A few months ago I switched my phone line at the studio to TalkTalk Business and at the same time the studio broadband internet was bundled over to TalkTalk as well. All was well… that is, until something went wrong. One day, first thing in the morning, the broadband internet supplied through TalkTalk Business ADSL went dead.
First, of course, I called the TalkTalk Business Customer Service line, which by and large kept me waiting on hold for half an hour until the queuing system gave up and passed me to voicemail. Of course any message left on the voicemail was summarily ignored. Eventually when I did get to speak to someone after a few days, they wouldn’t pass the fault through until I’d tried a different router.
So once I had done that, I called back, and of course couldn’t get through again. So I left voicemails. And I sent emails to the email address given on the TalkTalk Business Customer Service queuing system. But nothing. Absolutely zilch. Except a couple of bounced email notifications suggesting that TalkTalk Business and the parent company Carphone Warehouse have more than a few email routing issues internally.
Eventually, after a week of being ignored, enough was enough. I decided to email the boss of Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk, Mr Charles Dunstone. Of course no email address is published for the man, and it looks like where others have had difficulties with the company and published Charles Dunstone’s email address, they have been threatened until they removed it. So I tried various combinations of initials, surname and so on, and one of them apparently got through.
I got a reply. It apologised. It said someone was going to look into the matter and get back to me. Then a lady called Angela called me and was very good at listening to my complaint and trying to get it all fixed. However, poor Angela, like her boss Charles, wasn’t prepared for the sad fact that, however good they thought their employees were further down the tree, they were and still are, in fact, crap. Dross. Absolutely rubbish. Untrained, unskilled, inept, incompetent idiots.
My phone line kept on going down while someone was clearly tinkering somewhere. But worse, so did the redirection which was keeping my business going at least slightly.
After two weeks, the fault was finally passed to BT to sort out. An engineer (they do misuse that word terribly, which must be a terrible insult to real engineers) came to the studio and ran tests which concluded that there was indeed a fault and that it must be at the exchange. So I got a phone call a little later from a BT bloke to tell me that they had scheduled an equipment replacement at the exchange but that it could take up to a week to be done.
So, yet another phone call to Angela, who promised that it wouldn’t be anything like a week… which I doubted, but never mind. And then a phone call at the end of the week to say that I should expect someone to come back to the studio on the Friday to test that everything was OK after the exchange equipment had been replaced.
Nobody came. Then the Bank Holiday weekend. Then nothing. On Wednesday (yesterday) my phone line was once again completely dead. So was the broadband connection. Angela once again prompted her team into action, which resulted in my redirection being reinstated and my crackly, silent phone line being restored by the end of the day. But still no broadband.
Exactly three weeks on, I decided to write this blog entry. It’s still not fixed. So what am I to do? Whatever compensation or goodwill gesture I eventually get, it won’t be anything like the amount of money I’ve lost on business calls that never got through, or the sheer inconvenience and lost time that all this has caused me.
Perhaps I’ll just stick to a bit of damp string and two tin cans in future. At least until I can move to a country with a half-decent telecoms network, or at least somewhere where they employ people with brain cells and the ability and willingness to use them.
The Final Chapter?
By the time three and a half weeks had passed, I even began to doubt the reliability of my own router equipment, so I even took the step of going out and buying a new ADSL router for over £100. Of course 10 minutes after removing it from its packaging, it confirmed what I’d known in my heart of hearts all along. No signal. Nothing. Not even a whisper of one.
Eventually a very good, communicative BT engineer called James came to look. What he found at the exchange was several problems that hadn’t previously been fixed by the other “engineers” at all. He fixed those, then even took it upon himself to test his work. He called me to say that the signal was now reaching my building. But no connection. “LCP is allowed to come up” insisted the router, and it wouldn’t go any further.
It then took TalkTalk Business/Opal Telecom a further day and a half to work out that it was something wrong within their network, and to fix it. At about 3:30pm on the day before the clock hit four weeks, my internet connection was finally restored.
As soon as my letter to the Carphone Warehouse legal department is processed, I’ll let you know their response.
23rd November 2007 at 2:26 pm
Hi Jon
Much appreciate your detailed report on TalkTalks business customer “disservice”. We have TalkTalk trying to sell us their business services.
Having read your experiences we’ll give them a wide berth!
25th January 2008 at 5:33 pm
TTB struggle against BT who own the country’s network of communications and do their best to make things difficult for other service providers. As a member of staff at TTB customer services I must apologise for the fact that we are sometimes overwhelmed with calls and queues form. However, many of our customers never have a problem- although obviosly in your case you have had many and the service you’ve received has been inadequate to say the least. Like all companies there are many who will sing our praises to the heavens, and many who gladly see us burn in a firey pit.
I hope any future troubles are dealt with in a better manner- they certainly will be if you get through to me!
20th June 2008 at 12:15 pm
It seems all problems persist until Talktalk surrender, and commission BT to solve them., obviously costing Talktalk a large part of the money they make from us. Then, as if by a miracle a remote switch is turned and the system works again. BT even like to send their Openreach operative who tells you “I have been with BT forever and had no problem. It seems you get what you pay for.” BT run interference and follow up with their marketing man, disguised as an engineer. He doesn’t have to do anything at the house or the office, because the problem was always something BT installed in the switchboards.
When my domestic line was with BT and the line failed they offered me free re-direction to my mobile; then charged me for the re-direction membership. Twice!
Remember, BT introduced the iniquitous 0870 system and when you are with BT you pay for calls to their 0870 numbers. When with Talktalk, calls to their 0870 numbers are free.
I blame the intellectual but spineless Professor Sir Bryan Carsberg who foresaw all the potential abuse by BT but crumbled when Maggie shouted at him.
And, yes, I have had the 4-week loss of service, but no way would I reward BT for its mischief.
2nd July 2008 at 9:50 am
I have foolishly moved to Talk talk Business and I can sympathis with you they are useless, my service has been up and down since last week and I have spoken to them on several occasions and get different responses… I am a telecoms engineer for over 20 years and the talk talk customer service team do not have a clue about what they are talking about. They changed my profile several times in an attempt to get the service to be stable. I have talk talk home as well and do not have any issues with this service.
So when running iplayer on both systems and they are telling me it is the router at fault which is the same on both services they are talking pants. Then they say it is a noise issue and we need to send out an engineer at £200.00 again they are talking pants as the phone line is clear as a bell, because we are talking on it. I had enough and got them to get a supervisior, they is not one, go get him or her now… Sheepishly they find her and she talks to me and assures me all will be fixed. 40 minutes later on day 10 I get an engineer on the phone( need to earn that title before using it) who tells me it is fixed, I say really yes it is, no it is not…. Then all I can say is it is the modem you are using and what make is it, I tell them it is a Netgear pre-N and they then say there equipment does not support that modem.. Rubbish I say because my home service which you provide has the same router and works fine.
They then say there is a problem in the exchange…. the saga continues and I will not be defended, they have some really customer issues and need to train those guys to better help there customers. Also BT need to grow up and realize that people will move if the service is cheaper and like all brits we put up with the shit customer service. I say we should not we pay for a service and the provider should move hell and earth to provide an outstanding service.
12th November 2008 at 9:51 am
Fro my sins i joined talk talk Feb 2007 i have not since being miss sold the package had a month go by without being cut off, having no service, having there equipment fail. We like yourself had the new equipment excues for 6 months, and when the new equipment was installed they decided to cut off our line totaly for a full day. I have a file of aprox 2 inches thick full of lies and excuses. unfortunatly the only time you get any help is when you find a caring member of staff, but unfortunatly due to stress they do not last long (i am not joking).
i cannot or dare not try and calaulate the losses of revenue to my company, they have what is called a high level complaints dept, dont even bother a least pinocio was amusing.
TAKE MY ADVICE STAY AWAY FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR SANITY AND POCKET.
Ray.
28th January 2009 at 11:40 am
Jon, I have never once been moved to write a blog about my experiances with “Talk Crap” oops I mean Talk Talk until now. I am a Talk Talk business customer and also a residential customer, I’m pleased to say I have never had any problems with residential. I have enjoyed an efficient service, great prices, courteous staff and polite communications. On the other hand, I have been treated like utter rubbish by Talk Talk business. 3 years ago when I started my business I foolishly left BT (extortionate prices) and moved to Talk Talk. I had about 3 weeks broadband service before it disappeared for over a year. My complaints were met with countles promises of rectification. At one point we were told we would not be compensated as the broadband was free. hahahahahahahahahahhaa…..has to be a joke! we got so used to not having a service that we stopped using our office (lack of internet connection) and we ended up using my home more and more, we would periodically comlain and ask for help. Never once did our complaints get taken further than “we will do our best to get you up and running”. One day I had had enough, I was fed up of paying my bills on time each month for half a service, so I called up for the last time , making it very very clear that I was prepared to make everybosys life an absolute misery if I didnt get the services I had been paying for. They even failed to send new routers, they had me unscrewing sockets and describing wires, they even dared to say that I wasn’t using Talk Talk approved equipment (even though TalkTalk sent it to me). After about 16 months of non service I had to leave my office as it was so under used. Im now using a virtual office. Even when the incompetants deliverd our broadband services, we still did not recieve any compensation or call, nothing. We have decided to end our relationship with them even though we are getting the correct service now, because they are a horrific business service provider. I have also been told that Talk Talk residential and business are 2 different companies and are run by 2 different bodies, which would account for the ifference in service. so on a scale of 1-10 i rate Talk Talk residential 8/10 and Talk Talk business -39/10.
18th August 2010 at 5:14 pm
We have been tiscali customers for nearly 10 years, and made the mistake of trying to transfer to talk talk 4 years ago, didnt happen though becuse they kept saying we had the wrong type of phoneline? and now again 5 weeks ago tiscali cold call us and i agree to be upgraded to a better router and better tiscali tv set top box, 1 week later phone is dead??? £180 on mobile phone calls later to talk talk and tiscali the same company!!!! to try and get our phone reconnected, guess what nobody can do it they are totally useless, we are completely amazed at a communictions company, which makes having a marsian skype chat look a lot easier.