Thinking of changing broadband provider - feedback needed Thread poster: Gül Kaya
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Gül Kaya 
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:07
Turkish to English
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I'm thinking of changing my broadband provider. Does anyone have experience of Talk Talk which seems to have a good offer on at the moment?
| | | | Paul Stevens
Local time: 19:07
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
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| Used to be bad | Jul 23, 2013 |
Talk Talk had a very poor reputation a few years ago, with lots of customer complaints, but I don't know if they're any better these days. Personally, I'd rather not take the risk!
| | | | clairetransl (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:07
French to English
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| Not impressed | Aug 8, 2013 |
I recently switched to Talk Talk and am not impressed at all. The service is very patchy and I often need to reset the router. They are quite a lot cheaper than my previous provider, but the service is really quite poor.
| | | | Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:07
French to English
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| Interesting Guardian article | Aug 8, 2013 |
Just to add to the melting pot, you may be interested in this article in today's Guardian. Based apparently on 'research by Ofcom' (they don't cite an actual paper/publication, but I guess it must be track-downable), they give comparisons of some of the claimed speeds vs actual average speed and give you a benchmark of the speed you should be expecting to get.
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Oliver Walter
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:07
German to English
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| 1. "Which?"; 2. Speed or reliability | Aug 8, 2013 |
The consumer magazine "Which?" sometimes publishes reviews of broadband providers, including comments from its members. I think there was one in the past year or so, which I saw a few weeks ago. Your local public library may have back-issues of Which?, and you can see them there. My local library has them and I might have a look on Friday morning. As far as I can remember, Talktalk has a relatively high number of customer complaints, whereas Plusnet and Eclipse (and a few others) are better.
... See more The consumer magazine "Which?" sometimes publishes reviews of broadband providers, including comments from its members. I think there was one in the past year or so, which I saw a few weeks ago. Your local public library may have back-issues of Which?, and you can see them there. My local library has them and I might have a look on Friday morning. As far as I can remember, Talktalk has a relatively high number of customer complaints, whereas Plusnet and Eclipse (and a few others) are better.
For me, speed is not particularly important (I don't use broadband to watch or download video programmes) but reliability is the most significant issue. My broadband service and my email service are provided by different companies. I have no problems with the reliability of the broadband (mine is "Metronet" which is now a subsidiary of Plusnet); my email (and domain name) provider is not adequately reliable and I am thinking of moving elsewhere.
Oliver ▲ Collapse
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clairemcn wrote:
I recently switched to Talk Talk and am not impressed at all. The service is very patchy and I often need to reset the router. They are quite a lot cheaper than my previous provider, but the service is really quite poor.
switched to TalkTalk because they are the only company to offer a 20MB connection in my area. But I have exactly the same problems... started very well, now the speed drops regularly and I have to reset the router... I do get more than the previous 10MB, but the service is rather irregular... also, their support is based in India and you have to go through their "script" before they do anything...
| | | | Oliver Walter
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:07
German to English
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| Some conclusions | Aug 9, 2013 |
The survey I mentioned yesterday was in "Which?" magazine dated April 2013. For broadband-only, the best appear to be Zen Internet, BE and Plusnet. More information (I've added the URLs myself):
- Zen: the Lite package, for 18.37 GBP/month, speed 16 Mbps, monthly allowance 20 GB, minimum contract one month, customer service good,
... See more The survey I mentioned yesterday was in "Which?" magazine dated April 2013. For broadband-only, the best appear to be Zen Internet, BE and Plusnet. More information (I've added the URLs myself):
- Zen: the Lite package, for 18.37 GBP/month, speed 16 Mbps, monthly allowance 20 GB, minimum contract one month, customer service good, overall rating 85% (http://www.zen.co.uk/business/broadband/)
- BE: the Value package, 17 GBP per month, 12 Mbps, no usage limit, minimum contract 12 months, customer service good, overall rating 82% (https://www.bethere.co.uk/)
- Plusnet: Essentials package, 5.99 or 12.99 GBP/month (depends on where you live), 16 Mbps, 10 GB/month allowed, minimum contract 12 months, customer service good, overall rating 76% (but the website at http://www.plus.net/home-broadband/broadband-only/ says it starts at 8.49 per month)
(The lowest ratings included Talktalk at 47% and AOL at 26%)
For packages including the phone line as well as broadband, the best overall were Zen Internet (Lite + HomeTalk) and Utility Warehouse (Phone + Standard broadband).
From other viewpoints:
best speeds were from Zen, Utility Warehouse, Plusnet, John Lewis, O2, Virgin;
best value were Utility Warehouse, Plusnet, O2, Post Office (the worst value was Sky)
best for technical support were Utility Warehouse, Plusnet, O2, John Lewis; the worst for technical support were AOL and Talktalk.
Note: this applies only to the UK.
If you exceed the monthly usage (quantity of data) limit, what happens might be different for different companies. They might reduce the speed or charge for the extra data. If this is important you'd better find out (presumably from their terms and conditions) before deciding which service to use.
Note on symbols for speeds: M = "Mega" (million), m = "milli" (thousandth), B = "byte" = 8 bits, b = "bit" (one eighth of a byte).
MB is not a speed; it is a megabyte = one million bytes = a quantity of data.
Example: 12 megabits per second is written as 12 Mbps or 12 Mb/s
In some companies the people who write the website texts are themselves ignorant of this correct terminology.
I hope this information is useful to somebody!
Oliver ▲ Collapse
| | | | Gül Kaya
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:07
Turkish to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Oliver Walter wrote: The survey I mentioned yesterday was in "Which?" magazine dated April 2013. For broadband-only, the best appear to be Zen Internet, BE and Plusnet. More information (I've added the URLs myself): - Zen: the Lite package, for 18.37 GBP/month, speed 16 Mbps, monthly allowance 20 GB, minimum contract one month, customer service good, overall rating 85% (http://www.zen.co.uk/business/broadband/)
- BE: the Value package, 17 GBP per month, 12 Mbps, no usage limit, minimum contract 12 months, customer service good, overall rating 82% (https://www.bethere.co.uk/)
- Plusnet: Essentials package, 5.99 or 12.99 GBP/month (depends on where you live), 16 Mbps, 10 GB/month allowed, minimum contract 12 months, customer service good, overall rating 76% (but the website at http://www.plus.net/home-broadband/broadband-only/ says it starts at 8.49 per month)
(The lowest ratings included Talktalk at 47% and AOL at 26%)
Thank you for this Oliver. I have also been hearing very good things about Zen and Be. I've knocked the Talk Talk idea on the head now and will investigate these two further.
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:07
Member (2008)
Italian to English
I've been with several providers - the last one before this was O2, which seemed good but then let me down badly when I moved house.
So I went with TalkTalk. I know it has a bad reputation but it does the job for me. Unlimited downloads, consistently fast speeds, no major outages (although I do need to reset the router fairly frequently - but this may partly be my fault, as I'm plugged into an extension and not the main socket).
These occasional glitches are no more tha... See more I've been with several providers - the last one before this was O2, which seemed good but then let me down badly when I moved house.
So I went with TalkTalk. I know it has a bad reputation but it does the job for me. Unlimited downloads, consistently fast speeds, no major outages (although I do need to reset the router fairly frequently - but this may partly be my fault, as I'm plugged into an extension and not the main socket).
These occasional glitches are no more than I would expect from any provider. There's a very good online discussion forum where you can get problems solved quite effectively.
One catch about switching providers: you may need to switch your landline, phone number, and email address.
[Edited at 2013-08-09 17:34 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Pavel Slama
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:07
Member (2014)
English to Czech
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| I TalkTalk too | Sep 25, 2013 |
I, for one, am quite happy with my TalkTalk. It's not spotless, and in the past year, I've had connection dropping during about one week (presumably until they fixed something), but overall it is great value unlimited service with very cheap line rental too.
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