Finally back online after a fortnight without an internet connection and many, many calls to talktalks customer unservice.

Started with Nildram, who became Opal, who got taken over by Tiscali who were then bought out by TalkTalk. Had no problems with them over the (nearly 20!) years of their various guises so decided to give them a go for fibre.

The warning signs were there when I phoned the Indian call centre and the first question asked was 'how many people in the household?' followed by 'what will you be using the internet for?' this is apparantly so they can help me choose the right package for me, despite me saying I wanted the fastest fibre they do.

The engineer came and swapped my BT faceplate for a fibre one and left, in and out in 15 minutes - no internet - no problem it doesn't 'go live' until 'up to' midnight. The next day still a red light on the router and so commences call no.1 to Indian customer services, 'Is your router turned on?, have you tried turning it off and on again ?' Whathfck ! am I in an episode of the IT Crowd or something ?

After more pointless troubleshooting (I knew what the fault was but Guhpta did'nt want to know as he had a script to work through) 'have I scanned my computer for virusses? Is the modem plugged into the wall socket ?' Guhpta decides that the router is trying to connect to the network but can't, yes I know that I say, I'm not being assigned an IP address there's a problem with the IP verification to your servers. Despite that he says an engineer will arrange a visit which could be within the next three days.

Three days later and no engineer has called to arrange a visit, which isn't needed as the problem can be fixed remotely, so call no.2 - apparantly the networks down so nothing can be done at that time - try again in 48 hours......Call no.3, were aware of the problem leave it with us. Next day call no.4 no record of my initial complaint so the process starts again, and again I get no engineer appointment. Call no.5, dealing with the problem should be fixed within 72 hours. Call no.6 still working on the fault but will escalate to the faults team. One week has now passed.

Stumbled on a community forum for TalkTalk where if you post a fault one of their 'Online Executives' will look into it but could take 3-4 days before they get to your problem so I make a post, 3 days later not answered so I post again, another 3 days later still no reply so I post yet again. Day 14 after installation one of the executives replies saying he's carrying out some tests, 2 hours after his post and I'm finally back online !!

So it took less than two hours to fix the fault (IP wasn't being authenticated) but it took two weeks to get any action. Had I not found the online forum I'd probably still be without internet and still making calls to the useless Indian call centre.

Tiscali and TalkTalk have always had a reputation for crap customer service?

It's unlikely to get better unless people make a big enough public fuss in the right direction - i.e. at their PR reps / managers / etc.

There an ok company UNTIL something goes wrong and you have to contact them, everything has to be passed on to someone else who will contact you - but never does. And when you do think you're getting somewhere you have to wait 48 hours before contacting them again (to give them time to sort it out).

Guhpta phoned today asking if I still had a problem - the problem that was reported to them 16 days ago and fixed 2 days ago, which to me suggests customer service did fuck all and havn't been in contact with the engineering team.

He apologised it took so long to resolve but there had been problems on the network, which is total bullshit as it was an IP authentication problem that can be fixed remotely in minutes and nothing to do with the wider network.

Good news is out of all this I've gained a few contact numbers to completely bypass the Indian call centre and get direct to the actual team who can fix any issues.

> There an ok company UNTIL something goes wrong and you have to contact them

That's not an ok company! (Or the correct homophone).

Support is a component of what you're paying for - when it's not provided (and particularly when the service is down), they're just taking your money in exchange for wasting your time.