Your bad Experiances with ISP's

[csgohan4]

I'll start this one off with the most complained about ISP.....

TALK TALK

So I recently moved to London, Noted that Sky can only do me a Connect service with 40gb monthly useage as the exchange isn't upgraded. As A result I had to cancel Sky as they couldn't offer me anything near my 8MB line I used to get.

So seeing Talk talk was the only one that was the cheapest, I called them and ordered. Seemed striaght forward enough, chatted to this dude from South Africa and it went smoothly and got an Engineer to activate my line on 19th Nov.

Got a confirmation email and text about my order and everything was dandy up untill that point.

Got a text the next day and email letting me know my Engineer date was on 4/April/2013, that's right April 2013, a full 5 months time.

So I rang them and they couldn't offer me anything sooner and mentioned something about BT openreach doing maintainance/ Engineering works on the lines. There wasn't anything they could do to hasten this problem.

I just wonder why they would give me an early date intially and come round and say they change my engineer date AFTER i paid them 12 months advance on line rental.

I tried explaining to them about the problem but reading from a script and their barely understandable English wasn't helping.

Seriously you do get what you paid for. You pay peanuts you get nuts, rather bad ones at that.

I paid a bit more and switched to BT infinity 2 fibre optic and an Engineer will be coming in 10 day including weekends. They also gave me complimentary BT Wifi access for being on the phone with them for a while. Lucky I have a BT wifi signal where I live.

AVOID TALK TALK, they are utterly poor in customer service and how they treat customers. Taking your money before telling you the full story. It's like going to buy a car and the saleman saying everything is fine and they will deliver your car tomorrow. Then coming back and saying your car will be ready next year.

I am also still waiting on the cheque, rather than direct payment back to the card I paid, for the advance on the line rental. Stupid, utterly stupid and another scheme to earn more interest on money that isn't theirs.

Edit:

There is also the problem of customer services not able to discuss your order without a talk talk phone number and/or account number, neither of these you get on ordering, just a order number you are given which they refused to use and access my account.

Even the complaint I raised on their website bounced ack saying they are unable to resolve the complaint without these information, DESPITE explaining these isues.

[Mike306]

I wouldn't recommend Firefly. They had very poor CS when I was with them a couple of years ago. Also expensive and poor data allowances.

[Geoff I]

Oh dear where do I start, I was going well with AOL it was a superb service until it got bought out and the internet came to a stand still, went to Orange and they were a joke, then we had Tiscali now that was good for 3 months then the speeds dropped off then went over to O2, these folks were cheap and reliable until my son came home to live and wanted super fast internet hence BT they are tops but we do still have 12 months on the contract so we will see.

[Willzzz]

I'm with Talk Talk, but the business version (they don't actually require you to be a business).

It's still pretty cheap, but the quality and customer service is miles better than regular Talk Talk.

[csgohan4]

I'm with Talk Talk, but the business version (they don't actually require you to be a business).

It's still pretty cheap, but the quality and customer service is miles better than regular Talk Talk.

Interesting so they dont ask you for the company details e.t.c???

[Kevsta]

Virgin Media

The whole of their network in Derby went down a couple of years ago. It was down for weeks. It was down for so long, in the time it took to fix a BE adsl 2+ line was ordered and installed.

Despite an entire city being down, you called there tech support only to be told there is no known issue in the area.

Shocking.

[BobF64]

I just wonder why they would give me an early date intially and come round and say they change my engineer date AFTER i paid them 12 months advance on line rental.

It should be self explanatory, they want you to sign up.

Although, there is probably a certain amount of sale and technical isolation, so the real information isn't available until after you've joined and its passed on to another department.

Interesting so they dont ask you for the company details e.t.c???

I dont think any ISPs require you to be an actual business if you want their business service, what usually differs is the cost, business is higher and ex VAT, and you may get a better or more accessible support team.

In the early days, there was a difference in DSLAM contention, such that home users were stuck 50 to a unit, whilst business users were 20 to a unit, but I dont know if that applies any more since DSLMax.

[Jay]

Virgin media.

512k from 20mbps package, told they where oversubscribed with no plans in to fix. Packet loss was high and I had to use their forum to get answers as their phone support was useless.

[csgohan4]

Virgin media.

512k from 20mbps package, told they where oversubscribed with no plans in to fix. Packet loss was high and I had to use their forum to get answers as their phone support was useless.

Bet your PIng is very high

[silent]

well, my debarkle with plusnet v o2.

have been with o2 for years and decided i wanted fibre - my o2 broadband went up to £15 a mth - old legacy acct - because i've switched mobile providers. so i requested my mac code and ordered the new £20 fibre from plusnet online, gave the mac code etc.

all was going fine, they apprently emailed o2 to say they were taking the line over on the 13th nov and braodband services. then on the 11th they sent o2 another mail saying that the phones was going on the 14th.

o2 sent my a text to say i was leaving them and they were sorry blah blah. well, on the 13th, plusnet's engineer went and said the phone line was teminating and they couldn't transfer the line over. i called at 1pm and asked what the issue was as noticed a note on my acct - they said o2 have cancelled the line so they need to order a new one. he said it happened thousands of times and i should call o2 to stop it. i called o2, they stated they have not ordered the line to be cancelled. call to plus; yes they have so no phone. but the engineer will still cal between 1 and 6pm to fix your fibre into your home. this never happened so i called them again. sorry, he should have gone said one, no he wouldn't because theirs no line. we have also cancelled your fibre order.

great. i had to wait till next day for the line to be re-ordered and then re-order fibre. how long will that take. well, depends on the earliest appt but as it's fibre, 2 wks! so, 2 wks with no braodband and still they blame each other. o2 reckon they did not use the MAC code, but why did they email them if they hadn't.

is it worth complaining to OFCOM and asking for compensation?

[Willzzz]

Interesting so they dont ask you for the company details e.t.c???

No I told them straight up that this [Talk Talk Business] was for a residential property and they said that was fine.

[csgohan4]

well, my debarkle with plusnet v o2.

have been with o2 for years and decided i wanted fibre - my o2 broadband went up to £15 a mth - old legacy acct - because i've switched mobile providers. so i requested my mac code and ordered the new £20 fibre from plusnet online, gave the mac code etc.

all was going fine, they apprently emailed o2 to say they were taking the line over on the 13th nov and braodband services. then on the 11th they sent o2 another mail saying that the phones was going on the 14th.

o2 sent my a text to say i was leaving them and they were sorry blah blah. well, on the 13th, plusnet's engineer went and said the phone line was teminating and they couldn't transfer the line over. i called at 1pm and asked what the issue was as noticed a note on my acct - they said o2 have cancelled the line so they need to order a new one. he said it happened thousands of times and i should call o2 to stop it. i called o2, they stated they have not ordered the line to be cancelled. call to plus; yes they have so no phone. but the engineer will still cal between 1 and 6pm to fix your fibre into your home. this never happened so i called them again. sorry, he should have gone said one, no he wouldn't because theirs no line. we have also cancelled your fibre order.

great. i had to wait till next day for the line to be re-ordered and then re-order fibre. how long will that take. well, depends on the earliest appt but as it's fibre, 2 wks! so, 2 wks with no braodband and still they blame each other. o2 reckon they did not use the MAC code, but why did they email them if they hadn't.

is it worth complaining to OFCOM and asking for compensation?

I hate playing ISP ping pong

[watercooled]

Virgin Media, do I need to say any more?

Not too bad lately (hopefully not spoken too soon) but was having frequent power level problems, without net/TV for a few days waiting for an engineer to come out and rectify a simple problem probably created by another engineer.

In addition, we occasionally have everything go down, including phone, for a day or so.

Lately, VM seem to be having congestion problems with peering to sites like Youtube, so despite being on 60Mb/s, videos will load at <1Mb/s. Comes and goes, but there's a very active thread on their forums about it. Also, something I've complained about before is the 'throttling' I get when downloading content on Xbox Live; I've considered VM throttling and MS server congestion in the past, but in light of the above, it could be saturated peering again. However, congestion would imply fairly random speeds but I seem to get 30(rarely)/10/4 Mb/s IIRC depending on download. Still, it's hard to say without some inside knowledge, and less people are likely to know about this as it's not as straightforward to measure. Basically though, it seems you don't get full speed on a lot of services it's important for/harder to detect. Of course, Speedtest always hits >60Mb/s.

[cub1061]

TalkTalk, last 3 year I was getting good speed now for the last 5 weeks speed drop and constant lost of signal.
On the phone with them all the time even had both their and BT engineers out. Both said problem is with the line and not me.
So even now with 2 engineers saying their is a fault with the line all I am still getting is "you live very far from the exchange".
Don't know how to get it through their thick heads that I understand all this but evidence is that there a fault with the line regardless of how far I live.

I got 8 months left on my contract and it can't end soon enough.

Talk about kicking someone when they are down. At the beginning I was struggling to log onto the web so found a number to contact Talktalk. Explain my problem as I was put on hold alot and was told I won't any charges if I call talktalk with my home home. Today I recieved my bill and guest what. Yes. I any charge. Phone them up and explain the situation there reply "the number you mention is not a talktalk number". Got to point where my last phase was I not paying and let me speak to your manager.

[Dutchjonsey]

Virgin media, very poor service, and the router needed resetting every day >< The best came when I moved house, and tried to cancel the contract. They tried to charge me for early cancellation on a 9-month contract, after being with them for 10...

[pipTheGeek]

Has anyone ever had consistently good experiance with any ISP?
We have Virgin Media, as someone else said speedtest is always high, downloads are not always fast but there is no way (that I know of) to tell if the problem is VMs or the source server or some other hop. Is it suspicious that when speedtest first added their Norwich server, my speed tested as around 2 meg, now it has been there for a while it is magically up to 50 meg? When phoning them for faults they have been as good as any other first line tech support. We haven't ever been without any service for more than 24 hours. However, changing package is always a gamble. They appear to just throw some dice to deside what price they should charge you, it never seems to bear any relation to the current advertised prices and you then have to do the "I want to leave" dance with their retentions people to see if they will price match their own website!
My in-laws have finally got round to calling Sky about their appaling broadband speed. They were estimated between 2 and 5 meg. Just after install it was half meg, it managed 1 meg for a while and is now .3 meg. After 15 minutes on the phone, not actually doing anything or checking settings or anything just on hold and answering account questions etc, they are sending new microfilters. Have to wait and see but I am skeptical that this is going to change anything.