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Tiscali vs. Talk Talk


Ghostrider
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Wella, it seems Tiscali have finally succumbed and been taken over/disappeared within Talk Talk, just got this email....

 

We are pleased to inform you that Tiscali Group has today reached an agreement with TalkTalk (the wholly owned subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse Group PLC) for the sale of Tiscali's UK operations to TalkTalk. The agreement is expected to complete in the next few weeks.

 

Anyone have any experience/opinions of Talk Talk/Carphone Warehouse? Should I see this move on their part as the opportune moment to bail on Tiscali and move on, or should I maybe be hopeful of some improvement along the way that might make staying the sensible option?

 

Talk Talk I know next to nothing about, and what little I've heard about Carphone Warehouse has all been negative, so this takeover doesn't exactly fill me with optimism. :?

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My folks had talk talk for phone & BB. Nothing but a fiasco right from the start, The BB never worked correctly & my parents, who are retired and on pensions, only means of getting this fact across to talk talk was to call their expensive support line & spend an average 30 mins on the phone.

 

Then when they threatened them with complaints via trading standards when talk talk refused to shut down the broadband part of the package and allow my folks to get a more reputable BB package talk talk refused & while they turned the BB off, they did not leave the line open to use by another company.

 

It took my brother and I to get onto the company from our distances away from my folks, they are Aberdeen, im shetland, he's canada, threaten them with trading standards, breach of contract yadda yadda yadda for months before talk talk would close the BB contract and admit faults with the service provision on their part.

 

 

folks had to spend 6 months being charged for Broad band that did not work, had never worked, before they were able to change the entire package back over to BT.

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Beware talk Talk. They took over our phone line from BT without our permission. First we knew about it was a letter from BT stating that our contract had been cancelled as requested, and that they were sorry to be losing a valued customer.

After several phone calls to Talk Talk, we eventually got the situation sorted out. Now back with BT. Turns out that a rep from Talk Talk had been at our door a few weeks before,but as my husband was at work, i had told them to come back another time. They never did, but changed our phone line anyway. Just be careful with them.

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I have to disagree with the above comments. I have been with talktalk for a couple of years now. I've had a fast connection with virtually no dropped connections (half a dozen times in a couple of years).

 

They have been very reliable and a good deal cheaper than BT (under £30/month all in).

 

I would recommend them to anyone.

 

(I live in Lerwick, BTW) :wink:

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I would personally avoid talk talk, their customer services is appalling, I've personally helped a number of older talk talk customers with their complaints. Even when you finally get to change your line Talk talk will still charge you. Met one lady who discovered shed been charged for an extra 18months, not too ready at refunding either.

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Hmmm....three against, one for. I'm not liking these odds much so far. :(

 

I think this would be a good time to at least have a good look round and see what else is out there, just in case things start deteriorating further under TalkTalk. That's if there's many left to look at, I only went with Tiscali 3 years ago because Freeserve who I'd been with for 3 years at that time, got swallowed by Orange, and I was in no mood to be dealing with them.

 

Pipex was my kinda back up choice to go with if Tiscali didn't work out, but they got swallowed too. :?

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Guest Anonymous

This thread reminded me of a joke. Well, **** ****, is a little bit like that.

Anyway, because this is a family site, I won't tell the joke, but the punch line was:

 

What's all this gobble gobble, why don't anybody **** no more?

:lol:

 

And, before the mods censor me.: **** means ****, but for some reason their dirty minds have made the swearie filter exclude simple words like ****.

 

This is quite complicated, and getting more so, because for some strange reason I can't get past the ****ing swearie filter, which is stopping me ****ing about a very simple subject such as **** ****.

.

.

.

.

Ahhhh!!! Sussed it now. :wink:

If I substitute TALK for ****, it works.

 

:wink:

:lol: :lol:

 

A'm Geeng.

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Years ago, I had a tiscali pay as you go dial up account which disappeared without so much as an e-mail from them to say they were discontinuing the service. When it was working (and I used it only as a back up ISP), very often I would get e-mails that were not addressed to me but to somebody else!

 

I've been with Talktalk for many years; I think from their first year of trading. Initially, it was a BT line and you had a box/dialled a number first (can't remember which) or automatically got your calls via Talktalk - a BT line bill and a Talktalk call charges bill. Had no problem with that and Customer Services were still based in the UK.

 

Then about 3-4 years ago, Talktalk took over entire BT line. Fine for the first year. Got broadband from them as BT Broadband Call Centre in India lied to me about a fault in my local exchange and took 5 days to fix (I knew they were lying as I know somebody who works in said local exchange).

 

Approximately 2 years ago - oh crumbs, Talktalk installed their own software into BT exchanges and their own equipment. This resulted in call dropping, dead lines, broadband going down for a couple of hours at a time, about every 3 weeks phone/broadband going down several times a day for about 5 mins at a time, people trying to phone me and getting engaged, voicemail taking 24-48 hours to reach me, etc.

 

On average, it would take 3-4 weeks for Talktalk to resolve.

 

In addition, I had a Talktalk mobile which they discontinued. All the time, as I had taken my Orange mobile number with me, it wouldn't apply the discount (free calls to my landline number and vice versa).

 

When my account came up for renewal, as I had gone self-employed, I wanted to change from residential to business with Talktalk as allegedly, you get a better service and I wouldn't have to pay the reconnection charge to BT. (incidentally, you can only go from Talktalk to BT - NO OTHER PROVIDER). Oops, business is separate company to residential and Talktalk said no.

 

About 4 months ago I discovered on the home page the Talktalk Members forum. The moderators on there are fantastic and tried to sort out the intermittent faults. So if you do have a problem, rather than deal with Customer Services in India or South Africa, try the forum first.

 

In summary, their software cannot cope with the amount of bods using it. For example, guaranteed come 4.15pm when kids get in from school, broadband drops from 6 to 2 or 4 in speed. Phoneline goes haywire.

 

So am I staying with TT when I move to Shetland? Nope, I've just ordered BT Business package.

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^^ The only thing I know about Virgin is that a few years back they did exactly the same thing to me with my electricity that misty25 had TalkTalk doing with their Internet connection.

 

A telesales cold called wanting me to sign up for Virgin Energy, as they guaranteed that my mains gas?? and electric would be cheaper with them than anyone else. I told the guy to send me full written details of their prices in the mail so that I could compare them against recent bills, plus I wanted to have everything black on white before signing anything, so that if something went wrong there was no ongoing "you said, I said" bickering phone calls over it. He already had my name and address, and I gave him nothing else. Next I know I got a letter from Virgin "thanking me for becoming their customer, and that my transfer across to Virgin Energy would take effect as of whenever". :evil:

 

I was slightly pissed off to put it mildly. A few terse emails went back and forth between myself and Virgin, them coming with the usual rubbish of "it's difficult to reverse the transfer", "won't you at least give the service a try", until my patience walked and my final email was along the lines of "Do what you like, but don't bother billing me, as you won't be paid. I will only pay bills to my current provider as they are who I entered in to a contract with, not you". That one seemed to get the message through to them, but unfortunately not a tactic that will work with ISP companies.

 

Okay, a different branch of Virgin than the Internet, but all one corporate entity and ethic, and after such a fiasco I have made a point of making sure no part of the Virgin emipre has ever benefitted from any of my business again.

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@Ghostrider

 

Yes, these power companies seem to be able to switch provision between themselves too easily!

 

At the heart of it is the targets those phoning are set. Just the mere pick up of a phone and that's you - slammed into it - they note you down as a convert to their cause .. i.e getting their bonus!

 

I've got no complaints personally about Virgins Internet. Though I do have an issue with the possibility they're going to install Phorm along with the rest of these sell out ISP's!

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Pipex was my kinda back up choice to go with if Tiscali didn't work out, but they got swallowed too. :?

 

I got the talk talk email via pipex, and i ran like a mile, this was the final nail in my pipex coffin, pipex service and connection has been extremely poor and is steadily getting worse, especially between the hours of 7pm and midnight.

 

Is anyone with Plusnet? Been checking them out as an option. What about Virgin --any ideas?

 

I'm just waiting my migration to PLUSNET, and will let you know how i find them.

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