Avoid Talk Talk at all costs as their customer service is shocking. I moved house 5 months ago and was interested in moving my BB and TV package to the new place. Unfortunately, it proved impossible to talk to Talk Talk (oh, the irony!) as every time I called up, I couldn't get through security because I could not remember which email address I used when I set up the account 10 yeas ago. Nor could I speak to someone about how to resolve this because they needed my email address in order to discuss my account because "daTA pRoteKsHun". I tried their LiveChat function and every time I mis-guessed my email address I was summarily disconnected, which was doubly frustrating because the live chatters are clearly juggling multiple chats and so they keep using delaying tactics by pasting trite little phrases about how they are hear to help or making irritating small talk, meaning it would often take 15 - 20 mins to get to that stage. It was like Snakes and Ladders. So....I tried to cancel my account but it probably would have been easier to get an audience with the Pope tbh as I couldn't find an email address on their website (they seem to have rectified that now, but it still requires a bit of a treasure hunt). In the end I went back to LiveChat to ask about cancelling my account but got nowhere as she simply remained silent in response to my questions. So I ended up telling the poor booth-dwelling customer service droid in Bangalore that I wanted to cancel my account, but probably because I had deviated from her flow chart she just remained mute on the other end of the chat for minutes at a time (or "she" may have been an AI bot, with little intelligence, artificial or otherwise), so I had to give notice of cancellation that way and asked her to pass this on to whichever department deals with cancellations. To my great absence of surprise my account wasn't terminated, and they keep writing to me demanding tribute, continuing to this day. I found their complaints email and snail mail address online and have written to them there as well, enclosing screenshots of the chat in which I gave notice. Predictably, that has been ignored also and now they are threatening to refer my account to a debt collector or to take me to court. I am praying that they do I'll see if I can paste up the letter and screenshots.... View attachment 201655
Impressive letter, but they will still likely ignore it as these outfits invariably do when it does not suit them
In which case, I’ll see them in court, which is my domain. And if they’re foolish enough to set debt collectors onto me they might find themselves on the wrong end of a counterclaim for harassment as per Ferguson v. British Gas Trading Ltd [2009] EWCA Civ 46 Link to summary of the case below as this sort of info is useful for people who are unfortunate enough to be getting badgered by (especially) debt collection agencies. The vast majority of such companies sail very close to the legal wind and make all sorts of threats, most of which are empty but may be distressing to some people. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/swarb.co.uk/ferguson-v-british-gas-trading-ltd-ca-10-feb-2009/amp/
I use plusnet Overall they are good bit slow I pay for 65mgb and get 32ish Looking at sky as they are both same price BT are not easy to deal with when you have a crisis they don’t really care until you can get to the crisis team ...
Well you have to make the most of what available. No Virgin? Just make sure you don't get Shy or Talk Talk. One never shuts up and the other will insist the lights are off!
BT really took the piss, owed me over £1k for my business line (working from home). They just passed me from pillar to post via Indian call centres, I kept records of each instance of this and eventually had to the get the ombudsman involved. Never again will I have anything to do with them (I know full well that most fibre is via their network, I have to accept that). My current provider is TalkTalk, their support sorted an issue early on but haven't needed them since. In rented post separation, now divorced and moving once the vendors if my new gaff get their onward property sorted, should be a month or two at the most now that their developers are back on site. Will be cancelling with TalkTalk and hoping, having read Zhed46's post, this won't be too painful. As an existing Vodafone customer it looks like they're the best on price for fibre. Anyone have any horror stories?
I would never go with vodaphone on principle after the way I got treated at an unexpected event in my life
I think as long as you have a decent BB connection then I found SKY ok, customer service was good, always uk call centre when contacting them (usually Scotland) and they sorted everything very quickly. We had TV/Phone/BB with them though, not sure what they are like for stand alone BB and if their attention to detail slides with the amount of services you have? The only problem for us was our connection to the Openreach Network. Too far away from the cabinet coupled with probably a 1960’s degraded underground line resulted in a pretty poor phone call quality (sometimes the handset would ring, sometimes not but the phone would light up to show someone calling) and an abysmal internet connection (14mb/400k). Download was ok for us and what we were advised when we signed up (They never quote upload figures) We could stream tv no problem but with Mrs working from home now video conferencing and FaceTiming her mates became a real issue so we switch to Virgin, the TiVo OS is shite compared to SKY Q but the BB is worlds apart! I don’t blame SKY for any of that, they tried to get it sorted but Openreach were like “that’s as good as it gets” and they thought the phone sometimes ringing was enough. Wouldn’t matter so much if our house wasn’t lead lined, struggle to get a mobile signal anywhere indoors!
A mate of mine recently switched from Virgin to them as they have taken up Bournemouth’s ftth network so offering 1gb BB. The network was installed across parts of the town until the company went bust 10+ yrs ago and have had several owners since, latest being CityFibre I think. He had loads of problems at first resulting in no BB for a few weeks while both companies blamed each other for the outage. In the end he had to get Vodafone to listen back through their calls to him to prove they had lied and messed him around before he got the problem sorted, he did get 4mths free fibre out of them for the trouble though?
Hmm - skimming through this first and foremost...the phrase "Fibre" is a buzzword - nothing more....i think right now....theres probably 0.001% of the population that actually get a strand of fibre through their wall into a router....fibre ends at the POP (Point of Presence) and even then thats a relatively small amount. BT's 21CN backbone is what theyve been steadily migrating to over the years.....anyway...rambling...any provider on the ADSL network will be using BT's possibly 50 year old wiring(depending on where you are) your only real option is either Virgin (their network is RF based which means that its not subject to "being further from the POP" ie the further you are away from the exchange the slower its going to go.) Its the only real viable option but, its more expensive than comparitive ADSL services - you get what you pay for...if i put my postcode into BT adsl service thingy i get a "Stunning" 8meg download compared to my 35meg that i get on Virgin....your only other real option would be a 4g router, or satellite.... And the other thing is routers.....lots of adsl providers will tie to you to their "supplied by the lowest bidder" routers....which cost less than a tank of petrol but, again, people wont pay for decent kit and then fucking moan when their wireless is shit in the house....BT for example guarantee "wireless throughout the house.." but fucking putting boxes everywhere that you have to pay for when if the router was of a decent quality it wouldnt be an issue.... My router for example cost 280 quid, covers 4 floors and with 3 kids right now this minute (checking now) 33 devices wired and wirless hanging off of it... After all that....you get what you pay for but Virgin would be your best bet (if theyre coming past your door)
