touch
16.42 Friday 3rd to currently 18.30 the 7th
Given up caring, thank God for mobile phones.

[gyvespa]

I’m sure that when a friend moved a year or two back, he went to Virgin as an ISP. It turned out that there wasn’t any fibre to his new house, so until they could connect him they provided a ‘copper’ connection with BT. Billed by Virgin.
Although, there was a nearby cabinet.
Most of our local area was cabled by NTL in the late 90’s.

As for ‘Fibre’ internet, it’s usually FTTC or fibre to the cabinet.
That bit of cable that goes to your house is still a wire.
It’s all buzzwords and bull**** out there.

Another friend had trouble with his modem on Talk Talk, I rang the Indian call centre for him, I went through all the script with the very polite and well spoken Indian lady, however it still wouldn’t work. I asked her if she wanted to know the MAC address of the modem to check she was working on the correct device.
She then got very stroppy, told me that Mac was an operating system, there was no such thing as a MAC address and that I didn’t know what I was talking about and that I was very silly (yes really, they need to up their insult level).
I bid her farewell, he changed ISP’s very soon after.
For your information, I’m not a genius, the MAC address was printed on a sticker on the rear of the modem and labelled as such.
This was a while ago, I like to think they’ve improved with age.

[JONLITE06]

The thing about Internet ISP's is that,you tend to get what you pay for!

[willow70]

Apart from Virgin all the other ISPs use bits of copper and in some areas aluminium wire. I have had problems with multiple ISPs and eventually open-reach come and swap wires. This transfers the issue to someone else in the road . Eventually they do lots of complaining and it gets moved back to me . Its rubbish infrastructure that dates back to the 50s that is the problem.