Talk-Talk - sensible responses only please . . .

[stockhausen]

Reading ANY forum, you read repeated criticism of all ISPs. It seems that any time some poster mentions Talk-Talk, a firestorm begins - why is this? By all accounts for 'phone + broadband, Talk-Talk offer a much better deal than either BT or BT + another.

Does anyone have any real-world, 1st hand experience of Talk-Talk, good or bad and what is / was it?

Comments along the lines of Talk-Talk are useless / rubbish / etc., etc., etc really aren't of any interest. Nor am I interested in 'Gaming' and therefore ping times or downloading vast amounts of anything . . . other than the occasional Linux distro. I am just talking about fast remote (VPN) access to the office, email, website browsing, etc.

 

[stockhausen]

What about PlusNet?

Most of the bad responses are from people who don't know how to get things sorted.

Their support forum is the best form of communication with them, most people don't actually know/use this. They also offer a fastpath profile for gamers and sort out issues on the forum quickly.

The people who are quite critical haven't used the forum thus are quick to have a go at CS.

Thanks for the reference to the Talk-Talk Members Forum

I certainly get the impression that their Help Desk which is reported as being based in India is the cause of many complaints. In my experience, most ISP Help desks are (perhaps understandably) pretty much useless unless your query is VERY basic and where possible, I avoid using them.

Talk-Talk do appear to get a very poor rating (user feedback) in the Broadband-Help reviews although that may just be down to successful advertising and thus a much greater %age of inexperienced users needing help?


I get the impression tha PlusNet who also offer Home 'phone and Broadband packages are held in pretty high regard - any idea whether they are part of some other (larger) group?

 

[stockhausen]

... However they have recently increased their prices and reduced the service they provide. ...

Interesting . . . By how much have they increased their prices and in what way have they reduced their service?

They still seem to have competitive pricing if you want both a land-line service and broadband.

 

[stockhausen]

Increase of over 25% and reduced the usage limit from 100gb to 40gb.
I think they have also increased there call charges but I've never used the phone to notice.
I can appreciate that i was already on a really good deal from Tiscali, but this was just an insult.

... For this alone i'm looking to get away from them if they think this practise is ok!

To what ISP are you thinking of going?

If you know of one that offers a better deal than Talk-Talk for a land-line service and broadband I would very much like to know of it

Incidentally, I really can't see any way that I would EVER download as much as 40GB in a month, let alone 100GB and whilst I can understand your annoyance at the 25% price increase and losing a 60GB download tranche, if you can't find a better price and you don't use the 60GB, you would rather be cutting off your nose to spite your face, wouldn't you?

 

[stockhausen]

The only thing that would stop me moving to talk talk is the long 18 month contract. I hate long contracts!

That is a very fair point - although wouldn't a similar sort of condition apply if you were transferring to BT?

I believe that any time you change almost anything on a BT contract it automatically extends you contract term to 12 months - not sure if that is correct.

Still - 18 months does seem like a very long time if problems crop up and Talk-Talk fail to correct them

 

[stockhausen]

On another Talk-Talk thread, I have seen the following:

... I have many friends that are on Talk Talk and it seems that 90% of my friends under Talk Talk all have this same issue but it only seems to appear when they have been gaming either on PC or a console, and there are known rumours around that Talk Talk is a very good ISP for people that DO NOT GAME!!!, this ISP is for people that just surf the internet and read emails, general stuff, the ISP is not good for any kind of gaming in mind.

I may be wrong but on past experience with them and friends that are on Talk Talk it seems to be the gaming issue that creates the problem with Talk Talk.

As it happens, I am not interested in online gaming or even downloading large files (except for the occasional new Linux distro) but I do want fast speeds and I would like to feel confident that Talk-Talk are not going randomly to throttle my connection.

Any comments

 

[stockhausen]

Only downside is, their lack of RDNS is stupid.

Can you elaborate please?

Why would you want to do a Reverse DNS lookup and do you have any idea why Talk-Talk might NOT want you to do one?