Phone & Broadband help....

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funky1

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Hi guys, I'm about to open a salon next month & was wondering who is your phone & broadband provider?..I see lots of companys online offering the services but I'm wary as there are alot I've never heard of....
 
If you want to run a few of the names past me I can probably tell you yay or nay - I used to work for Talktalk Business (and Tiscali Business before they got taken over) and dealt only with resellers and channel partners.

The main thing to remember is that in most cases you are using exactly the same wires and equipment to the property - very few providers have their own hardware in the exchange (you're talking big boys only here... Talktalk, BT, Virgin and Sky mainly - of those the biggest are Talktalk and BT) - The interesting bit is that both resell their lines/network to other internet providers... so smaller providers will actually be paying talktalk for the use of the line and equipment and you pay them and deal with them :)

Reason for lecture is that you need to mainly go with customer service rep... a fault can happen on any network and the only real differing factor is how well information is passed back to you... No-one can make the network engineers work faster (they work for BTopenreach - who provide lines to BTinternet and BTwholesale...same as they do to everyone else) - some are better at tweaking the profiles you are on to maximise stability and speed of your broadband - but on the whole it's customer service and price you need to weigh up.

If you have BT infinity where your shop is - GET IT!!! This uses the new fibre optic cables and the speeds are MUCH higher and the lines are far more stable - yes it costs more but it's worth it! Talktalk and other providers are just starting to join in the race but personally I would go BT if you can get infinity :) And haggle!
 
Not TalkTalk!!
Their customer service is so bad'
 
I was with virgin just because my friend got me mates rates haha.. BT are rubbish also worst customer service
 
*sigh* actually Talktalk is getting better - and this is coming from a very disgruntled past employee whom I can PROMISE you have no loving feelings towards them as a company...

The talktalk network is believe it or not better than BTs at the moment... at least if you want LLU rather than IPstream...

A lot of Talktalks problems were down to mergers - No-one knew what was going on or who owned a problem and so a lot of mistakes were made. It's just about settling down now and the billing issues have all been resolved to my knowledge... I hand on heart don't think they're any worse now than other providers... and it pains me to say that.
 
Mmm...not convicts they are getting better. It proofs that once hit had a few bad experiences it's very hard to wipe them off hour mind.
I'm paying £300 penalty charge for terminating the contract with them just because im fed up with problems, phone line down, Internet down - therefore couldn't use the card machine and loosing clients through not being able to get call us. A client called us to book and said I tried to call you the other day but sounded like your phone wasn't working. I had to go to the salon across the road. This hurts when your are a business owner.
I found a local company who will pay 12 months the line rental - it is a 36months contract but it's only down the road from me and they were really nice (well, they would be since they wanted me!).
But Talk Talk used to call me to say Would you like a new contract, you are paying £23 for the line rental ATM. I knew for sure I was only paying £13 but they were inflating it to make it look better to get me in a new 24monthd contract. And now looking at their bills, they've charged me 18p/min for mobile calls when it should 9p.
I'll call them on Monday to query that but I had enough.
Sorry about the rant.

July x
 
Talktalk terminated my dads bussiness landline (he has the same number for 24 years) "by accident" and it took 8 weeks to be reconnected on his old phone number. He is currently in the process if claiming against them as his business was down about £500 a day because of it. That said Talktalk customer service has always been good. In the beginning I got a few different answers but overall they were helpful.

It didn't stop me with going with Talktalk when unopened my salon for the price I'd def recommend them.
 
I went with BT purely because they always get engineers out prett quick and they are reachable no matter what. Although customer service wasn't great I have an account manager now so one point of contact which I prefer.

I took the infinity fibre optic broadband it's the Lamborghini of broadband you will love it! Also the call charges have a cap on them, so calls to mobile will cost 25p up to an hour, international 60p upto an hour and so on.

If you can go to BT wholesale you will get best price.

Although they try to sign you up for 5 years I signed up for 24 months as you just never know.

Good luck.
 

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