Talk Talk ?

[the_constructor]

I am thinking of changing my ISP but am a little concerned who to go to.

Has Talk Talk improved over the last 12 months and do they have call centres in GB...?

TIA

-- the_constructor

[Bob Eager]

uk.telecom.broadband =====> that way

You'll get much more info there...!

[cynic]

Google talktalk hell. I am leaving as soon as the contract runs out.

[John Rumm]

Call centres are in the uk - at the end of a premium(ish) rate number. Based on experience of some of our clients you will get to know them well!

[Tim Southerwood]

the_constructor coughed up some electrons that declared:

Don't know. But I am with Andrews and Arnold (aaisp.co.uk) and they are

*very* clueful. Not the cheapest - but here are a couple of examples of calls from me to them over the last few years:

a) Me: Phones AAISP, lady answers in 15 seconds: Me: My links gone dead, is it you or me? Her: We're having a problem, engineers are rebooting something. Me: Ok, that's all I need to know, I'll wait it out.

10 minutes later, all is well.

b) [Upgrade to ADSL-MAX, the 2Mbit/s cap wasn't being removed after the physical link settled down to 6Mbit/s - waited 3 days]

Me, by email: blah blah, cap still in place; Them in a couple of hours: Could you wait one more day? Me: OK [Next day] Me [still by email]: Nope, still broken, could you ask BT to fix it? Them [hour or two later]: Please bear with us. [Later, within a day IIRC]: BT Engineer calls my mobile; BT bloke: Yeah, this happens sometimes, I've reset some widget at our end. Are you in a position to test it. Me: Sure, give me a moment to ssh into my home system... Me: Yes, that's running at about 6Mbit/s - thanks!

In summary - not cheap, not there outside of business hours, but when you do call them, you do get to speak to intelligent people who don't ask you to reboot Windows, which in itself is worth the cost!

HTH

Tim

[Bob Eager]

(snip)

Three of my experiences with AAISP:

1) At 17:20 on a Friday, decide I want an extra domain name. Email support and ask to have 'xxx.org.uk'. Email received back at 17:32 saying that it's all registered and Nominet will update their servers with my DNS server addresses shortly.

2) Decide I want more static IP addresses (32 instead of 16), so email support. Email received back an hour later telling me of the new

32-address block, saying it's now being routed to me, and would I please let them know (no hurry) when I've stopped using the old block.

3) At 08:30, discover that my ADSL is dead; ring support at 09:05 when I get a chance. Out until 15:30, but when I return it is all working. Subsequently discover that BT (it was a BT fault) closed the fault at noon citing 'misconfigured customer router'. AAISP promptly reopened fault with BT, basically telling them not to be so silly; no involvement needed from me.

[John Rumm]

The only worry is who will end up buying them! Nildram have been swallowed by Tiscali, Plusnet (and hence Metronet, freeonline, force9) went to BT, as did Pipex. There are not many independents left.

[Broadback]

I have 2 friends who have used Talk Talk, and boy have they had problems. Personally I use IDNET, no problems and their support is sublime.

[manatbandq]

TT have been fine for me over the last 12 months.

MBQ

[Derek Geldard]

I had a good experience with Nildram. Despite being eligible for free broadband with either Orange or TalkTalk, I've elected to stick with Nildram and keep paying.

a) Me: phones Nildram and lady answers without delay.

Me: My link is still up to the exchange but I lost all connectivity, now I seem to be disconnected to Nildram and can't log back in.

Nice Nildram lady : "Just a second ... Right they've just "dropped"

47,000 customers while they reboot a router. You should be back on in less than 5 minutes.

And "back on" I was.

[Weatherlawyer]

That's it then. I will sign up no delay.

[Weatherlawyer]

I am surprised that Talk Talk didn't go head to head with Tiscali on here:

No douibt that is because no one with the sense to use ISPreview would use TalkTalk?

So why would they use Tiscali?

[Andy Hall]

These review sites are of relatively limited value for several reasons:

- ISPs with a larger customer base will experience larger numbers of complaints.

- There is no indication as to whether the problem related to a complaint really is the ISP's fault or is that the customer has finger trouble or expectations beyond what is being provided. That can be because of over-marketing by the provider, or the customer not understanding that speed and connectivity are not completely under the provider's control.

- Like almost all things, the price that the customer pays heavily influences what they get. For example, the entry level providers tend to employ techniques such as traffic shaping, caching and other contention methods. They don't invest in proper support. They economise on peering and transit arrangements and go for poorer SLAs on connectivity. All of this taken together adds up to poorer customer satisfaction especially for customers who have been taken in by the marketing, expect something for nothing, don't know any better and have limited technical ability themselves.

- To some extent, the review sites drive the market. A provider gets a good review or two or comes close to the top of a league. They get lots more customers as a result. If they are then unable to step up the provisioning and support, the service quality drops and people migrate away. Then the provider gets acquired if they are lucky or goes broke if they aren't

[John Rumm]

The other critical failure of many comparison sites is they take no account of the package that the customer has purchased. This can have a big impact on the level of performance and support that different users get from the same ISP, leading to radically differing views and experiences of them.