TalkTalk Troubles

You're going to tell me I shouldn't be relying on a cheap broadband service. But over the last month, it's been fine, and I do have backup methods onto the net.

So I shouldn't complain too much when TalkTalk started to creak, and left me with no phone or broadband for nearly a week (so far).

Two weeks ago, I had a letter saying "We're sorry you're leaving." I checked, and they said it was sent in error, as my exchange is being upgraded to TalkTalk equipment.

Last week, the broadband, and then the phone, stopped working.

Since then, it's been like my early days on Demon/BT broadband, in the era when nothing could happen without a BT engineer, and everything was uncertain. Phoning TalkTalk gets little help or response. It takes half an hour to get through, after which they take a mobile number and call you, so you can hold on their bill for another fifteen minutes. Or they take a mobile number and promise to text you when they have information - and don't.

When you speak to someone, they can't tell whether you have an account or not, they don't have records of previous calls, they try to shunt you to the "faults" department, and so on.

After five days, I get a (possibly) definitive answer. There was a problem caused when they upgraded the exchange. Why is it taking so long to fix? And why couldn't they tell me that in the first place? No answer.

So what am I doing? I'm talking to you over GPRS - I've got a Nokia E61 (nice Wi-Fi enabled phone) with an O2 SIM. It's giving me dial-up speeds.

As the TalkTalk hold music says "We have got to get it together". They surely have....