If You Have Telewest/ntl - How To Save Money

[maneesh]

I have telewest phone and broadband at home. Talktalk's offer of free broadband is amazing.

So I call up telewest, tell them I want to cancel and go to talktalk. The guy tried to say how crap talktalk was.

After 10 seconds, he gave me £12 off my monthly bill.

How's that for 2 minutes work???

[Kazi]

Talk talk is a load of bull. You still have to pay line rental anyway.

[maneesh]

Yeah, irrelevant. The point I was trying to make was how simple it is to get a cheaper bill WITHOUT switching suppliers. Telewest are prepared to deal if someone calls up to cancel. Most customers are too lazy to pick up the phone and threaten to leave!

[Parthiban]

Talk talk is a load of bull. You still have to pay line rental anyway.

Do you mean its a bad service? Or the price? Cos I think the price is awesome! £21/month for unlimited phone calls (including certain international calls) plus 8meg broadband, can't really get better than that.

Although I'm quite interested by that, as you can't go straight from telewest to talktalk, you need to go back to BT first (which means 12 months with them), so I'm gonna have to try this B)

How much was your monthly line rental previously?

[Martin UK]

go get yourself down to tescos and buy an ip phone then ip phone to ip phone calls are totally free

[maneesh]

Talk talk is a load of bull. You still have to pay line rental anyway.

Do you mean its a bad service? Or the price? Cos I think the price is awesome! £21/month for unlimited phone calls (including certain international calls) plus 8meg broadband, can't really get better than that.

Although I'm quite interested by that, as you can't go straight from telewest to talktalk, you need to go back to BT first (which means 12 months with them), so I'm gonna have to try this B)

How much was your monthly line rental previously?

I'm sure their service is of equivalent service. Remember it's an 18 month contract with Talktalk, and there is no guarantee that broadband will remain "free". It's quite possibly a stunt to attract large numbers of customers. If the put the price up from free to a competitive level, then they know that human nature will result in few customers actually making the effort to switch back to BT/Telewest etc.

go get yourself down to tescos and buy an ip phone then ip phone to ip phone calls are totally free

I would do that immediately but, none of my mates are savvy enough to even know about voip. Many of them don't even know how to switch Bluetooth on.

Anyway, who needs free call offers. You can join www.1899.com and get national calls anytime for 0p/minute. All you pay is a connection charge of 3pence. Calling mobiles from home is cheaper too. I just pay line rental and use 1899 for any calls.

[Roonaldo]

Talk talk is a load of bull. You still have to pay line rental anyway.

Do you mean its a bad service? Or the price? Cos I think the price is awesome! £21/month for unlimited phone calls (including certain international calls) plus 8meg broadband, can't really get better than that.

Although I'm quite interested by that, as you can't go straight from telewest to talktalk, you need to go back to BT first (which means 12 months with them), so I'm gonna have to try this B)

How much was your monthly line rental previously?

I'm sure their service is of equivalent service. Remember it's an 18 month contract with Talktalk, and there is no guarantee that broadband will remain "free". It's quite possibly a stunt to attract large numbers of customers. If the put the price up from free to a competitive level, then they know that human nature will result in few customers actually making the effort to switch back to BT/Telewest etc.

go get yourself down to tescos and buy an ip phone then ip phone to ip phone calls are totally free

I would do that immediately but, none of my mates are savvy enough to even know about voip. Many of them don't even know how to switch Bluetooth on.

Anyway, who needs free call offers. You can join www.1899.com and get national calls anytime for 0p/minute. All you pay is a connection charge of 3pence. Calling mobiles from home is cheaper too. I just pay line rental and use 1899 for any calls.

The free broadband from TalkTalk is free forever :winky:

And exactly, how many other people have got IP phones at the moment.....

[Davesdealing]

I have telewest phone and broadband at home. Talktalk's offer of free broadband is amazing.

So I call up telewest, tell them I want to cancel and go to talktalk. The guy tried to say how crap talktalk was.

After 10 seconds, he gave me £12 off my monthly bill.

How's that for 2 minutes work???

I know what you mean, I am with NTL, I did have problems, the call waiting was never activated (18 months) the TV top set would freeze and the broadband locked up and wouldnt allow connection. On talking to customer services there was a lot of yes sir, no sir, but no real solution, so I said put me through to disconnections! A few threatening sentences and now I CAN'T leave them for at least a year or two more! I was given 3 x £100 credits, 1 years credit on the broadband (£24.99 per month and ended up with a credit of just about £600! half price line rental for 3 months and a few other sweeteners... that started in 2004, I think its about time to ring them again.... 16 meg sounds interesting from Bulldog! yes and they paid for my phone call!

[davepruce]

A bit OT but make sure that your BT line can support whatever speed is making you drool, otherwise you are wasting your hard earned.....

I am nearly 5k's from the exchange and cannot get better than 112k/s on my 2meg Demon account, and I cant get NTL or TeleWest or... or... anything other than BT

[maneesh]

A bit OT but make sure that your BT line can support whatever speed is making you drool, otherwise you are wasting your hard earned.....

I am nearly 5k's from the exchange and cannot get better than 112k/s on my 2meg Demon account, and I cant get NTL or TeleWest or... or... anything other than BT

Yeah that is sooo true Dave..all these folks with 8MB/10MB lines and they have never even tested their download/upload speeds!

The free broadband from TalkTalk is free forever :winky:

And exactly, how many other people have got IP phones at the moment.....

No such thing in life as a free lunch...

[Davesdealing]

A bit OT but make sure that your BT line can support whatever speed is making you drool, otherwise you are wasting your hard earned.....

I am nearly 5k's from the exchange and cannot get better than 112k/s on my 2meg Demon account, and I cant get NTL or TeleWest or... or... anything other than BT

Im on 2 meg at mo, and regularily check my speed on my laptop wi fi from the main computer in my study, this is the result today.

1.7 megabits per second

Communications 1.7 megabits per second

Storage 209.5 kilobytes per second

1MB file download 4.9 seconds

Subjective rating Great

http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/

They say its great...Me...I have NO CLUE, only do it because a mate showed me!

[Fargo]

go get yourself down to tescos and buy an ip phone then ip phone to ip phone calls are totally free

uhuuuu,, then add the cost of your ISP to have more than 2mb broadband and your already more that 21 quid a month...

[eXOBeX]

A bit OT but make sure that your BT line can support whatever speed is making you drool, otherwise you are wasting your hard earned.....

I am nearly 5k's from the exchange and cannot get better than 112k/s on my 2meg Demon account, and I cant get NTL or TeleWest or... or... anything other than BT

Might be worth trying a different ADSL router. Some of the Draytek Vigor units are apparently excellent on long lines.

[Pip]

Nothing wrong with Talktalk broadband. I use them with no problems. Their current offer seems a little optimistic though, logistically speaking.

[lelandv]

There are a number of complaints lodged with the ASA with reference to Carphone Warehouse/TalkTalks "free" broadband "forever" offer.

The primary points of the complaints:

1. "Free" should be "inclusive" because it is dependent upon the user also purchasing the talktalk international calling plan. No calling plan, no "free" broadband. ASA has already previously upheld numerous similar complaints where something was purported to be "free" but was actually conditional to the purchace of another service or product thus making it actually "inclusive", not "free".

2. "forever" is only "forever" as long as the user is subscribed to the talktalk international calling plan as well. There is no guarantee that this calling plan will remain at £9.99 / month, nor is there any guarantee that what are currently "inclusive" calls will continue to be inclusive in the future. Note that it is only included with the talktalk international plan, not either of the other two less expensive calling plans that they offer. It is also curious to note that those customers who are CURRENTLY talktalk international calling plan users will actually pay £1 / month MORE once this service goes live, even if they don't take advantage of the broadband offer. (the calling plan price of £9.99 under the new service is £1 more than the current international calling plan cost).

3. They purport to be able to service 70% of the UK population -- this is not strictly speaking true, at least not at present. They only have 120 exchanges equipped at the moment, and this is due to be about 200 by the time BT Wholesale get their butts in gear and provide the systems to support bulk transfers (deadline 1 july for this.. wait and see). CPWH state that their aim is to have 1000 exchanges equipped by 2008 which would cover 70% of the UK (roughly), but the rollout for this is spread pretty much evenly across the 2 remaining years. It is reasonable to conclude that the majority of the population will not be able to benefit from this service for at least the next 12 to 18 months.

4. Because the ultimate target is only 1000 exchanges, there is no way that they will be able to "service" more than roughly 70% of the country. As such, this service is considered to be "selective", but nothing in CPWH's advertising and marketing does it say that the service will never be available to everyone. Their marketing philosophy attempts to allude to the contrary.

5. They have used the marketing hype of the "free broadband forever" campaign and have started taking advanced orders now for a service which will not even be available until July at the earliest (for the limited 200 or so exchanges estimated to be equipped by that date). This provides "qualified leads" as well as a few million £ in quick revenues from the one-off connection charges to further fund the rollout of the rest of the exchanges, as well as other services in the pipeline.

6. For those who are in an local-loop unbundled exchange area planned for future rollout, but will not be available at the go-live date of 4 July, they will be required to pay an additional £10 / month for a normal wholesale IP-Stream based service, the same as those who are in a non-LLU catchment area. Of course the one-off connection fee, talktalk international calling plan, and line-rental still apply (line rental still applies because the voice elements of the phone line are taken over by talktalk under a wholesale line rental to provide the "preferential" call tariffs -- in essence the voice element is logically "unbundled" thorugh carrier preselect, but the physical line is still through BT until such time as the service is properly unbundled later.).. so for those users the monthly cost will be £30.99 instead of £20.99. Once their exchange is migrated, they will be moved over to the LLU service at that time and the additional £10 / month will cease, but there's still no guarantee that the user will be able to attain 8 Mbps anyway.

7. For ANY provider, 8 Mbps is relatively slow anyway these days. ADSL2+ supports speeds of up to 40 Mbps downstream and 8 Mbps upstream under ideal conditions, but at any rate in the region of 15Mbps down and 4Mbps up at longer distances than what is currently available on DSLAM equipment found in BT exchanges (and the alternative providers' equipment co-located at BT exchanges for LLU operations).

If you look at the Gartner and other statistics, CPWH/TalkTalk make up about 0.3% of the UK DSL-based broadband market share... they have a LONG way to go to catch up to the top 5 (in order: BT, AOL, Wanadoo/Freeserve, Tiscali, and PIPEX). I see this marketing exercise as an attempt to snatch significant market share from the gullible millions of people who don't really know the industry -- sadly it will work to a certain extent. Will be curious to see the outcome of the ASA complaints though.

CAVEAT EMPTOR

Leland

[lelandv]

A bit OT but make sure that your BT line can support whatever speed is making you drool, otherwise you are wasting your hard earned.....

I am nearly 5k's from the exchange and cannot get better than 112k/s on my 2meg Demon account, and I cant get NTL or TeleWest or... or... anything other than BT

I'm 6.2 km from my local exchange (being in a village) but have 2Mbps with no problems and the signal to noise ratio and other line quality checks are favourable to attaining in the region of 15 Mbps if the DSLAM were ADSL2+ equipped.. of course my ISP uses BT's wholesale IPStream product to provide broadband services so the chances of getting ADSL2+ in the foreseeable future are pretty much nil unless BT decide to install fibre here... the technology is pretty much the same though.

L.

[davepruce]

A bit OT but make sure that your BT line can support whatever speed is making you drool, otherwise you are wasting your hard earned.....

I am nearly 5k's from the exchange and cannot get better than 112k/s on my 2meg Demon account, and I cant get NTL or TeleWest or... or... anything other than BT

I'm 6.2 km from my local exchange (being in a village) but have 2Mbps with no problems and the signal to noise ratio and other line quality checks are favourable to attaining in the region of 15 Mbps if the DSLAM were ADSL2+ equipped.. of course my ISP uses BT's wholesale IPStream product to provide broadband services so the chances of getting ADSL2+ in the foreseeable future are pretty much nil unless BT decide to install fibre here... the technology is pretty much the same though.

L.

Leland, I'm sure that you know what that means but you lost me after ther word problems!!!

Any thoughts on who I should talk to or how to resolve my problem? Demon dont want to know 'We supply 2 meg, its down to BT to provide a line suitable.....' etc etc

Cheers

Dave

[lelandv]

Leland, I'm sure that you know what that means but you lost me after ther word problems!!!

Any thoughts on who I should talk to or how to resolve my problem? Demon dont want to know 'We supply 2 meg, its down to BT to provide a line suitable.....' etc etc

Cheers

Dave

The problem you have, Dave, is that you're at the mercy of BT's installed equipment and BT lines. Demon are using a wholesale IPStream service to provide your broadband connection, which simply means they're reselling BT service. There are numerous other factors involved with determining possible speed of an ADSL line, and many things which can affect line quality. Until exchanges start becoming equipped with ADSL2+ DSLAMs we're not going to see much of an improvement.

L.

[davepruce]

OK Thanks for the comments anyway Leland

Dave

[Kazi]

A little but in this world today, it irritates me that everyone expects things for peanuts or even free. We pay more in the long run. The telecomms industry is the worst for it and only have themselves to blame for this way of thinking.

As a retailer though, most peoples attitudes really peave me off.

[lelandv]

You're not wrong there Kazi...

The number of times that we've had multi-million pound customers threaten to cancel their service and go elsewhere just because they're not willing to pay for 10 days required consultancy for a solution because it wasn't written into the contract beforehand (never mind the fact that the requirements that need consultancy were not provided by the customer in the first place... so it's technically classed as an additional requirement).

Oh well.. such is life.

L.

[Parthiban]

The number of times that we've had multi-million pound customers threaten to cancel their service and go elsewhere just because they're not willing to pay for 10 days required consultancy for a solution because it wasn't written into the contract beforehand (never mind the fact that the requirements that need consultancy were not provided by the customer in the first place... so it's technically classed as an additional requirement).

I think the flipside of that would be whether it is worth losing that customer over something that might be considered quite small in the larger picture......

While I know it must be tough in the retail sector, is there anything wrong with expecting a bit more? As Lexus owners, we've all become accustomed to a higher level of service, and we're not being charged more than with other brands for that privilege. Therefore, if I decided to buy a BMW/Merc/Audi/etc. would it be wrong for me to expect that same level of service? :o

Regardless of what anyone says, the deal from TalkTalk is a cracking one, and cannot really be matched by anything else pricewise. Yes you may have to sign up to their international calling plan, but it is still cheaper by such a long way. If they can offer this at this price, and the service is not compromised, then there is no reason why anyone else can't offer it too