I'm looking at changing ISP to that Talk Talk free broadband offer...has anyone else tried it?

or can think of a reason I should avoid it?

I currently use BT which is fine, no problems, but it's bloody expensive at about £29.00 a month + we pay seperate line rental and phone calls.

I know this is a bit of a spam situation but maybe you need to see what I'm banging on about.

So here's a link..Talk Talk Broadband

I've heard something about this - I can't see a problem if you're lucky enough to live in an area which is covered by it. Otherwise, I think a phone/tv/internet package is the way to go

We're covered and can get the deal. Haven't got cable though so the TV part of any package is out. This Talk Talk thing looks like the best offer around for us at the moment.
I've pretty much decided to go with it in the near future...I'm really looking to see if anyone has anything negative to say about it.

There seem to be several schools of thought. Some people are exercising caution and waiting a couple of months to see if a Dutch Auction results, but the immediate or obvious down-side seems to be that the initial contract period is longer than with other ISPs and there is also a get-out penalty to pay if you wish to leave the service. Perhaps the sub-text is that there is no such thing as a free lunch? I am going to wait and see... Like you I think I am paying far too much for my BT BB and am looking at ways to save money but I can't help thinking that the Talk Talk offer does seem too good to be true.

My thoughts exactly.

So far the biggest downside I've found is that I'll loose my primary e-mail address - don't laugh just about everything that I've registered for is under that address, banks, BUKF, phone..the lot. It'll be a bitter blow.

well i was with talk talk's phone service till a few months ago when i cancelled. find it really anoying when you have a problem and it takes over 40mins to get to speak to someone.

Well I've signed up for it

I'm waiting for a connection date, probably some time in august they said.

I hate messing with the settings on my pc...it's all going to go wrong. I can feel it in my water.

August, bloody good job you have a connection in the mean time.

I've no intention of cancelling my BT account till I've ste up my new one...life without the internet! *shudders*

I have Talk Talk BB Once it’s setup it work’s good I did have to use there security software for it to work correctly.
You also need to be on a BT line which will never connect anywhere near 8meg
I connect at 2.3 Meg always but besides that it works fine.
Good luck with yours when you get it.

ive been looking for someone different as tiscali are banging on about me downloading too much at peak times, ive stopped but they still insist im a heavy user, which i think is basicly a scam because they want people who hardly use the internet to use thier service and pay for it, trouble is im paying £19.99 a month for the internet and phone calls which is a good deal, anyone used bulldog before? as they are offering something similar

This was nicked from aniother site. And there is plenty more where that came from

As you may be aware there is alot of bad press out there about Talk Talk Bradband from the Carphone Warehouse.

Heres the real deal about the free broadband offer on the talk3 international talk plan from my personal experiance.

I joined talk talk initialy only a month ago with no hitches, my phone line transfered from BT to them with no problems and the broadband came on a week before this while still with BT. I had no problems everything was running tickity boo internet was fast could access skybybroadband, P2P services and play my online games. I was quite pleased and thought I had made a wise desision. One month into the contract I went onto the talk talk website to check my webmail and noticed the Free Broadband offer and was quick at signing up - this is the most stupid thing I could have done. After going through the terms and conditions it states that they block P2P useage and I decided to cancel as my previous contract did not state this. I went to contact them on the phone and I held for 35mins before giving up. I then for the next week tried each day and then decided to e-mail them. I never recived a responce from them in the 5 day timescale that they quoted. I then e-mailed them again and yet again recived no responce. I then wrote to them again no responce and A day before the connection was due to go live I sent another e-mail. I got a responce from this one 7 days after the connection date stating I needed to pay a 70.00 gbp disconnection fee dispite trying for over a fourtnight to contact them and having no responce.

The connection has now been canceled after I held for a hour and thank god and iv cancelled the Direct Debit so they cannot claim any more monies from me Iv informed them and Ill pay by debit card for what i believe iv used.

Sorry its so long winded but I think people need to know this info.

So what happens on the free broadband may you ask.

Well the following applications I use no longer work between the hours of 8am and 12 midnight (but sometimes longer and the speed is still very slow outside these times)

Bitlord (or any bittorrent client no matter what settings you use)
MSN Messenger (It never signs in)
Hotmail (You cannot access the website)
Playing Your Games Online (Iv read there is loads of games that you cannot use with them anymore)
Limewire
Bearshare
Or Talk Talks own e-mail

Ok you might think his Pc is not set up properly - Wrong I have 2 Pc's A Laptop and a media centre and it works on none of them and Iv refreshed my settings on everything. After contecting talk talk they claim that these services will remain blocked as part of there fair useage policy.

The internet seems to be slow as well and the manager that I spoke to told me that was because there servers could not cope.


I hope you benefit form this information because i'm going through hell just now and I'm finding it difficult to deal with.

My Advise - avoid at all costs because the service is rubbish and the offer is very too good to be true as people say you get what you pay for oh and by the way using a proxy or tunneling software doesnt work on this service either!


There you have it. My OH uses bittorent, i use MSN and Limewire, so this wont benefit us if we can't get on.
There are many more like this HQ , to be honest i have heard nothing positive said, My OH wanted Talk Talk and i've said no way!!!!, We are on Metronet and are paying about £40.00 a month for it, i want to change back to AOL, but OH dosent want it , we had it before but he said it was $hit, I thought it was O.K. but heck, what do i know He really wants NTL but the cable that feeds the street stops at the house opposite and NTL have no plans to feed the cable further. So it looks like we have to still keep paying £40.00 a month, until something better comes along

This does not bode well...

I'm with orange (formerly wanadoo) and my broadband isn't free but I like it

im sticking with BT, mainly down to the fact then when you have a problem, they actually answer the phone. NTL used to do my head in when i had to wait over an hour, and then it was the wrong department that couldnt help me. As for talk talk, when we cancelled our phone line contract with them, was on hold for over 30 mins before someone answered, and there a phone company.

Wanadoo were pretty good when we phoned them when we had a problem

Anyone who knows me (from msn) must have seen me logging on and off at all times. To them I apologies. It must be really annoying seeing my (*Harlequin* is online) icon pop up every 15 minutes, but I can't stay connected!!!

TalkTalk Broadband is NOT! stable. It's all over the place! anything from 6mps - 3.5mps....and every time it jumps you get (or I do!) disconnected.

I'm really REALLY pissed off with it. "free broadband"?...you are definitely getting what you pay for

Give it a miss.

Walk away

It's free but not worth that!

"we apologise for the delay. we will answer your call shortly. "



THAT WAS 20 MINS AGO

[edit]
It seems they've sent me an old modem, and a new one will be dispatched. I'm supposed to be grateful I suppose

Call me "Mr Picky" if you want....but I just ain't grateful.

I only ever got 2.2 mps from BT.


But it was stable.

i only get 1 mps from BT. but it does what i want, and anyway, untill the exchange gets upgraded, its the best anyone can offer. BT might be dearer but there service is really good.

The new modem has arrived

Will this be the end of constant disconnection for Harlequin?

It's very tricky...many wires

If I succeed I'll shut down every thread except this one so you can all say "Well done Harlequin" and congratulate me.

I'll try not to keep you all waiting too long. I know you're worried.

This is Harlequin logging in at a miserly 28KBPS!! on his mobile...I mean, what could go wrong? It's just instaling a modem right?

Well yes it is. But it only works if you download drivers for it from the internet. They don't tell you this before uninstall tha last moden and it's drivers. They wait till you phone up and ask why won't it work.

Can anybody spot my dilema, and what the inherent problem with talk talks way of doing things?


You've just gotta laugh.

You could try using System Restore and go back to a restore point before you uninstalled the old drivers. Then maybe you'd be able to download the new drivers with the old modem.

Just a thought anyway.... good luck

I had a simular problem with bt, i was lucky as the guy next door downloaded them and stuck them on my memory stick, but a warning first would of been nice

That's what I did. It worked.

All I can hope for is that I can stay in sync long enough tommorow to download the drivers from the engineers.

Well the engineers did not call...So I called talktalk. They now say take the modem CD into the carphone warehouse and ask for a new one.

Ever get the feeling that it's still not going to work?


I'm going back to BT

talk talk are overloaded,

they cannot keep up with the demand at the moment,

they may be good one day,

but that day hasn't come yet.


I'm on Tiscali, but about to change to plus-net ,

they are supposed to be good.

http://www.plus.net

My brother had tiscali and had problems with them and the fair usage policy that they introduced after he signed up for the anytime unlimited package. He was downloading lots of games and movies and they decided that was far too much so they cut his speed down by half without warning.

He wasnt pleased so he went with someone called Zen, i think and got the 8mb package. He was assured that the line could take it and that all would be ok but the line couldnt take it and they were without internet for weeks while BT and zen were trying to sort it out.

He doesnt download anything anymore as he's addicted to World of Warcraft so all he wants is a steady connection so now he's with Plusnet at a steady speed of 512, which is what he wants.

Apparently most companies dont offer a steady constant speed but plusnet do. Although the 512 that he gets is for £20 a month which is rather steep.

Well the update on my problems is....The technical support bozos are not supposed to send customers to the carphone warehouse shops for help, which is what they did. The sales assistant did his best but couldn't get through to the tech side and we had to abandon the effort.

I've been told to ask for a new modem and cd. Can't get through, they've been busy all day.

I just know that a new cd and modem is not the answer, but we'll play the game a little longer.

Just been informed that talktalk have set up seperate dept to deal with problems such as mine.............










But their system is down.

I was thinking of joining talk talk for phone & interent instead of just phone but reading the this tread im just going to stay with tiscali. Never had a problem with tiscali, speed is closer to 2mg even though i am paying 9.99 for 1meg, so much bad stuff on their forums about going to max im not going to touch that either, better the devil you know...

Don't touch Talktalk....just don't

Well I've just spent another 15 minutes with the phone glued to my ear listening to Thunderclap Neumans "There's something in the air" over and over again, and a womans voice interupting every 15 seconds saying "We are sorry for the delay, we will answer your call shortly" <---Liar! Though I must confess I'm begining to fanasize about her.

I've got a theory.

The TalkTalk bradband does not and was never intended to work. TalkTalk just charge 10p a minute for you to call tec support, but there is no tec support, just a recording on a clapped out ansa machine. Thousands of people are all calling up to get their connections fixed and there's some sad git sat by the ansa reading the Daily Sport playing with himself and just watching the money roll in at 10p a minute.

hey guys, i've been reading about ur situation and would like to suggest this site, http://www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/. lets u choose ur options and gives a choice from ISP's that i didn't even know were out there, take a look.

Finally found out what the problem is. I've not got an "ethernet" connection.


WTF is "ethernet"?


It's gonna cost me £50.00 to get one fitted anyway. What ho. Great fun.

there poo talk talk

DONT USE THEM!!!!

Ethernet card fitted...and after many calls to the tech guys I'm connected.

Now lets just leave it running and see what happens shall we?

I'm on Talk Talk as well. I decided to take advantage of their all inclusive package that they advertised really heavily a few months ago.

The 'offer' they promoted in fact only applied to about 85% of the country and as it turned out deepest Norfolk is in the other 15%. It meant I ended up paying another £10 per month but I was happy to because it was cheaper than the rest. I'm on an 18 month contract.

The internet speed is 2.3 Mbps but it's fast enough for me. The problem is the amount of times it disconnects while I'm online. I have to unplug and then plug back in the modem before restarting the PC.

This palava can happen two or three times in a session or not at all for days. Luckily I'm a patient man

Rob.

I've got what is supposed to be some sort of cross between a router and a modem from Talk Talk.

I'm getting 100mbps showing. It's definetely more stable now, though my msn disconnected a couple of times the connection to the net never quite went away, it flickers for a few secs then re-connects.

Not Ideal....but I'll have to live with it.

Could you try reinstalling it?

My BB went a bit wonky, I reinstalled it and all is fine

That's one of the TalkTalk Jokes. Believe me I tried and tried to install and uninstall.

You are sent a cd with the new modem...so naturally enough you try to install the new router/modem with it (well I did anyway). Time and time again I tried. Phoning the service center, getting the same spiel over and over again from the help desk. It turned out that no matter how often I tried to get the damn thing to work using the cd it was no use, I had to contact the service center and get them to talk me through changing some settings on the router/modem. There was ABSOLUTELY no way I could have know all those settings. There seemed to be no instructions for this anywhere on the cd. (Or maybe there is and I just couldn't find them).

But one thing the tech said to me made my blood boil, he said "Ah! Yes. You don't need the cd to install the modem. Please do not use that program.".................................where did that leave me?

Note this is all after I had an ethernet card fitted.

Maybe you should just change provider!

The moment the contract is up I will.

Well i just re-signed up with BT. Phoned up to cancell as i had a "high usage" charge on top of my normal broadband bill. Ended up getting that refunded, a fiver a month knocked of my bill and my speed increased from 1 meg to the max the line can handle 2.5 meg. Not a bad phone call

100 mbps. Blimey oh riley HQ that's fast!! At speeds like that doesn't your screen start to melt?

Is 2.3mpbs really slow? This is the first time I've had broadband at home and it seems fast enough. Or is it just what I'm used to?

You just wouldn't believe what's going on. This level if incompetence HAS! to be deliberate on their part.

There's problem with the line.

They've disconnected my broadband account.

I can't switch ISP unless I cancel all my services with TalTalk at the same time. (This will take 14 days, but you cannot talk to the disconnection dept. They have to call you.)

The problem with the line I've been told is "The wind has blown down the exchanges."...which I find odd as I was online during the storms and there was no problems then,but they wouldn't lie to me would they?

Well lets see how they like not getting paid. I've got last months bill here. It goes through on the 12th...well it should, but I'm cancelling it. This may not be the right thing to do but it's the most satisfying.

War has been declared.

Looks like its true what they say, you get what you pay for.

Freaking right you do!

TalkTalk have it set up so you can't cancel. It's taken till today to get the message across to them, and that only happened because My new provider told TalkTalk that they were taking over the line soon.

TalkTalk still tried to hit us with a penalty, but we pointed out that we had cancelled the direct debit and not paid our bill and had no intention of doing so, and they backed down a bit and a compromise was reached.

TalkTalk are oversubscribed on dodgy cheap equipment, If you develop a problem that is their fault, they will not fix it but will leave you to rot untill you get so pissed off you just migrate to another provider and then TalkTalk will hit you with a penalty.

You Have Been Warned!

The fact that its free / so cheap was warning enough for me