Ever since I ran into a highly personable female TalkTalk rep who stopped me to admire my earrings in a shopping centre just before Christmas and then proceeded to convince me my life would be transformed by saving £2 per month over my previous internet provider, I have lived to regret it. My home broadband has become unreliable and as slow as hell. Any sort of internet activity has become a slog requiring the patience of Job.Complaints to TalkTalk either fall on deaf ears or solicit the bland script-inspired response that the area I live in must be at fault.
Must be that new mountain range that's sprung up in the middle of Oxford then.
I have now escalated my complaint to Ofcom pointing out it is most unfair to hold customers to 18-month contracts if little or no service is being provided and the contract is therefore being breached on the service provider's side first. They promptly referred me back to TalkTalk, not quite fulfilling the suicide risk criteria needed for Ofcom's consideration.
Checking my broadband speed against 'the internet's leading Broadband speed checker' the other night I am getting 2344 Kbps download speed out of the 1Mb-5Mb I should be getting for my postcode location.
Meanwhile there's the matter of all those hours of my life I will never get back trying to do the simplest things. And my poor much-neglected blogmates.
And did I tell you the one about the new LG camera phone which won't download pictures to my PC and how many hours I've wasted on that only to discover it is probably a software fault inside the phone all along and not my own bumbling incompetance (as inferred by those oh-so-helpful LG call centre staff)???
I'm an artist I tell you, an artist!!!!! I shouldn't have to concern myself with such triviata as battling telecoms companies. Isn't it bad enough I have to work for a living rather than gazing from my garret all day long, quill in hand? What would Lord Byron do in my shoes I ask myself?
Totter a bit. Probably.
12 comments:
I'm frightened of anything other than Apple + BT. I know Sky would cost less, but...
Oh, that is so very annoying. I feel your pain. My hubby and I have suffered the LG service people about a refrigerator on numerous occasions. Fortunately for us, after realizing they would be no help at all, we were able to get help from the people who sold the refrigerator to us, who also serviced them (we were unaware of this at the time and thought we had to go direct to LG). Would have been nice if the LG people could have referred us back to them in the first place, rather than wasting so much of our time (not to mention the groceries we lost). Anyway slow computing and internet is excruciating after having experienced how fast it can be. I hope you can get some sort of solution soon.
All of these companies are supposed to be about customer service, but in fact are not about either... rather they are about taking our money with practically nothing in return.
I too got a new phone, back at Christmas time, and the bloody thing works like junk... I'm ready to ditch it...
agghhh. Nothing worse than substandard technology! I've come to wish you luck on your screen test bid for circus fame and fortune, so perhaps after that you'll be able to make the switch to superduperextrordinaryfabuloso broadband. Not that I know anything about the UK services, but if one throws enough money at things they usually improve, no? I have great hope for you because my word verification is SOMENEW!
xo
There is no ISP on the planet who can provide anyone with the speeds they claim on their adverts. They loads millions of customers onto their servers and then wonder why everyone's broadband connection peters out. This is no consolation, I know, especially when you've been tied into a contract for 18 months. I'm not sure what to suggest other writing directly to the head honcho at TalkTalk. And possibly Ann Robinson at the BBC's Watchdog.
Technology exists to drive us round the bend.
Still, I'm honoured that you still had the patience to pop by my blog during your days of torpor.
You poor soul. I have talktalk at home...it's rubbish in Brighton and brilliant in Buckhurst Hill. In the office we have Be There which is brilliant.
Artists should not be made to indulge in technology...send them a bill for your life hours lost!
I thought this was going to be a post about a pop band, not a broad band. I agree with Rol, technology exists to drive us nuts. I am a techno-nothing! Good luck.
Having just moved from Dialup Dementia to Highspeed HSPA, I hear your pain.
I'm in a new world of course, with multiple windows and downloads that are as a speeding bullet compared to a stone's throw.
I hope you sort it out but doubt it. When I got the HSPA it wouldn't work so I called the provider who insisted it was a problem with my (brand-new) laptop - after 2 hours.
It took my genius technician another 2 hours and a long drive to find it was the f***ing faulty Sim card they had provided.
Arghhhhh.
Tech. We are demented from it.
XO
WWW
As a former Tiscali customer (now with Talk Talk, who took them over) I know the frustration to which you refer. When it works it works well but it is unreliable. If I don't do anything for 10 minutes - say whilst I am tyoing and email - it all drops out and I have to repair the connection even if it says it is good.
Someday soon one GINORMOUS conglomerate will own every form of communication and compatability will no longer be an issue...
neither will privacy, human rights, personal safety, individualism..
but whatev? We'll all be able to upload our pictures to Big Brother :)
Thank you so much for the sympathy one and all. My battles with TalkTalk go on and on, but I'm trying not to let them stop me blogging.
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