Talk, Talk sucks.

I'm sitting here on hold with my ISP trying to find out how much of a charge I'd have if I cancelled my service with them. I so wish that I hadn't written anything good about them at all because I was obviously so very wrong.

It started yesterday at around 4:00pm when I noticed I couldn't browse to any websites. I did a quick ping to all of their servers, figured the connection was good and then started trying via FQDN. No luck. Obviously DNS right? So, I figured that I would give their technical support lines a call to find out what was going on. That's when my hell started.

After 90 minutes of being dropped, listening to Charles Dunstone's apologies about the call volume and I found only clueless sales people who were extraordinarily unhelpful when they realized I wasn't giving them any money. I've heard Tom Petty's 'Something in the Air' so many times that I now want to beat it with sticks until it dies. They don't have any other hold music.

I finally get someone around 6:00 called Mohammed Bex (Becks) in technical support. He tells me there is a 'problem with the servers.' I ask what the problem is and he refuses to tell me. I shit you not, he said I didn't 'need to know.' After a lot of arguing with him I finally got him to confirm it was a DNS problem but only after I'd said it first. What the hell? I then asked him why he'd just said it was a random service problem. (I misunderstood him, his accent was quite thick.) And....

He accused me of lying to him.

I kid you not.

At this point, I'd had it with Mohammed Bex and decided to try and speak with a manager. He wouldn't give me the manager's name until I apologized to him for lying. So, begrudgingly, I did. After about 20 minutes on the phone with this prize winner I hung up and waited for the 50 minutes for the service to return.

7:00pm I tried again. Nslookup still wasn't working. I then heaved, lifted my tired head and started dialling again. After another 30 minutes I finally got to Collin, who was a lot more pleasant and did something magical to make my connection work.

Today I decided that perhaps I'd like to cancel. After about 4 phone calls to Talk, Talk, I finally end up with Sindy, Cindy (?) who doesn't know what a cooling off period is. Well, after 20 odd minutes of hold/talk time she eventually she figured it out and it turns out it's only 14 days. We can't cancel the service without paying them 70 odd pounds for doing so.

Talk, Talk was the biggest consumer mistake I have ever, ever made.

I wish I would have checked ADSLguide first.