TalkTalk technical support goes from poor to abysmal.

TalkTalk technical support have never been very good and the only reason why they’re still my ISP is sheer laziness on my part. My latest round of problems suggests that I should get up off my arse and start shopping around for alternatives.

The problem started a month or so ago. The line would go through phases where the internet connection would drop frequently followed by a period of stable internet connection. Its almost as if TalkTalk engineered for it to be this way because, by the time you’ve got frustrated enough to call their technical support the line’s back up again.

This Sunday the line failed one time too many and I was sufficiently motivated to call their technical support. TalkTalk technical support can be relied on. That is, relied on to always keep you waiting on hold for a long time and always – ALWAYS – have the message that due to unusually high call volumes that the wait time may be longer than normal. I always ask myself the question: if call volumes are always high, doesn’t that then become the norm? And shouldn’t they gear their helpdesk operation for that volume of calls?

After waiting on hold for an age my call was answered by Priaya. She had to spell her name to me phonetically because the line was so bad and I asked if she could phone me back. She said she couldn’t do that and so our conversation was done at shouting volume. Not a recipe for calm reasoned communication and as I repeatedly asked her to repeat herself I found my blood pressure rising. I asked I could write my problem down in an email and have them resolve it that way. The answer to that was no but she was happy to give me TalkTalk’s postal address so that I could write my problems down in a letter and send to them! Ah, bless. They’re still living in the last century.

She then put me on hold and transferred me to technical support. (I thought I’d phoned tech support in the first place?!) The call was eventually answered by someone who sounded so faint and far away that I thought they must be on the other side of the world. Which, in fact, they were. TalkTalk’s call centre staff are in India. With a great deal of speaking slowly and SHOUTING down the phone it became clear that this person could not phone me back nor could they give me an email address. Continued shouting and listening intently I picked up the following facts: that the fault was due either to the microfilter (the microfilter that TalkTalk supplied me with a few months ago when I last had problems with the internet) or my extension cabling (of which I have none: the TalkTalk router is connected directly to the master socket).

This is, of course, garbage. TalkTalk ALWAYS says that something is wrong with the microfilter or the extension wiring. I’ve been a TalkTalk customer long enough to have cottoned on to this. Wouldn’t it be better to start by looking at the history on the customer’s account and see that the microfilter was replaced only recently (as mine has). And, if they could get their act together, they could make a note that my router plugs directly into my master socket without the need for extension cabling so they wouldn’t keep trying that old excuse. How about if they did line tests and check the state of the line before making the customer jump through hoops?

I’m hopping mad. And I’m shopping around for another ISP.

Woods, Walls and Water

It was freezing today! Literally. The last few winters in the UK have been pretty mild and all this cold weather stuff comes as a shock. But rather than stay in the house on a lazy December Sunday we decided to tackle a 7 mile walk from our guidebook "Lower Wye Rambles". This isn't the best of guide books and the author obviously has problems with navigation. The directions can verge on undecipherable at times but there is one GREAT walk in the book and it starts at SO524029.



The walk includes a waterfall (pictured) but also includes some great views and some lovely forest walking. But the thing that I like about this walk are the little lanes and footpaths around Lllandogo. It is reminiscent of The Shire in Lord of the Rings. I'd love to do it on a foggy evening but since we get lost when doing the walk in good conditions that might not be the best of ideas.

Anyway, what with the cold weather and a minor detour due to guide book problems we decided to truncate the walk and got back to the car 3 hours after the start. It was 10 miles back to our house in Chepstow and we were soon drinking tea and eating tart in front of the fire with the cat.

First Direct are resting on their laurels

I joined First Direct back in 1990 and was one of their first customers. I’ve always been keen on firms that embrace new technology and back then telephone banking was pretty cool! I joined and found that their customer service was excellent and recommended it to all my friends. I just couldn’t understand why people would still want to visit the bank for any reason apart from getting out cash.

Nowadays, seventeen years later on, most people use telephone banking and the new thing these days is internet banking. Despite First Direct being tech savvy enough to have been the first to provide telephone banking they are resting on their laurels in the technology department. This is reflected in their internet banking service.

Its always been a bit cumbersome to use but a recent problem with a bill payment has made me realize how “cumbersome” translate to money problems. We made a bill payment to Welsh Water but, unbeknownst to us, we accidentally picked the next (beneficiary) company on the drop down list, Yorkshire Water. We didn’t pick up on this because the next screen asked us for the amount to pay and the next screen to that asked us to confirm the whole transaction. Being a money minded man, my eyes were focused on the amount and I didn’t realize that the beneficiary was wrong. The first we knew of it was when we received a very puzzling letter from Yorkshire water.

We approached First Direct and asked if they could refund us the money (and chase Yorkshire Water for the money themselves) but they couldn’t do this because the error was our own. They have volunteered to chase Yorkshire Water for us and get a cheque sent back to us. They are also chipping six quid into our account to make up for the fact that we’ve lost our early bird payment discount with Welsh Water.

Whilst trying to sort out the above problem I used a mixture of telephone and messaging to communicate with the bank. It is not possible to send emails to First Direct. They say that this is insecure and insist that you use the messaging service on their internet banking platform. There are two problems with this messaging system. One is that it does not allow you to save messages (apart from cutting and pasting the message body into MS Word) and the other is that there is no audit trail. I sent a message to First Direct that did not get acknowledged and when I phoned them they said that they hadn’t received the message. Luckily I had saved the body of the message on my PC. But there was no way of me proving that I had sent them the message.

The whole internet banking platform is starting to look a bit Mickey Mouse compared to their competitors and needs a complete overhaul. I hope they do this. I still feel pretty loyal to First Direct despite this recent problem (yes, it was my fault after all) and I’ve just spent some time talking to them and giving them my feedback. They need to overhaul their bill payment systme so that the beneficiary is confirmed separately to the payment amount. Also that they need to build a permanent record of messages sent into their messaging system. They said that they would pass my comments on to the eCommerce team but I shouldn’t expect to hear anything back. This seems like a bit of a black hole to me. How can First Direct expect to get valuable feedback from their customers if they don’t acknowledge it?

Plodding my way to the top

My interest in backgammon started about 5 years ago. We were on holiday and at a pub and they happened to have a backgammon set. I’d played a few times before and knew the rules but for some reason this time I really got interested. When I got back home I found a local backgammon club (Reading, Berks.), someone lent me a copy of JellyFish and I really got hooked.

Today I play in the Bristol backgammon league and I’ve finally managed to get to division 1 – the highest league in the club. I only scraped into the top league by the skin of my teeth and am expecting to lose many matches. To give you an idea of the standard of play, one of the players in this league, John Slattery, was European Champion a few years back. Gulp. Well, so far so good. I’ve played 5 matches and I’ve won 3. I’ve even been complimented on my cube handling by one of the best players in the league.

It’s taken me 5 years to get there but it just goes to show – if you keep on plodding along, eventually you’ll end up where you’re going. I just need to remember to keep on plodding along with some other things in my life...

Monday, August 14, 2006 - Back Again

I’ve now been out of work for 5 months and the market has really slowed down for summer holidays. I’ve only got a couple of irons in the fire and chasing them up is a painful collection of left messages and unreturned calls. I need to do something different. But what?

I have decided that part of the do-different is to be a creator. Not a divine creator, you understand, just basic mundane run-of-the-mill creation. That’s one of the things that I miss about being in work. Even an email or spreadsheet is an act of creation. It says that I count, I can do something that no one else can/will.

This blog is part of that creation process and while its resurrection reflects badly on the state of the job market it reflects well on my future sanity.

Signing On:

Once every two weeks we depress ourselves still further by going to sign on. This morning was such a morning. But at least the sun was shining as we walked out of the job centre.

Off to the states tomorrow

Very few blog entries recently and that's because of two things. One, I've been feeling very under the weather recently. Thought I might be a bit down after the redundancy thing but I don't really think its that. I think it's been some sort of bug. Two, lack of blog entries has been due to the fact that we have been getting ready for our last minute trip to the states.

I didn't tell you about that, did I? Well, we decided to book the flight last Friday so it's been a real last minute thing. We are flying into LAX tomorrow and should be in our hire car by about 3PM. We'll trog down to the beach (in an attempt to stay awake) and then have an early night. Thursday morning we'll be awake before dawn (because of jet lag) and on the road to Las Vegas. We hope to arrive there by lunchtime and we'll probably get some lunch at the Luxor before checking into our hotel, the Aladdin.

I've been to LV once before and really loved it. There's internet access at the hotel apparently so hope to post some more when we're over there.

I wish I could post pictures on our blog.

A lack of printer

There are two of us at home right now and we have two PCs – but no printer. This is a real problem. You just don’t realise how lucky you are in an office when you’ll think nothing of sending a 30 page document to print, read through it, make a few amendments and print it off again. Doesn’t sound very environmentally friendly but it is a damn sight easier on the eyesight. Job hunting is hard enought without having to do everything on-screen.

Yesterday we ordered a new PC (including printer) from Dell. Trouble is, it will take up to 10 working days to be delivered. I am not sure if my eyes can last that long.