When TalkTalk first started offering their “Free Broadband Offer” we thought this might be a good idea. I was already paying £14.99 to TalkTalk for my broadband connection and we already used TalkTalk for our calls so the savings could be considerable over the course of time.

Now for the small print: You need to transfer your line rental from BT to TalkTalk and take up their Talk 3 package. You are also committed to an 18 month contract. Again no big deal if things are all okay but looking into their landline services I found that they didn’t offer the call sign service where you can get another number with a different ringtone. We use this for our fax machine at home so in order for us to keep a separate number for our fax machine we would need another line.

We decided against transferring to the Free Broadband Offer and boy am I glad I did.

Shortly afterwards I started experiencing problems with my broadband connection. The speed was running at a crawls pace, I couldn’t download my emails on certain accounts and I couldn’t even get access to quite a few websites. Calling TalkTalk support was a complete waste of both time and money. For Broadband support you have to call a premium rate number and I would be held in a queue for sometimes up to an hour only for them to tell me there was nothing wrong and because I was using a router they couldn’t support me.

Now I had been using the service for 11 months with no problems and suggested that the problem was at their end which they refused to accept so it left me with no alternative but to ask to leave.

I have been trying to leave since the 11th May 2006 and was told I would have to wait up to 28 days for the all important MAC code. This eventually arrived by email on 7th June 2006 but when I tired to use it I was told it was invalid. Despite emailing requesting another one I got no replies. Eventually I called them again on 25th July 2006 insisting that they send me a MAC code straight away. I’m still waiting!

Funnily enough my broadband connection issues resolved themselves after about a week. I hadn’t changed anything at all at my end so I can only presume the problem was at their end as I had suggested before. I still want to leave as I can get a better deal and faster connection elsewhere and I have ZERO confidence in their support.

I have found TalkTalk’s customer service to be some of the worst I have ever experienced. I have been hung up before when the Indian lady in the call centre couldn’t understand my request and promised action on several occasions to get no further.

Anyone thinking about taking up their offer should think wisely as you will be tied in for 18 months. That’s okay if things work well for you but if you run into any problems my experience of their customer service has been less than favourable and you could feel like your hitting your head against a brick wall.

I mentioned before an offer that Orange was doing where you could get unlimited internet browsing for ?1 a day and now it seems hot on their tails T-Mobile has launched a similar offer giving you unlimited internet browsing for £1 a day.

This offer from T-Mobile only applies if you are using a Pay As You Go phone and doesn’t extend to their contract phones where they encourage you to take out their Web ‘n’ Walk plan as an add on to your existing contract.

I guess this is one instance where it pays to be on PAYG which is strange considering how all the mobile companies try really hard to sign us up on contracts.

I am going to try it out with my Sony UX180P although strictly speaking you aren’t supposed to do it.

Last Friday I had my Harley serviced in Oxford. I booked it in for first thing in the morning and was going to wait while they did it which they estimated at 2 to 3 hours.

So I thought I would put my new Sony UX180P to the test and took it along so I could catch up on some forum and blog reading while I was waiting. The only thing that put me off was the cost. Data costs via a GPRS network tend to be expensive unless you have a special plan which I don’t and could cost anything between £3.00 to £5.00 per megabyte depending on the network.

Luckily I stumbled across an offer which Orange was doing where on pay as you go you can get unlimited internet access for £1.00 for a whole day. Now the unlimited access is if you are using their GPRS or CSD but it turns out they are also doing a special offer for 3G data access for £1.00 a day as well albeit limited to 25 megabytes which would have been ample for me. Strictly speaking on the 3G data access you aren’t supposed to use it for modem access for computers.

Anyway, when I went to order my Orange World Daily Access for a £1 it didn’t actually give an option for GPRS or 3G. When I connected my PC through the built in 3G modem it connected to the 3G network by default rather than the GPRS network so I was happily surfing away at thoroughly useable speeds. The battery in the Sony UX180P lasted just long enough for them to carry out the service which was good as at least it drew my attention away from all the goodies and new bikes that they had there and temptation couldn’t prevail.