This weekend had one theme overshadowing it, TalkTalk, the UK communications company. How, Something I would put down to the hard nose sales practices and technical incompetence of the company.

Firstly, I am aware of a person that signed up to TalkTalk hone and broadband, but before connecting her broadband want a £30 setup fee to be paid, now that wasn’t mentioned before signing up, hidden away somewhere in the small print. Not very fair tactics.

Secondly I received unwanted, unsolicited phone calls from this company trying to get me to change my telephone and broadband supply to them. Previously they had canvassers round the doors trying to persuade people to transfer their service, fortunately my wife who took answered indicated she would need to speak to me. That night a cal to “follow up” where they were bluntly told “NO” on several times throughout the brief conversation. Then this weekend they called yet again, this time I picked up. Having had not a great week at work I wasn’t in the mood for their messing around, so I didn’t. They caller was promptly told to give his spiel, then told no, questioned about the phone call and promptly advised that on no circumstances would I be changing my supplier, and that given the previous call, this call was now classed as unsolicited and unwanted. The caller was also advised that if there were any further calls this would be a matter for Ofcom.

Thirdly neighbours had been experiencing problems in connecting to the internet, truth is that they could connect, but not open any web pages. So its get connected to their network, check the wireless router and all seems to be well, a small tweak should improve the performance, stop the continual connect/disconnect they have been suffering. Now here’s the fault finding, start by checking the computer configuration, IP, assigned, gateway assigned, DNS, where the hell’s the DNS, its set for the router, nope, there’s the problem. Into the router again and the DNS is missing. When connecting to broadband networks the DNS and gateway will automatically be set by the ISP, but DNS is missing. Bit of internet searching to locate the DNS server IPs, and add them manually. Still no joy! Time to check out forums to see if anybody else is experiencing problems, OMG just hundreds. The DNS servers have been playing up for weeks. Just then my neighbour lets me know she had spoken to someone else on TalkTalk and the same problem. As usual the helpline tried to bluff their way out of it (bunch of charlatans).

So the weekend was dogged by one company. I would now actively advise anybody switching their telecoms over to this company. If still tempted got to the forums to see some of the issues (and this is only the company’s own forums).