Really poor speed and Rubbish Customer Service

[Mylie]

I've had slow speed for over two years and cannot get  this resolved.

All TT want to do is blame home wiring or connections and charge me £75 if this is the case.

[I was previously a Shell BB customer and forced back to TT when the service was sold on]they did send an BT engineer and he confirmed a network fault in the area, but this has never been rectified.

TT say they don't guarantee any speeds, even if the speed is nowhere near the 65mbps Im paying for.As you can see below my service is rubbish yet I'm forced to stay with TT until my contract expires in January 2025 when they will charge me even more for not delivering a service!

I've spent hours on the phone and via live chat [there's generally an understanding/language issue]. I simply want the service and speed somewhere close to what I'm paying for or leave TT without penalty, any suggestions welcome!

[Mylie]

Hi Debbie

Yes I was migrated from Shell, but now with TalkTalk for sometime, may I ask the relevance of the question relating to the speed delivery?

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi @Mylie 

Are you part of the Shell migration?

[Mylie]

Hi Debbie

Speeds are the same on either the shell [ ZYXEL]router or the TalkTalk router, I tend to use the shell router as the TalkTalk one drops out around 3-5 times a day also overnight and requires constant rebooting.

Engineer fitted new 'Master Socket 5C' and on that day measured 50mps to the socket, speeds were then good for a while and now falling and not much better than before the engineer fitted the new socket.

August Speed Test:

Today's Speed Test:

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi Mylie

I'm so sorry to hear this.

Did the engineer locate any faults when they attended?

Is the replacement router currently connected at the test socket?

[Mylie]

So after a awful lot of communicating and a days lost pay when I stayed at home for the engineer call, i've had around two mounts of reasonable speeds and now its dropping and down to around 24mps, considering  I'm on Fibre 65 that's very poor, I'm lost for polite words to describe how I feel about this service!!

[Mylie]

Hi All

I've had a reasonably stable service and improved speed for around a week now,for some reason the last two Mondays I wake to find the dreaded red light on and no BB, a router reset returns the service.

Thank you  to all the contributors and staff for the information given, over the last two years I've spent hours and hours on the phone and online chat to get to this point and I've decided that any further improvement is unlikely and  enough is enough.I will review my options at the end of my TT contract.

Again many thanks to all

[Gliwmaeden2]

No, generally everything, @AllyM.

[AllyM]

I have seen that @Gliwmaeden2 , but I kind of thought that was more related to issues associated with billing/account migration than physical line faults, but who knows?

[Gliwmaeden2]

@AllyM, staff are referring problems with former Shell customers' service back to the Shell Migration team. 

[AllyM]

I'm not sure what "Superfast Fibre Plus" is. It may be an old package name or if you originally signed up with Shell, it may be a name of a package they sold. The "average 67Mbps" quoted for TalkTalk's Fibre65 service is just advertising/marketing speak - it's not an indication of the speed you will necessarily be able to get.

Like I said, they will look up Openreach's specs for your specific line at the point enquire to sign up for a package and should advise you of the estimated range and guaranteed minimum speed for your specific line before you confirm going ahead with the order. I'm not quite sure how else you think they should do it.

If there is a (possibly intermittent) fault on your line, a it appears there may be if I've read through this thread correctly, then that is a completely separate issue, and hopefully staff can continue to help you out with that.

[Mylie]

I was sold Superfast Fibre Plus with an average download speed of 67mps, which of course was not achievable.

Whatever the  proportion of the network is fibre or copper is not the customers issue,surely its the ISPs  that need to sort out the estimated speed before selling a package, the length of copper must already be known by the ISP, as that information will be known by network provider that they use.

 Current format used by Talktalk and others appears to be, sell the customer your best guess and hope they don't notice that they are not getting what they are paying for !

[AllyM]

The problem with Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) internet is that the speed you are able to achieve depends on the length and quality of the copper part of the line from the cabinet to your home, so ISPs can't advertise a specific speed that everyone can get.

You should have been advised of your personalised estimated speed range and guaranteed minimum at the time you signed up for your broadband service (with Shell?).

[Mylie]

Hi Ferguson

Thank you for your comments.

Im testing primarily with ethernet and exactly as you say the wifi in only slightly slower.

It's the whole assumption that you will get the speed talktalk  sell you that's a big issue, after all if you purchase a box of six eggs you expect to get six eggs not 5 or maybe 7!!

[Mylie]

Indeed the whole speed thing and fault finding is very very odd!!

[Gliwmaeden2]

What seems odd is that the speed to the router is slower than the speed to the device. Something not quite right going on there.

[ferguson]

Bear in mind that you are unlikely to pay much, if anything less for a FTTC based Fibre 35 than a Fibre 65 service. These are both effectively operating on outdated copper technology and at some point in the coming years you will be switched to a Full Fibre service. That option may already be available to you should you choose to pursue it.

The speeds you have posted seem within normal parameters, are you testing your connection to the router with an ethernet, or wireless connection? The latter will invariably be a wee bit slower. 

The disconnection may be a one off, if it becomes a regular occurrence then the support team will gladly investigate further. 

[Mylie]

Hi AllyM

My current speeds are rarely at the max of Fibre 35 and nowhere near the max offered for Fibre65. latest check below:

Its the assumption of speed that is made by TalkTalk that's really  annoying, in fact for my migration they had no data available, yet continue to charge me for a service speed  I cannot get:

This was a reply from Talktalk last week regarding speed information available:

The question is would I be better on Fibre35 and have the speed capped at 40mps, which is at least achievable?

This morning I had red light on the router and no broadband for several hours ,Its working again and I've just run a connection check and its still showing a line fault,this is ridiculous, has anyone taken this sort of issue to the Communications Ombudsman?

[Mylie]

Thank you so much for all your assistance

[AllyM]

The 2 standard FTTC services provided by TalkTalk are Fibre35 and Fibre65.

Fibre35 is capped at a speed of 40Mbps download and 10Mbps upload. Fibre65 allows speeds up to 80Mbps download and 20Mbps upload. This is of course subject to what your line is capable of handling. Based on your connection speed after getting the fault fixed, it would appear that Fibre65 was the correct package to put you on.

[Gliwmaeden2]

It's the Shell Migration team with the same number as for all customer services (mentioned in my earlier post, @Mylie).

They'll be available during the day, 9am - 7pm weekdays, till 6pm Saturday,  not open Sunday.