I would have recomended talktalk until my broadband screwed up last week. I spent hours waiting on the phone, getting through to a department, only to be told I was through to the wrong team and I needed to redial a different number. So redialing again, I again had to wait nearly an hour, got through to the faults team, and then told again, I was through to the wrong team!!!! This time I was speaking to line faults and I needed broadband faults - doh!!! I finally managed to speak to someone in Bangalor, who went through the usual scripted questions - have you turned off your pc / modem, reseated cabling etc, checked firewall settings, installed new software recently etc.
After explaining that I had done all the above and much more, he then said I should turn off the modem for 24 hours and see if that cured it.
Now I am a network engineer and I had already deduced that the problem was not with any of my kit and was to do with the something at the BT exchange. I explained why I thought this the case - I used simple software to check the link which was basically "flapping". But he would not have it and again said I should turn off the modem for a day. This was last Saturday. On Sunday, I tried it again and surprise, surprise, it did not work. I then went through the same rigmorol again and finally spoke to yet another Indian adviser. I gave him my details and I said that my problem would have been on my records, but he said that there were no records of the problems I had or the previous phone call. So I had to explain everything again, and go through the same questions. After 10-15 minutes of this, his conclusion was that the modem was faulty! B****ks, I said, getting very irate now. I had already swapped the modem with a known working one...
I then explained that the connection was dropping every 45 seconds or so and that this was indicative of the connection, and had nothing whatsoever to do with my pc / router / modem / cabling or anything else in my house.
Finally after another 5 minutes, and the adviser putting me on hold, he came back and said "Can you turn your modem off for a few hours" -
Ahhhhhhhhhh
Sorry to go on, but until I had to speak to a talk talk representative, I didnt have any problems with them. Now, I will warn everyone not to go to them at all.
My broadband connection was broken all week. I tried it this morning, and it worked!! BT probably got an engineer out to the exchange and fixed the fault.
I dread the next time I have a problem, and will be looking elsewhere as soon as the contract is up.