Monday 11 March 2013

Avoid Talk Talk !

Had some issues with Talk Talk broad band in the last week.

I've had my broadband & phone service with them for around five years and my parents have been with them for over seven.

Last week my mum had some issues and their internet service just died. I went around and did the usual - reset the router, tried new adsl filters and even took my own router round to check and there seems to be no signal going into the house.

Spoke to TT on Thursday for around 30 minutes and did the usual line checks and they couldn't find a problem - then I ran out of time and had to call them back yesterday. After an hour plus on the phone and more checks they still couldn't find a hard fault and wanted to send an engineer round. That's fine, even the prospective charge of £ 50 if the fault is at our end and not theirs seems fairly reasonable. however, the date for the visit was ..... 8th of April.

So now they're not providing the service we're paying them for and we can't move to a new internet service provider because that would breach the contract we had signed with them (?).

No amount of referring the problem upwards or asking to speak to a UK representative worked (I presume I was speaking to a call centre in India) - essentially seems to be only one service engineer in the Leeds area and he works on a strict first come first served basis.

Now, for fear of you all thinking my diamond shoes are a bit tight I understand that not having internet is a bit of a first world problem especially as my parents use the internet socially - e-mail, banking on-line, light browsing, bit of kindle etc. However, I'm offended on their behalf and think about what would happen if TT did the same to me - which if course is possible and I ended up with no internet access for four weeks.

I work from home and am self employed essentially the internet is as integral to the business as I am - without both being available everything stops.

Here's where is get's interesting though - Talk Talk is the fourth largest ISP by subscriber in the UK (I checked) - with over 4 million customers - BT has 6 million to give some context.

However, Talk Talk (according to Ofcom) is also the most complained about ISP - running at 0.53 complaints per 1,000 customers per quarter (that's over 8000 complaints per annum - that must keep their complaints people on their toes !)

As an aside Leeds is one of the three or four largest conurbations in the UK - maybe Talk Talk would have fewer complaints if they looked at maps and saw where their clients were.

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Phil Knight
Independent Healthcare Consultant

I'm a totally independent healthcare intermediary with 20 years market experience, not tied to any insurer, full FSA regulated and part of the Premier Choice Healthcare Group. FSA Number 312878


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