Genealogy Chat

Just think about it guys - see below:

Seeing as everyone rushed to help this poor old dear during her panic this morning, just a tip guys, I have changed over to talk talk broadband. I was paying £33 a month to wanadoo for the highest download for sons gaming stuff plus £11 to BT for line rental plus £9 to talk talk for my calls - all national 24/7 to anyone. (Total of £53 a month). I have now taken the International option 3 which gives free calls to anyone in I think 37 countries including US and Aus plus all my national calls and my broadband and my line rental for a total of £31 a month. (This will reduce by a tenner as soon as my exchange is sorted). They only have one download option which is more than the extra download I was paying for with wanadoo. My eldest son has actually got the same deal for £21 as he lives in a city where talk talk have already converted his local exchange (70% of UK) and so he gets his broadband for absolutely nothing. I have to pay a tenner a month til my country exchange is converted which they reckon will be about 6 months then I get the broadband free too. I jumped on the bandwagon the first day they announced the offer and it took 3 weeks for it all to change over - no break in any of my services, smoothly. It is promising to change the current 2.2 speed up to 8 free of charge as/when my local exchange can do it. Son has only signed up yesterday, says his phone calls and line changeover is promised for 3 weeks but his broadband wont changeover for 8 weeks. He will just carry on using his wanadoo til he gets the free talk talk. The phone deal is very handy for him as he often calls europe and US.

Hi Heather, Have you ever thought of becoming a saleswoman? :) I have seen the adverts for the Talk Talk package for combined phone, internet packages, but I never make any calls outside the UK, i'm not really too bothered about broadband to be honest, but wondered if it was worth switching anyway. All the best John

I've got in on the £21 pound deal. I got the phone switched over last week, BB should be another week. Everyone at work is waiting for me to let them know if the BB is any good then they are going for it too. Someone at work signed up last week and was told August would be when they could switch as Talk Talk had been inundated with applications.

I tried to swap over, but it isn't available in my area boo hoo! Lynda

John, its amazing isnt it I do seem to be good at flogging FTM, ancestry subs and now talk talk. I could never be a salesperson if I didnt believe in the product, but when I do, I m really enthusiastic! Perhaps I should contact ancestry see if they could give me a part time job! Well re talk talk so far I am more than pleased - I was very concerned that they would be overloaded because of the number of people who would jump on the bandwagon - as I said I got on the first day as I was already looking around. If you havent got broadband John, you will be amazed how fast it is - it really makes such a difference to you. You would get all national calls free to anyone - so that may be a bonus for you. However wanadoo have upset me in last couple of months - 1. by making a mistake and not deducting my monthly direct debit and THEN phoning me three times in an evening from their debtors agency!! They had I found done this to hundreds of people. I did complain strongly and they refunded a months money as compensation but to be honest Id rather nothave snotty little clerks disturbing my evening saying I was in debt and then not believing me after I rang customer service sorted it and told them it was wanadoos mistake. They virtually calle dme a liar. Then the day before I swopped to talk talk I spent 6 hours on premium lines trying to find out why wanadoo wasnt recognising my password and having been told varying reasons - i.e. I was again a debtor !!! , that I was typing it wrong (after 3 years?) that my system must have been hacked into, that my puter was duff, that it was a corruption of my windows - reload the lot - (another hour of my life wasted) - that someone had changed my name and password (I must have spent £30 that day on their technical line) one on the ball chap there said, Oh, its just our servers are overloaded, add these letters to your user name and you will be directed to one that is able to cope. So that well and truly made up my mind and I went online with talk talk next day. As I say up to now its brilliant, much faster than wanadoo and they promise an upgrade to 8 mg when available. I am just praying they have the servers they will need to cope with it all. BTW, I was concerned about changing my line from BT to talk talk but when I spoke to them they explained that though we will be paying talk talk for the line rental, talk talk are actually paying BT and BT will be our point of contact if there is a problem with the line. You can also choose to keep your 1571 free voice mail. You do need to have been with your old server for the contract period you signed up for (1 year with wanadoo) and you do commit to 18 months contract with talk talk. There is also a one off connection charge of £29 but if you are saving, like me £264 a year, then that is peanuts. The modem and equipment is sent out to you free and all I did was unplug my old modem (I dont doubt wanadoo will ask for all their bits back) and plug in the new talk talk one. I didnt fiddle with the phone line or the filters as wanadoo can have the talk talk ones if they are going to be petty.

I had to ring up Virgin (the ISP I'm using at the moment) to get a MAC code, something Talk Talk need for the transfer to happen. The Virgin bloke actually said 'can I ask who you're moving to? No, don't bother, I guess it's Talk Talk' He reckons they are losing hundreds of customers per day to them, so I reckon some of the other ISPs will come up with a similar (or even better?) deal shortly.

just a little tip for anyone with wanadoo, dont pay the premium rate for their techincal help. I have done before, but last time I rang up and told them I wanted to cancel my services because I was having problems and wasnt prepared to pay the 50p per min charge for customer service, so they gave me a cheaper number to ring and a password to use when I got through to operator. Linda

Im expecting other service providers to bring out new offers too but I am happy at the mo with talk talk - I mean you cant get cheaper broadband than nothing, can you! Ive had about 6 mails from wanadoo in the last two days offering all these new incentives to stay with them but nothing is a good offer and as I said that last miserable day of talking to gentlemen who I couldnt understand just to sort out what was basically wanadoos problem really miffed me. I understand wanadoo is changing over to Orange shortly so I guess they will try to tie in with a mobile or land line deal aswell. But when my exchange is converted and I get the broadband free I just worked out I will be saving £384 a year!

Hi What I do like about talktalk is that if I check their website it says they can do my broadband connection in August. Unlike other companies, it appears that they are being honest about when they can connect you.All to often in the past other companies say they can connect you today while you then wait weeks for the connection to take place. Once the rush is over and there's a shorter delay in being BB connected I'll be joining them. Current monthly cost Virgin £25 broadband NTL £15 cover all call charges BT £11 Total £51 http://www(.)talktalk(.)co(.)uk Cheers Paul

Paul, it may be worth you signing up now as you would get preference over the others and you would still be saving money on your BT and NTL services until you get the broadband - do you get it free or the tenner? Youd get ALL national and those international ones for £21. What a fantastic bonus for people who have friends/relatives abroad, isnt it. So, you can save a fiver on your line/calls (plus the bonus of international calls thrown in). Seriously guys, if you have the same sort of brain as me, think what all that dosh could buy you (without any guilt) in the way of certs and other genealogical stuff.

I tell you what else I like about talk talk Paul. We have a pain in the butt youngest son still living with us. On a couple of occasions he had run up huge bills for hundreds just ringing his friends or services etc on our phone. We wouldnt be aware of this until BT sent their bill for a few hundred quid and then all hell would break loose. A short while after we took the talk talk phone all calls option (about a year back) I had a phone call from them concerned about unsually high number of calls of more than 70 minutes (which is the free limit without hanging up) - it was son ringing friends and mobiles. They gave me an immediate block on calls to mobiles (and us a password to be able to use them and premium rates) and that was the end of that little game. It didnt save us the £50 he had already run up but certainly we didnt get the hundreds of pound calls we used to have now and then with him. I thought that was a very sensible and considerate thing for them to have done.

One of my nephews ran up a huge bill. BT demanded payment was made within 3 months and brother-in-law ended up paying more to BT each month than he was paying for his mortgage! Glad mine haven't reached that age yet but it won't be long.

Hi I checked again this afternoon and although I am already receiving 8Mb broadband with Virgin, they say that it will be another £10 because of the 'local exchange'. Even so it's still a good saving. The only reason I have not signed up yet is because I'd like to arrange a clear break with Virgin/NTL/BT otherwise I'm worried that l may end up with all the monthly charges plus talktalk charges inclusive of the initial talktalk connection charge all at once. Cheers Paul

It doesnt seem to be a problem Paul. They arranged the changeover with the BT line and they would do the same with NTL Im sure. I just got a mail saying the date it would change and then I got an automated message phone call saying that my line had changed on the day. Of course I got post from BT saying that another provider had said I wanted to change and asking me to stay but just ignored it.

Getting Broadband was best thing I did; dial up was so SLOW I was waiting for ages for every page to load, plus no-one could get thru to me on the phone. I had to make sure Id plugged the phone line back in, after using pc otherwise my mum would phone in hysterics thinking I was dead, cos she couldnt get thru...

My phone bill comes to around £10 per year. I get the general impression that this is somewhat below average.

Blimey Michael, are you still using two cans and a bit of string??

Must admit, I'd looked at this offer to, but not sure if I really would save anything?? I currently pay £17.99 a month to Tesco for BB and then the standard line rental to BT (not sure how much, but last quarters bill was £40.49 including rental and calls). Do you think it would be worth changing over, or should I wait and see what happens with the other companies now? Bev X ps. finally changed my Gas and Electric last week to one provider so hoping to save a packet there too (at least thats the promise they made:-) so now I'm on a roll!!!!

Bev Your two bills mean you're paying £31 pound per month for BB and phone, so you could save £120 per year. Thats 17 certificates! My phone bill wasn't much more than yours for the quarter and my Virgin BB was only £12.49 (special deal for 1 year as I was with them for dial up, usually £14.99 I think)