I’ve been trying to leave TalkTalk broadband since the 11th May 2006. The first MAC code I was given I was told was invalid and after chasing them again and again and again I still don’t have a new MAC code. They tell me it takes them 28 days to generate a code (Why so long?) but the last recorded request I made for this is 25th July 2006. It’s now the 29th August 2006 and I still don’t have it.

So I thought today I would ring them again and find out what is happening. I called them 5 times this morning and each time I got cut off before I could get an answer. Bearing in mind this is a telecommunications company, you’d think their systems would be good enough for this not to happen. Getting cut off once maybe, but 5 times in a row?

I’m still no further forward!

One of my pet hates is filling up my car with petrol. I usually wait until the car is running on fumes before I will go into a Petrol Station which can’t be good for the car.

It is the total disregard for my safety by other customers that gets me. If they want to blow themselves up then fine but spare a thought for the other people around. I quite often see people smoking in the forecourts (Hello, are you just dumb?) or filling up their cars whilst having a conversation on a mobile phone.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could order your petrol online and have it delivered to you? If you can order your groceries online and pay only a £5 delivery charge then I don’t see why they can’t do that for petrol.

I’d be happy to pay the extra £5 for someone in a mini tanker to turn up at either your home or workplace and fill the car up for you.

In times gone by if you received bad customer service or shoddy goods apart from venting your anger to your friends, family and colleagues there was little else you could really do to make a point.

That of course was before the internet and the proliferation of personal blogs available to the world. Now you can vent your frustrations to anyone in the world who is prepared to listen.

Should big companies worry? Of course they should. For all the millions of pounds a year they spend advertising Bloggers can spread the word about their inefficiencies for next to nothing and sway customers away from the decision to take up their services.

In the grand scheme of things and big budgets it’s unlikely that many small time Bloggers will find their pages reaching their audience high up in the serps. That was of course until Blog Search arrived.

Google has an excellent blog search which I’ve never really paid too much attention to before. It’s not advertised on their main page and in line with a lot of their services it’s still in Beta. The good thing about Google Blog Search is that it is bang up to date. Pages are indexed within minutes rather than days like their main search engine and it doesn’t differentiate between mega large sites and small individuals blog sites.

An example of a blog fighting back and one of my personal favourites is TalkTalkHell. A site dedicated to exposing issues that people have found with TalkTalk and with 24,194 hits to their blog so far I think they maybe getting the message across to a few people.

So if you’re thinking about taking up a new service or buying from a company you don’t know you may want to do a quick blog search on them and see what the real people are saying and not just the advertising hype.

This morning a 6 mile journey that would normally take me about 15 minutes has just taken an hour. There are road works at the entrance to Watermead where I live where they are building a new junction.

There is only 1 road in and out of Watermead and it took me 45 minutes to travel less than half a mile. This wasn’t even at rush hour and schools out so the roads are normally even quieter.

I expected there to be delays as last night it took 30 minutes to get into Watermead but this is a joke. Can’t these planners anticipate these problems and put in contingencies?

What’s worse is there is little confidence that when the new junction is completed that it will help with congestion at all and if anything the general consensus is that it will be worse.

Yet another waste of tax payers hard earned money!

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.