Model Boat Mayhem
Mess Deck: General Section => Chit-Chat => Topic started by: Neil on December 30, 2014, 03:14:45 pm
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right guys and gals.........I know we have had this topic before but it is nice to get an up to date consensus of opinion.........
been with Talktalk( Tiscali and the other one 3672 or what ever it was) for 17 years now.
three nights ago my internet failed and so rang technical services.
the guy from Calcutta couldn't have been MORE helpful but couldn't find a fault to the house from the exchange and tried all sorts of tests finally admitting that the problem was probably inside the house..........
He then set up a visit for an engineer to come to my home and if the fault was in my equipment it would cost me 55 quid for the call out........fair enough as my equipment is getting on a little.
However the big bug bear was now that we were relying on good old british engineers to get to me.........January 6th was the earliest..........NOT WELL PLEASED WITH THAT!!!.
Made a written complaint and a phone complaint to Talktalk without resolution as to an earlier visit.
So last night my daughter took it to Twitter and Facebook and made our complaints public about Talktalk's very poor service, and the fact that we would be moving our account elsewhere.
Funnily enough within an hour and 48 hours since it first went down, suddenly at around 23.15 last night, the problem suddenly solved it's self and broadband was re instated.......
Excuse me for being cynical but that seems very coincidental..........and I won't be cr****d around like this ............
so the question is, who is the best provider for phone and broadband where I can get unlimited wi fi and downloads, free broadband and free phone calls anytime for a set DD fee each month?
BUT PLEASE DO NOT RECOMMEND SKY , as I will not, under any circumstances, buy anything that Rupert Murdoch and his family have had or do have, anything to do with or even associated with..........I detest the man and his family and have my principles which I won't break under any circumstances at all.
many thanks. :-))
neil.
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Sound's like you're an ex printer! I'm with virgin personally. I have good service and a 50mb line I think.
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I don't think the holy grail of broadband has been found yet,I have been trying to get BT to sort our very slow broadband out we kept getting messages to say we were at our down load limit, speed saw very good ,bought the BT unlimited download package every thing went slow TV only connects when it thinks fit all in all pretty rubbish .
So after all that I suppose that is one of the list I don't think there will be any good news .
David
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We cannot really help until you tell us what options your exchange has. Is it a tier one or better, do you have fibre options etc
I have BT fibre. The product is great but BT are c..p.
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Think you're lucky to get it seen to Neil.I know two people who are with Talk talk, and both say their after sales back up service is appalling.
I have superfast with BT for my sins,and you wont be any better with them.I pay an extra £10 month for assistance, and it is good when you need it I must admit, but most of the time I dont! I have never had as many outages as I do now.What P..S me off is that other firms rent their lines from BT and are able to supply it cheaper than BT does! Another great British Rip off.Not forgetting that when the internet was first invented,it was supposed to be FREE to all!
Mick F <*< >>:-( >:-o
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Been with Plusnet for 15 yrs olny had 1 problem and that was sorted within 24 hours Brill company to be with
Dave
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Plusnet are naughty. I am on a tier one exchange and they charge more than the normally quoted price for tier one exchanges but don't necessarily make it obvious. They are more expensive than BT for me.
If your internet comes via your phone line then most problems are sorted out by openreach regardless of your provider as most problems occur between the exchange & your computer..
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Been with Plusnet for 15 yrs only had 1 problem and that was sorted within 24 hours Brill company to be with
That's interesting Dave, I had to deal with PlusNet as executor of my Mother in Law's estate and they were a nightmare! But PlusNet seems to come out well in surveys so perhaps I was just unlucky.
I think that in a lot of cases when it works things are generally OK whoever you are with but when it doesn't you do take pot luck!
Of course there is always the hidden bandwidth problem which few companies will acknowledge when you have too many people sharing the cable, they just try to juggle things about as best they can as, short of rewiring everyone's landlines, there IS no real answer especially with people expecting to download video. Also, if you are a long way from the local telephone exchange you will never get a decent speed over copper. This was my problem until a year or so ago but then BT installed fibre to the local cabinet and I switched to that from AOL. My speed went up dramatically. My BT broadband connection has proved to be very reliable so far but my Sister, who lives locally, is currently experiencing real difficulties in having a landline and broadband connection installed to her new Park Home. BT just simply cannot get their act together and there is no coordination of the work required.
It can be best to have your landline and broadband from the same company as then they can't blame each other for any problems that develop.
But to answer Neil's original point, I think it is a bit of a lottery depending on where you live. If you Google 'best broadband provider' you tend to just get the best financial deals. Googling 'most reliable broadband provider' is a bit more useful.
Colin
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..............But to answer Neil's original point, I think it is a bit of a lottery depending on where you live. If you Google 'best broadband provider' you tend to just get the best financial deals. Googling 'most reliable broadband provider' is a bit more useful.............
Colin
That is true but make sure that you are comparing like with like. One company might offer a standard broadband package to BT Tier one customers, a different package to exchanges where LLU connections are available and yet another if fibre is available. Some also throttle connection speeds at times of high demand whereas others don't.
Don't assume that you can get anything that you choose, that they are all equally good/bad nor that they are equally good/bad everywhere
Try here & find out what is available to you.
https://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker
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Colin.
My late father as with Plusnet. I am his executor and have just, yesterday, emailed them. Can you tell me what problems you had? PM me if you wish.
Doug
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we are on BT, we had similar problems, just after they changed the local network to fibre. BT call centre india said no problems on the line, and like you said we would pay if it was in the house. called out an openreach engineer. he turned up, found 3 bad joints between us and the box, upgraded our phone socket, as it wasnt compatible with broadband, gave us a new router free (as the old one wasnt compatible with the new fibre network they had installed). all this after several calls to the india call centre who told us nothing was wrong with the line.
we have since upgraded to BT infinity, with a great result 60Mb/s download, 10Mb/s upload, plus with unlimited access (last time I managed to check we were using about 850Gb data per month- a combination of internet use, online gaming, and watching online TV.)
Grendel
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My late father as with Plusnet. I am his executor and have just, yesterday, emailed them. Can you tell me what problems you had? PM me if you wish.
PM Sent.
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With Virgin media over 15 years, 152mb Broad band :} Equipment is repaired Free of charge, no real issues.
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called out an openreach engineer. he turned up, found 3 bad joints between us and the box,
Yes, our engineer also found a faulty connection on the copper wiring that we were unaware of. We are also on BT Infinity and happy with that but not so much with their email which is supposed to be getting upgraded.
Virgin get good reviews but then they are on cable in the first place and there is no prospect of cable coming to us in the foreseeable future.
Colin
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we have zero prospect of cable as we are in a historic city where they are not allowed to dig to lay it.
Grendel
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"the guy from Calcutta couldn't have been MORE helpful but couldn't find a fault to the house from the exchange and tried all sorts of tests finally admitting that the problem was probably inside the house..........He then set up a visit for an engineer to come to my home and if the fault was in my equipment it would cost me 55 quid for the call out........fair enough as my equipment is getting on a little.Funnily enough within an hour and 48 hours since it first went down, suddenly at around 23.15 last night, the problem suddenly solved it's self and broadband was re instated......."
Strikes me that either the original "diagnostic tester" didn't know how to use his tester, or he wasn't testing your line. If your normal telephony works properly, no noise on calls, then the line should carry broadband OK. That leaves the technical stuff at both ends. Customer equipment doesn't normally suddenly stop and start all by itself. Neither does the gear in the network. My gut feeling is that someone in a test center somewhere reset something and yours started working again as well.
edited because the verdana font size gremlin struck again
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I used to be with orange and broadband was too slow even to do a speed test. After many calls and many visits by Orange and BT the problems were not sorted. Each blamed the other. Finally Orange said they were unable to to give me a reliable service and released me from my contract, paid me £200 compo and told me to sling their router in the bin. An Orange rep called me privately and advised me to go on BT total broadband because they owned the lines and the exchange. I should add that I live in the sticks and am over a mile and a half from the exchange and 1200 metres from "the box". My broadband dramatically improved (up to 7mb but usually 4-5). I never had any problems. They then brought fibre to the box and I upgraded to infinity. It was rubbish at first but a man came and checked the wire from the box and found 4 faults. He also came privately in the evening and for £20 put in a new, latest , internal system and excelerator box. The phone itself improved (no more crackles) and broadband went up to a regular 21mb. We have had no problems, the wifi is excellent as our house is built from Caernarfon red bricks and attenuates wifi a lot but I get wifi throughout the property and even in the workshop which is timber frame with a virtual faraday cage of stainless steel mesh that the render is attached to.
The help team in Mumbai have been superb when I've had computer difficulties. I can't fault BT. I get what I pay for.
Jerry.
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I am with BT Infinity and have had no problems with it. Also have BT's telephone anytime where the first hour to land line numbers is free, and reduced call charges to nominated mobile numbers?
I am sure that I read somewhere that PlusNet is owned by BT
Graham
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I changed to virgin media a couple of years ago after having so much trouble with BT phone line broadband, in the end they admitted the problem was the distance my house was form the exchange, something they failed to mention when I took out broadband with them, the broadband and phone with virgin I can't really fault, generally reliable and good speed but they fall down with their TV the TiVo box is total c**p, I'm on my fifth box, in fact if it wasn't for the broadband I'd ditch them but then I'd never go with Sky either. {:-{
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I have been with for 22 years with wait for it AOL O0 only this year when I had some problems my brother told me to call aol for a new router guess what there now TalkTalk I never new that and when did they take over AOL I was never informed. I called them and got an Indian call centre and within a week they sent me a new router everything works fine but AOL has its own software and my brother an IT engineers cannot stand it and has for years told me to leave AOL. He uses and recommends SKY which I will move to in the new year as there offering free broadband for a year at the moment.
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but they fall down with their TV the TiVo box is total c**p, I'm on my fifth box, in fact if it wasn't for the broadband I'd ditch them but then I'd never go with Sky either. {:-{
Tivo box been fine with us..Best thing going, can skip through all the ads.
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well, thanks for all your comments guys, and it seems that not one of them is ultra reliable, and I am especially thankful to Malcolm for both his pm's and the explanation for what probably happened after my daughter used twitter to highlight the problem...........I think after listening to all your pros and cons that there is no ONE provider that is any better than another...............so, rather than start having to change my email address and notify countless people, banks etc, I'll stay where I am and just use twitter to get it fixed when things go teats up.
thanks again. neil.
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Hi I am with Virgin for phone broadband etc. It is a turnkey operation if anything is wrong it is Virgin equipment. They fix it for free. I have basic broadband and get 20Mbits regularly.
I have dealt with talktalk on someone elses behalf twice. It was dreadful, I even offered to be a consultant to them to improve their customer service. Every fault enquiry was a start from scratch, they do not seem to keep records of on-going faults. I have worked in and managed a customer service desk.
Virgin may not be perfect but it gets my vote every time.
regards Roy
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We have been with sky for several years and never had 2 issues.
1st issue was that we lost Internet when it rained. This was due to the line from the post to the house being 40 years old, replaced an all was well. So not actually sky's fault
2nd issue was a knackered router, lady on phone said there was a fitter 2 streets away and she would check if he had one on the van. 20 mins later knock at the door and there was sky chap clutching a new router for us.
Maybe not the cheapest but certainly from my experience one of the best
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We have two companies one here and one in Spain. Here its the only company you can have, KAROO. Its alocal to Hull company, no others BT etc operate here. We have a fibre connection that gives 110mps download, the drawback is it costs £55 a month!
In Spain we have a microwave dish system it doesn't use landlines, the dish is about the size of a dinner plate. 8mps speed and that costs 33€ or £29 a month.
No others operate in Hull because they would have to use the local telephone company infrastructure. The charge for this use is so exorbitant that it is unrealistic for others to operate. They can do this by law as its the only municipal owned phone company in the UK.
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I am with EE no problems so far so cant comment on customer service.
I do have 14 years of working within a call centre environment for r s .
Depending on what software is used ( rs uses sap ) and what the agent actually does is usually what it comes down to.
I was with sky and had 2 faults in one year and found it usually took an hour on hold to get connected, only when I said disconnect the line that's when they started to take me serious.
So personally I think there is none that are perfect and go with what people recommend in your area
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Zen, bean with them for 12 years or so never an issue & brilliant customer support, for instances like when the router (mine) blew up!
Just upgraded to Fibre with them & it was seamless & quick. The phone service migrates on 5th Jan.