At the end of September 2018, I posted this topic onto this forum as I had lost my internet connection which I should be getting from TalkTalk's Fast Fibre service. In that post, I mentioned the various hurdles which I had to jump through in order to resolve that issue but in the end, I had to resort to making quite a lengthy phone call in order which did finally get my internet back up and running.
To this day, I am thankful to the contributor in the second post of that previous topic as it was upon following that advice, that the problem was eventually solved, although this still doesn't take anything away from the fact that TalkTalk's own service status page always refers you onto the chat room whenever problems arise and as I said in that previous topic, the people on that chat room never seem to have even a clue about what they are doing, and never listen properly to what the customers are looking for.
Now, not much more than a year later, I have to say that the problem has arisen yet again as my internet suddenly stopped working on Monday morning, and has not worked since then. I have tried using a number of different routers and none of them worked, yet I know that the router can't be the problem here as every single router which I tried, worked fine the last time that I used them and they couldn't all suddenly decide to simultaneously fail now.
Once again, I have no dial tone from my phone, even though everything is connected to the master socket, which is the only socket that I have in my house. Furthermore, I have also read that since I am on a FTTC service, there is no test socket within that. Now, I could go through the process yet again of making a phone call to the same number as before but since I have Asperger Syndrome and am therefore more prone to anxiety than anyone else, I find that very stressful and would rather not go down that road.
The fact of the matter is that once this matter was resolved the last time, there shouldn't be any need to me to have to go through this same process yet again. This means that even though this particular phone might get the problem resolved for now, I cannot now trust TalkTalk in their words, that this problem won't then recur some months later, or possibly even sooner than that.
This shows that TalkTalk's service is completely unreliable and it was shown by my last experience that whenever I try to resolve these issues, the customer service is absolutely appalling. Because of that, I mentioned that I would leave TalkTalk altogether if I absolutely had to and now, this latest issue has left me with no option other than to go down this path as I have now been pushed to the point, when I have had enough of all of that, and would now rather go elsewhere where the overall service will hopefully, be much better. Now, I know that my current contract doesn't end until the end of November, but I have been pushed so much to the edge by this issue that I am now, even prepared to pay any resulting early termination fees in order to get away from this appalling service right now, regardless of what those financial costs actually are. I said in my last correspondence that I would end up doing this if I was pushed in that direction, and I mean exactly what I said there.
In the meantime, I am showing that I don't even miss TalkTalk's service one single bit. For my internet, I have taken up a cheap 4G unlimited data service which gives me all of the speed which I need. Since that was quite a cheap deal, I was also able to take that up in addition to my mobile phone contract with O2 because the fact that I am often out and about with my mobile phone means that I didn't want that to be my only internet source, although it is there and a backup and unlike TalkTalk's shoddy service, it has always been very reliable with no significant downtime whatsoever.
As for my cheap 4G deal, I have that set up through my normal third party router which has a USB dongle attached to it. That USB dongle contains the SIM card for my cheap 4G deal, and acts as a modem which then provides my normal internet service throughout my whole house, in the same way in which I normally would with TalkTalk's fibre service. As for my landline which is part of my TalkTalk service, I have replaced that with Skype and have taken up a Skype number from them, which is actually a landline number, but which is employed without the use of an actual physical landline.
Another service which I was using was TalkTalk TV, but I have replaced that with a number of internet streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix (and TV on-demand/live TV services such as the BBC iPlayer) which added together, give me far more than what TalkTalk TV actually provides, especially since I watch a lot of YouTube videos wheres the TalkTalk TV service (which is actually served by means of a normal YouView box) doesn't even include a YouTube app within it.
Finally, there is my email address which is provided by TalkTalk but with that, I have urged people to use my GMail address instead when they are emailling me as this means that my email address then doesn't depend in any way, on who I get my broadband from. In addition to that, I also have an Outlook.com email address from Microsoft which also services the same purpose, and which is also a good backup to have.
When you add all of that together, I am getting everything and more than what TalkTalk has been providing, even when I don't actually have that service in working order. This shows that there is no actual need for any of TalkTalk's services any more so by ditching TalkTalk altogether and just using those above alternatives, I know that I will save money in the longer term, even if the short-term cost is a hefty early termination fee.
