TalkTalk broadband was featured on BBC Watchdog last night and we’re told they have received more complaints about TalkTalk than any other company ever featured on the program.

Charles Dunstone from TalkTalk says he’s disappointed that so many customers had complained to Watchdog. What does he expect them do?

He also said “Talk Talk is connecting hundreds of thousands of people to free broadband every week.” He added that half a million have already signed up and the offer has been so successful, the company has been overwhelmed” Now do the maths on that one, hundreds of thousands of people are connected each week yet only half a million have signed up for the offer since April. At the rate they are going it would only take 5 weeks to get to that figure. Doesn’t seem quite right to me.

He also said “that he has introduced a process for handling cancellations and outstanding accounts”. Doesn’t mean it works though. I’m still being billed for broadband that I haven’t had since the 5th September.

He showed a board on the wall that stated that calls were being answered within 15 seconds and there were no calls waiting. When I tried to call them yesterday (five times) after selecting the option I needed I was immediately cut off. Maybe that’s why there is no-one waiting.

My advice to Charles Dunstone is to try calling in with a problem himself and see how his staff deal with things. Only then will he truly understand the problems his company has.

Update: These instructions are for the original Sky Netgear router. For instructions for the new black Sky router see further down.

In a previous post I mentioned that someone at Skyuser.co.uk had figured out a way to find out your Sky Username and Password which is hidden within the router. This involved flashing the software of the router with a new version from Netgear. Whilst not difficult it might not be for the faint hearted.

Someone else has come up with a much easier way and quicker way of finding out this information. All you need to is log into your Sky router by typing into your browser 192.168.0.1 and then entering in the username admin and password sky.

The next step is to enter the following url into your browser

http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?todo=ping_test&c4_IPAddr=%26/bin/grep+ppoa_+/tmp/nvram+%3E+/www/netgear.cfg

Once you have done that enter in http://192.168.0.1/netgear.cfg and save the file to your pc. Open the file with a text editor such as Wordpad and you will see your Sky Username and Password listed.

With this you will be able to use a different router other than the Sky provided Netgear one.

If you want to use your Sky router on another providers broadband then you would have to flash the software as mentioned earlier to get access to the Username and password fields you would need to enter your existing details in.

If you want to see what else you can do with your Sky router then visit NETGEAR DG834GT Hacking

New Black Sky Router Netgear DG934G

To get your username and password from the new black Sky router go to https://www.cm9.net/skypass/ and enter your MAC code and serial number and it gives you the username and password. This has been confirmed to work by other readers.

Obviously some bright spark has managed to figure out the algorithym used by Sky that creates the hidden username and passwords.

I just received an email telling me I was going to be charged on the the 5th October for a broadband connection I don’t even have!

I left Plusnet on the 19th September so why do they still want to charge me? The email says “If you have any queries about this or any other matter, please don’t hesitate to contact our friendly Support Team on 0845 1400200 . We are available to take your calls 24 hours, 7 days a week.” That’s great but their friendly automated service centre doesn’t have an option for billing.

So I decided to use their online help centre. Filled in the form to remind them I don’t have broadband with them anymore and receive a notification telling me my question will be forwarded to the support team and I should get a reply in about 19 hours!

Is that good customer service? It seems it is pretty much the norm for UK companies now and we’re told it is the consumers fault because we expect to pay less for our services and basically they can’t afford to employ more staff and still make a profit.

When you log into your Sky broadband Netgear router you will see that there are no fields for username and password. These are hidden I guess so you can’t change them and use the router on another suppliers broadband.

It also means that without your username and password you can’t use your own router instead of the Sky Netgear router to connect to their service.

Well someone over at Skyuser.co.uk, a forum setup for Sky broadband routers independently of sky has figured out a way to get your username and password from your Sky Netgear router.

Your username is the mac code of your box @skydsl and your password is a hex code. For instructions on how to do this go here.

It has been confirmed on the forum that users have managed to connect to Sky with their own routers using the username and password obtained from the Sky Netgear router and users have also used their Sky router to connect to another provider.

It is worth remembering though that strictly speaking if you use a router other than the Sky provided Netgear router then you are breaking their Terms & Conditions.

I’m starting to get really wound up now with the Sky Broadband provided Netgear DG834GT. I don’t know whether the one I’ve got is faulty or this is the norm but the wireless range on it is rubbish.

I’m struggling to get a connection less than 5 meters away from the router. Anyone else having the same problem?