back to article TalkTalk loses 43,000 customers, chunk o' revenue in Q3

TalkTalk lost 43,000 broadband customers during the company's third quarter and reported that revenue in that area of the business had fallen year-on-year. The telco told the City this morning that it was continuing to unbundle exchanges during the quarter and attributed the decline in subscribers to the fact that it was …

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  1. Bunker_Monkey
    FAIL

    "Falls in customer volume" isnt that the same as??? "customers are leaving us"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes.

      “I partook in the beverages at the local tavern” is the same as “I had some drinks in the pub”. What’s your point?

    2. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
      Headmaster

      increase in the rate of online self-service

      Oh people are fed up of the: "Have you turned it off and on again?" speak so have turned to a web page that will say the same thing and when they click next "Page not displayed" so they have to call anyway.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Does the choice given to the new customers include stopping the illegal interception or does it just stop the filtering whilst still using their browsing history to build up their blacklist?

  3. Lallabalalla
    FAIL

    In my experience...

    Worst. Customer "service". Ever.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Sir Sham Cad

    One less now

    So, after being happy with Homechoice (apart from the self-cooking set top boxes) and then happy with Tiscali when they borged HC and, for a time, being happy with TalkTalk when they snaffled Tiscali I'm finally jumping ship and having Virgin Media come round to hook me up.

    Why am I jumping ship now after all this time? Simple. My "broadband" speed hasn't gotten over 700kb/s for the last month and was usually 300-500kb/s. Consistently depending on time of day and day of the week. When iPlayer doesn't work and you can't watch 2 minute YouTube clips without waiting for five minutes for it to download then the connection is not fit for purpose (Yeah, I know. First World Problems etc...).

    I don't know whether this is a policy that's been suddenly implemented across the TalkTalk network, local contention issues in my area or if the TalkTalk to Internet bandwidth has just gone to ratshit but I do know that TalkTalk consider 300kb/s+ to be "acceptable" and I do not. If others are experiencing the same problems as me then no wonder they're losing customers hand over fist.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's not policy, it simply means you have a fault either in your property or on your line and it needs fixing.

      Good luck with Virgins traffic management.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Funny El- Reg

    Seems like the article is an advert for TalkTalk. Numbers faling and reason is yanking customers off BT ? Doesnt add up, that paragraph.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I used to be with Tiscali

    After Talk Talk took over and the service disappeared down the tubes I phoned up to cancel, the bloke on the other just sounded fed up with it, I assume he was fielding a slew of calls a day. So Talk talk bought a whole new customer base only to lose them due to their own ineptitude overnight.

    Saying that I've been with Virgin since and up until the last 2 weeks the network had been faultless, since then both phone and broadband have been up and down like Richard Branson in a room full of Virgin Air hostesses (the one's with MG's obv).

  8. Mr Young
    Coat

    Zzzzz - talktalk trying to sell continuous monitoring?

    I guess you would need to spend money on extra fancy hardware for that job? It'll be worth it if it protects me from the pron...my eyes, aaaah! I need to go - me sarcasm off button has failed again

  9. SiempreTuna
    Thumb Down

    TalkTalk? LieLie more like ..

    I spent ages looking for the best deal, (foolishly) signed up with TalkTalk and .. they increased the price in the FIRST MONTH!

    Having said that, those of you who have signed up with Virgin need to keep an eye on your bills. I let the missus look after things, only to discover that after 3 years, they'd increased the price from £25/month to £38/month.

    That's an average price increase of around 23% a year.

    Clearly, the fastest thing about Virgin are the price increases.

    And they kept pulling TV stations.

    Not sure who to go with next, but it's definitely neither of the above ..

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Easy solution

      Just fuck all the paid for TV channels right off, and use Freeview. You won't miss anything worthwhile, I assure you.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No illegal interception...

    "Does the choice given to the new customers include stopping the illegal interception..."

    It's not illegal, else the government/Ofcom would have halted it, rather than (as article shows) a Minister praising the system.

    Every ISP has a big anonymous list of sites its network sends request to, just like every telco has a big list of phones numbers that its network gets asked to reach.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not illegal?

      I assume you are being ironic.

  11. dephormation.org.uk
    Alert

    Home Safe

    You cannot avoid the surveillance, only decline the filtering.

    Unauthorised interception without consent of sender and recipient is a criminal offence. Yet the Police and ICO will not protect you.

    Thus if you value the privacy/security/integrity of your communications... you need to move to a trustworthy ISP.

  12. Chris D Rogers
    Thumb Up

    Too much anti TalkTalk

    My folks became TalkTalk customers after it took over a few smaller players and were not on any contract, just making a monthly payment for a 8mb download speed, actual speed is just under 5mb and upload speed under 1mb.

    At Christmas I rang customer services to make a complaint, it transpired I was in the wrong, the chap I was talking too, for all the shit I gave him was polite and helpful - indeed, not only did he sign us up for a 12 month contract lower than existing plan, he also helped considerably in changing email addresses .

    I had no complaints, having looked at TalkTalk combined broadband and telephone services, it transpired they were the UK's cheapest, further, line rental that had actually increased under TalkTalk was reduced to a respectable £9.50 per month if a 12 month advance payment was made - actual cost saving to parents was more than £80.00 per annum.

    For this, my folks get a reasonable service all for under £13.00 per month, this includes a capped download of 40G per month, this can be upped for a £5.00 pm additional charge.

    As someone who actually knows what an awful service is, I live in Hong Kong in a remote area and local Telco Netvigator are possibly one of the worst in the world - my folks UK service is actually far better and costs less per month and the difference is stark.

    Given I'm a big downloader, I'm glad to say, following 8 weeks in the UK and having fled more than 100G, utilised iPlayer in SD and HD, TalkTalk imposed no additional charges.

    For what you pay, and what you get, they really are good - yes i could get a bit higher download speed, yes i could go unlimited, yes i could sign up for load of useless media options like Virgin - in reality, a telephone line, decent broadband link, and reasonable DL cap for average user is all people want, and on this account TalkTalk excel.

    1. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

      You will live to regret the day you uttered those remarks

      Believe me. I have experience of TalkTalk too.

      To call it absolute shit would be talking it up far, far too much.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You would only get charged for going over the 40gig limit if you did it 3 times in a 6 month period.

      And they would write to you each time you did to warn you.

  13. Callum
    FAIL

    I was a nildram customer; which became Opal and then talktalkbusiness. The service with talktalk business is utterly awful. e.g. they have failed three times in a row to log an openreach call to replace a master socket. It's so bad that I have a draytek vigor router with a "3" 3G usb key plugged in permanently to switch when the contention rates rise in the evening (which bugs me because I'm meant to be a business customer and shielded from evening consumer usage)

    Anyone got any recommendations for a ADSL broadband provider that works for techies. i.e. not the watered down crap service that seems to be the norm. I don't care about price.

    1. Richard Crossley
      Thumb Up

      ADSL Recommendation

      Zen ADSL

      http://www.zen.co.uk/business/broadband/business-broadband.aspx?page=53

      They cost a bit, but their technical staff are pretty good. They don't do unbundled.

      I would still be using them if BT could have fixed their infrastructure. My line = 1500 Mbs, next door = 4500 Mbs

      1. Chris Parsons

        I second that. Been with them for years, worth every penny. If something goes wrong, you get to speak to a bloke who speaks English - now, there's a novelty.

    2. Mr Young
      Thumb Up

      I don't care about price?

      If you really want to go for it - I'd suggest your very own satellite!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I've found..

      Fast ISP to be very good, pricey, but excellent service and excellent speeds.

      Talk Talk is quite possibly the most obnoxious and ineffective company I've ever had the misfortune to deal with. Leave them to the x-factor-tards the advertise for and move to someone who understands what your problem is when your upload speed is 10 times faster than your download speeds on ADSL....

      For the guy who was getting 300kbs, I was suffering... 30 - 50kbs from Talk Talk.

      Awful beyond words.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Recommended

      "recommendations for a ADSL broadband provider that works for techies"

      Aquiss, Andrews & Arnold, UKFSN, or Orpheus.

    5. Philscompany
      Thumb Up

      I'd recommend Eclipse Broadband having used them a lot for various clients plus my own broadband - not the cheapest, but helpful support staff who know their stuff and don't force you to run through all the basic checks you've already done if there is a problem. Somewhat unusually, they're totally happy to pass apparent line faults on to BT if it becomes necessary (Tiscali more or less flat refused to last time it was required) but they also stay on top of the call while it's open and see it through to completion.

  14. Keith 12

    Just about to finish an 18 month contract with Talk Talk. (Fibre cabinets just installed 25 metres away but NOT impressed with the 2mb max. up speed on offer, mulling a decision to move to BT for the 10mb up) At 6km from the exchange we get around 4mb down and 950k+ up. Online gaming pings are frequently around the 30 - 40 mark. Approx 2 hours downtime in 2 incidents of about 1 hour each over the last 18 months.On initial activation, Forum requests concerning poor gaming pings were answered and fixed within 24 hours.

    Was very wary about moving to Talk Talk - I have to say I remain very impressed.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Wait a few months, 80meg down, 20meg up will be available on Talktalk fibre.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Buying ISPs and losing customers..

    They bought up the ISP I was with before, and said ISP went down the crapper, capped everything, even iPlayer became for all intents useless for HD streams, WOW updates (and gameplay) painful. Customer service said it was a BT problem, BT quite expectedly said it was TalkTalk

    So if you factor in the customers they've aquired from other ISPs, and they're still down on numbers then one can only conclude they're doing something very wrong and that matches my experience perfectly. I wonder if they've retained any customers from ISP purchases, or if they all jumped ship?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Talk-Talk are so bad ...

    that my 80 year old mother-in-law was complaining about the poor service levels, frequent dropouts, and an inability to access things like MS Messenger. Given the extortionate monthly fee they were trousering for her (out in the sticks) sub-1Mbps connection, we thought it only right to help her switch (to PlusNet), and now everything's fine and dandy, connection seems faster even, and it's less than half the price. The final clincher was the way Talk-Talk cut off her connection the same day as they issued the MAC code. Sharp practice indeed.

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