Info and forum posts by 'birch295'

RE: How Crapp is Talk Talk

Had to reply and let you know: YES, we have had the same experience!

Almost exactly the same, in fact - applied late May, provided the MAC at that time, got asked to provide it again...tried calling the phone number provided and it was dead...they denied all knowledge of the previous MAC ever having been supplied.

In defence of Indian call centers, I work in a customer support organisation with colleagues in India and TalkTalk`s people don`t seem to be as good as the people I know out there. Please don`t assume all Indian call centers are bad. However, my experience of TalkTalk`s support has been poor (and I told them so). Their infrastructure just doesn`t seem to be set up to properly route or track customer queries - which is the basics of customer support. Also, their people have not been trained to use their brains - they know how to stick to a script.

The way it works in India is that the big name companies get the best people, because of the associated kudos/marriageability (seriously) that association brings the employee. The bigger the call center, the better for the employee, because of the opportunities for advancement. TalkTalk may well be struggling to hire or retain people against other well-known companies such as BT.

Anyway, we finally got connected two weeks ago, but although they sent us a username and password, no modem or software ("in the post"....or so we were told two weeks ago!). We have a wireless modem but having called TalkTalk tech support (10p a minute) they told us we have to speak to the modem vendor to get the settings to make it work with TalkTalk broadband. Which baffles me, as we never had to do this with BT Broadband - it just worked.

We wrote to TalkTalk to complain about having to pay for the Talk3 package in addition to BT Broadband from May to September, which we estimate cost us around £120. In response, they wrote back to us blaming us for late provision of the MAC (which we provided on the day of ordering broadband in May!) and offering a paltry £10 credit to our bill.

Too little, too late. We are now planning to cancel the whole lot, phone and broadband, and be done with it. Which is a shame, because the phone service worked fine and did save us money...

I see that CPW have just won the bid to buy AOL UK. God help AOL customers!