Peter Needs Help Sorting Contract Nuances

So, I’m not sure about the finer points of issues like this. Anyone have any advice?

I have honestly had all the energy sucked out of me by TalkTalk.

My Broadband experience has been nothing short of awful (I’m
surprised that I’m connected right now).

But that is not my gripe.

Basically I joined TalkTalk in June 2006.
Transferred my line in May 2007.
Tried ending my 18 month contract today (June 2008).
Only to be told that I have 5 months left on my contract.
They told me that my contract began in May 2007, and would charge a
£70 disconnection charge.
I argued that my contract started in June 2006.
They did not accept this and told me that they had to create a new
account when I moved in May 2007.
They really do not care about the customer. You can hear it in their voice.

I was never informed that I was placed on a new contract.
I can not find this information in the terms and conditions.
Doesn’t a transfer mean just that? Otherwise they should say ‘cancellation
then connection to a new 18 month contract’.
I am absolutely flat broke and this has come at the worst possible time,
especially since they have cost me so much pain over the 2 years.

They have informed me that they are sending me a letter that they had
sent on the 3rd May 2007 stating that I’m on a new 18 month contract.
I keep all my letters, and I never received this letter.
Also, if I never agreed to it, how can I be bound. Especially if it’s not
in the terms and conditions.
Even if it is on the letter, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. I would
not have paid over £100 to install a BT line, then another £30 to cancel, then I
think more money, just to be told that I am on another 18 month contract
with those vultures! Pure Evil the pain and frustration they have caused
so many people.

Do I have a leg to stand on?
Please help.

Thanks!

Refresher! Help with 680!

It’s been a while since we went through this. Anyone have tips for Roesmary and error 680?

Wonder if anyone can help with no broadband connection and error message 0680?

Having read extensively of other people’s difficulties and eliminated all the possible causes by doing all the basic tests suggested in the helpful responses the problem still persists. Can anyone tell if this might be a cause: for a few months the message “virus definition updates have failed because file base001.avc has failed its CRC checks” has appeared. Also, this file is the first of a long list of files, so it’s possible that all the others have failed too. I have found out that the Cyclic Redundancy Checksum (CRC) is a function that processes each byte of a file – but not sure how this helps solve the problem……?
On a few odd occasions connection has not been possible but for the rest of the time it has been fine. Now for the last two days the 0680 error message appears. The phone works and all the other tests have been done ie nothing else connected, no sky, no split filter etc etc.

Judging from other people’s experiences when ringing BT or their ISP they were asked to do all the basic tests yet the problem remained. Can anyone help please?

Here’s the basic stuff for a 680:

Tiscali: Error 680

(Link) How to reach a person.

Hey guys,

Got sent a link by someone involving the below article. Unlike a lot of link spam, this is actually pretty useful. It’s a sort of primer on how to navigate phone trees. Some of it is just relevant to the US and Canada, but you guys might find it useful as well!

We’ve all been there. It’s infuriating to sit on hold for 20 minutes, only to be connected to a service agent who has only a cursory grasp of the English language and even less knowledge about how to help you. The following tricks will help you skip to the head of the line and find a better person to talk to.

VOIP News: 50 PBX hacks

Confirmation regarding e-mail

Hey guys,

I have some information regarding the e-mail thing. Talk Talk are going through an upgrade period to resolve some of the previous e-mail issues you guys had.  Some of the upgrades didn’t go as planned, hence the problems from last week. They say they’re still working through a backlog of issues at the moment but hope to have things resolved soon.

Let me know if that helps or not!

Cable connected to wireless?

Hey guys! My wireless setup is via an adapter on a system at home set to Access Point. I then use ICS from the wireless adapter to connect to Talk Talk’s network. Needless to say I don’t have a fancy router :).

But, my guess is someone knows how to do this without shelling out 25 pound to Geek Squad?

Have a read and see if you can help!

Hello there Mr. Hell. My name is Abbey and I’m the daughter of an existing Talk Talk customer, and I wish to tell you my trouble.

Today my dad and I spent the afternoon feeling frustrated, annoyed and quite angry. Infact there was a point when I felt like smashing my computer up with a sledge hammer, a feeling in which I’m sure all computer owners have experianced at some point.

But anyway here’s why:

I recently got a Nintendo DS for my birthday, and couldn’t wait to get set-up on Wi-Fi connection, believing that it would be relatively straight forward. (I should have known better!!)

I mean I have all the equipment I need: Internet, Wireless Router, a DS and Windows XP, and finally a compatible Wi-Fi game.

I’ll get to the point, our wireless router (purchased from Talk Talk) is currently set up with the cable connected setting, but to enable Wi-Fi connection, we need to change it to the Wireless setting. Not sure of how to do this, we turned to Talk Talk for help, so we rang their helpline. Before getting anywhere, we were transferred to 3 different help sections after only explaining our problem.
Finally though, it seemed as though help was at hand, it looked promising!

The help service that we were talking to now, was called Geek Squad and they said they could easily help us change our router to the wireless setting BUT!!!…….

………It was going to cost £25!!! £25 just for a set of instructions? Talk about being ripped off, it’s diabolical!!

So let’s summarise my problem here; My dad and I spent an afternoon trying to get help on how to make our router wireless, when it’s supposed to be wireless anyway, we phone TalkTalk up and get transferred all over the place, when the number we first rung up should have been able to help us out. Then when help is finally available, we find out it’s going to cost us an arm and a leg to get it. Talk about bad service!

Anyway we gave up on Talk Talk for help on this matter in the end, and we certainly weren’t prepared to pay that £25. So I turned to the internet for further help and I stumbled onto your website. On there, it was nice to see we weren’t the only ones going through this ‘TalkTalk Hell’!

I’m sorry this E-mail was miles long, I never intended it to be this long winded, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it. Goodbye, take care.

Thanks for your lovely e-mail Abbey. Hopefully someone will have an answer.

SMTP restrictions?

Derek wrote in with this regarding sending e-mails from another ISP’s network. My thought is it’s an IP restriction to try and prevent relaying through their mail servers.

(For a run down of open mail relays, clicky on Answers.com

Check Derek’s e-mail:

I have been in France for the past eight weeks. A friend allowed me to use his wireless network but not once could I send an email via talktalk on my VAIO laptop. I telephoned the talktalk help line using my mobile telephone but was told that everything was OK, or that I should use the talktalk internet mail service. This I could do. I then sent an email to talktalk telling them about my problems in only being able to receive emails and not send them. They sent me a reply again asking me to telephone the help line. I asked them to telephone me and another reply simply told me to again telephone the help line.

As you know, using a mobile telephone to contact a help line, press one, press two press three etc. is very expensive. Fortunately, I had retained my dial-up connection to waitrose.com and was able to access this to keep in touch with emails and such like.

When a customer is in difficulty and sends an email asking for help, surely it should be within the bounds of the help line to ring back to try and discover the problem.

I have been a strong supporter of the TalkTalk telephone and Broadband service since it started and recommended it to many friends. I appreciate that the service has attracted incredible numbers, as there is no service to beat it at the price. I hoped that after the service had been in existence for such a length of time most of the connection problems should have been sorted out.

What do you guys think? Any confirmation? Honestly though, the tech should have known if this was the case.

NNTP and Talk Talk?

Flattery will get you almost everywhere there Peanut:

Hi, firstly I am in what I expect to be a minority of people who receive a great broadband internet service from TalkTalk. I know. I couldn’t believe it either after the horror stories! But yeah, much faster than our previous ISP (Eclipse), and I didn’t think net speed could vary between ISPs with ADSL…

Anyway, I have a query… I’ve trawled the interweb and the TalkTalk site trying to find out if they offer a newsgroups / Usenet service. Do you have any information about this?

Great site; every time I have a TT problem, the answer’s usually on it somewhere! 🙂

*blush* Thanks!

Anyone know if Talk Talk supports NNTP? I haven’t used a newsgroup since 1999.
(Nothing in the alt. category I’ll have you know.)

Consumerist.com: How to win phone battles

Some tips for you guys! 28 tips to winning battles with Customer Service reps:

1) Use a speaker phone
2) Set aside at least 30 minutes
3) Get a human.
4) Gather your evidence
5) Act like a human
6) Don’t think the world revolves around you
7) Know your enemy
8) Take notes
9) Don’t be afraid to hang up and try another operator
10) Run out the clock
11) Be firm

12) Keep calmly repeating your story
13) Say exactly what you want
14) Don’t ask for yes from someone who can only say no
15) Make a business case for your wants
16) Honesty begets honesty
17) There’s sometimes more freebies to give out early in the day, or early in the quarter
18) Email a company executive, then print it out and mail it

The next ten tips are from the customer service rep side, compiled together by the call center slaves who run CustomersSuck.com.

19) Be civil
20) Let the rep talk
21) Don’t ramble
22) Don’t blame reps for corporate policies
23) Remember the other person is a person
24 Demanding a supervisor will not always work
25) Be reasonable and keep perspective
26) Consider seeing a therapist if you’re screaming at a powerless rep
27) Sometimes you just can’t be helped
28) Don’t tell them how long you’ve been on hold

Consumerist.com

Also: How to file a good complaint

Some tips from someone working in a call centre.

I’m not actually allowed to say if this is from CPW staff. (Thanks CPW Legal team!) However, it has some good advice.

1) *Always be polite and friendly.* I’m sure most of the time this is
the last thing you want to do, but an advisor would much rather help a
nice customer.
2) *Clearly explain your problem.* Avoid saying things like “as you can
see from my previous emails…” as this only extends the amount of time
an advisor has to spend researching the problem, making some of them
less likely to give you a proper response. Ideally paragraph but avoid
any kind of HTML or formatting as the email system we use removes all of
this.
3) *Don’t bother asking for the email or letter to be passed to Charles
Dustone, etc.* It just won’t happen. And, even if it did, I doubt he’d
have any idea of how to deal with the issue.
4) *Always include DPA details if discussing account-sensitive
information.* DPA stands for the Data Protection Act, and we need to
complete this process in order to look into your account, so it’s best
to include your telephone number, address, account number and the bank
from which TalkTalk takes your Direct Debit in every bit of correspondence.

There’s some good info as well. Like there’s a phone pilot going on? Has anyone been called back by Talk Talk staff over the last few months?

Technorati Tags: Carphone Warehouse, Talk Talk, Charles Dunstone, customer service, ADSL, DSL

Powered by ScribeFire.

73 year old cancer sufferer SLAMMED by Talk Talk

Oh man. I’ve seen a lot of stories here… but this is one of the worst. Brian was slammed in January after trying to upgrade his long distance plan. For 5 months Carphone Warehouse and their bully boys, Corporate Credit Media, have been hounding him for a service he didn’t want. What’s worse is they did so AFTER they said they’d refund him the money.

It’s horrifying.

I’ll summarize since the docs are in pdf format!

On 12th of January Brian received a document in the mail thanking him for signing up to Talk Talk broadband. He called on the 16th of January to cancel.

On the 20th of January Brian wrote to Charles Dunstone by letter telling him he wasn’t happy being slammed.

1, Feb they received their broadband username and password. Phoned again to cancel on the 7th of February.

22 February received first broadband bill. Called again on the 27th.

Sometime in March received a letter from credit control saying account was overdue.

Replied (with solicitors cc’d in, good move Emma and Brian!) on 16th March notifying them they pay by direct debit.

17th of April received confirmation broadband cancelled on 2nd March (?!!)

18th April received final notice for broadband bill with a different disconnection date

19th April Brian wrote saying he wanted confirmation this was cleared.

2nd May received confirmation from CPW that the 11.33 for broadband was credited to his account.

5th May 2007 received notification from Corporate Credit Media about an outstanding debt.

12th May 2007 received ANOTHER notice from Corporate Credit Media about same outstanding debt.

13th May Brian sent a sternly worded letter to CPW via his solicitors with correspondence attached.

Not sure where they’re up to now. So, debt collection law. Anyone know anything?

Technorati Tags: Carphone Warehouse, Talk Talk, ADSL, DSL, bad customer service, customer service

Powered by ScribeFire.