Amazingly, I overheard a conversation on a Train last week between 2 member of TalkTalks training team, they were discussing all sorts of things, however they were saying what they needed to do about the complaints they were getting about the free broadband, and it does'nt sound good.

They (as we know) have been receiving a lot of call about the free broadband, mainly over the waiting time to get installed, they were saying that many people have been getting the run around, with managers never phoning back, customer wanting compensation etc etc

The outcome of this was basically "dry your eyes, you don't get something for nothing", they appear to be training the staff in the best of the fob off techniques possible, she was givng an example of what to say to customer when they ring up and complain - put the customer on hold, pretend to ask a manager, then come back tot he customer and say the manager is on a call / in a meeting / at lunch or anything else that could get them off the phone, and they will call you back, she was saying as they make money from the phone calls "the company" don't mind doing this to customers, the only time that they should put people through to supervisiors is when they will not wait for a call back and will not clear the line, or where the call is being recorded by the customer as this could cause legal problems for them.

I think this confirms what we all know.!!

I,m very sorry to hear so many complaints, clearly justified. We have been lucky - TalkTalk installed way back in Sept, after a short (2 month) wait, and working well. Can absolutely understand the rage of those who have been led up the garden path - I would have been mad as h*** if I'd still been hanging around waiting for service: but I did want people to know that there are (some) successful installations.

Cruz wrote on Dec 18^th, 2006 at 2:06pm:


Don't you mean Ratners?

I found the above information very interesting and here's why. Setting aside the five months without connection whilst waiting for my "free forever" to become live, I am now experiencing connection issues. Sine 2nd Dec, I am making a detailed note of each days connections, ie 7 attempts to connect = 2 success's,  the most attempts has been 21 with 5 success's. However, it isn't straightforward, many of the times, I have to follow TT's route, of clicking on this then that then reboot whilst it attempts to connect me. Now and again the blue screen appears, but I've accepted this now as the norm. yesterday it only took me 6 attempts to connect three times. I cannot leave the computer on once connected as after hald an hour, pages slow down and it freezes.

I have been reluctant to attempt to phone because of the long holds, but now I will inform them I may be recording the conversation.

Do you honestly believe he would respond and if so, would you also guess that he would say he would get someone on to it then would they ?

islandman wrote on Dec 27^th, 2006 at 6:12pm:


Emails to the CEO always gain higher attention and a higher level of investigation in an organisation than an email or phone call to customer service underlings.  They may not be replied to by the CEO but they are usually referred to a departmental manager, director or other senior person for further investigation.

Customer service persons never do anything productive with complaints because they get them all day long so are hardened to them and ignore all of them.

The decision to use an 0845 and 0871 number for National Rail Enquiries Services will be one taken at board level and not in the customer services department and thus it is board members you need to get your point across to.