Boiler Woes Continue

We had hoped that by now we would have managed to contact our beloved landlord and got him to make some sort of decision about the repair of our central heating boiler. We had a phone number, which we were given by him when we transferred to renting the house directly from the landlord and away from the rental agency, but on attempting to ring the number we found that it was no longer working. After a few more attempts it would appear that he has a new number, much as we got a new telephone number when we went over to Sky from TalkTalk a couple of years ago. You would imagine that we would have been informed of the new number but obviously, they never thought it important enough to give us this new number. So we are still stuck without knowing what to do regarding the boiler, but still have an engineer coming on Friday morning. Then Carol discovered a business card from the plumber who she got through the Academy when we had to get the leak repaired (due to the landlord fouling up the installation of the washing machine, which is recalled in an earlier blog so need not be repeated here.) It would appear that this plumber will not look at the boiler without the landlord's permission, which means we are no further forward with this situation. As a result, of all this we are continuing to have no hot water for washing up, or baths etc etc., unless we boil kettles and saucepans and the house is freezing cold, although we have a very small electric fan heater for use in the lounge. We will have to see what the new week brings as regards resolving this situation.

Broadband, Landline telephone and television Switched to Sky

We have today transferred our broadband, television and landline telephone contract to Sky. It has been a relatively painless operation. I have to say, all things considered, they have been extremely efficient. It is barely two weeks since we rang to order our package. We have had the multi-channel package for around a week and the engineer who installed the dish and set up the Sky Plus box was very efficient and swift with the instillation, arriving more or less exactly as predicted, although we didn't get a phone call early in the morning to tell us what time he was expected to arrive. As I've mentioned in an earlier post here, we were with TalkTalk, which has probably the WORST customer service of any company I can think of, who really seem to have NO IDEA what they are doing, so I can't recommend this company. It seems to be a case of 'the left hand not knowing what the right is doing.'

TalkTalk Trouble

We have been customers of Talk Talk for around 3-4 years. We have broadband and landline telephone with them. It is easier to have both as it means you only have one bill. We have been considering changing providers for some time and had learned that our contract with TalkTalk would come to an end in either January-February next year. We have Freeview as our television provider, but we don't have an outdoor aerial and have to resort to using a somewhat poor-quality indoor one which means our picture quality is poor. It has a tendency to freeze up and at times goes pixelated, which can make watching television really impossible. We would like to have a multi-channel provider such as Sky or Virgin. But we weren't sure which provider to go for and accepted that we couldn't change either our broadband/telephone landline provider until early2014 when the TalkTalk contract came to an end or take on the extra multi-channel service until then. We then got a letter from TalkTalk, which came out of the blue last Saturday, informing us that their service costs would soon increase, and if we did not decide to continue using them as a phone/broadband provider we had 30 days to change to a new provider without incurring any early-contract ending fee. So, as a response to this letter we began to look around for a new provider. At first we had considered Virgin, with a broadband, multi-channel and landline telephone package a possibility. We then discovered that we couldn't have a Virgin Media package for the simple fact that there is no cable installed in the Milton Keynes area, as their service comes through cable. This is something of a shock as I had imagined that a modern city such as Milton Keynes would have been covered by cable, possibly being one of the first cities in Britain to be cabled. But no. We then decided to try Sky (we were with them at our other house in Crownhill, but cancelled the contract due to financial problems which I don't intend discussing here.) We rang their number and have now got a contract organised and they are coming to install the dish and set up the Sky Plus box tomorrow (Friday).
Then yesterday we got a call from Talk Talk. Apparently Sky have got in contact with them to tell them we are changing our provider to them. I was asked, by a surprisingly very rude call-centre agent, why we were changing, who our new provider was and what were they charging? We said we wanted to include multi-channel television in the package, and we were told by the TalkTalk agent that they could provide a package, but we were unaware of this. I have to say their customer service is really poor, they don't seem to know anything about the letter we got telling us we don't need to pay the cancellation fee. So, it's a case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing. 
We have had a couple of  further letters from TalkTalk, which virtually contradict the earlier on telling us we don't need to pay a cancellation charge if we change providers within 30 days. One says we'll have to pay around £15 for every month left of the contract. The TalkTalk agent we spoke to yesterday seemed to suggest we would have to pay the cancellation fee. So, why did they send the first letter?And today another letter came from them saying we needed a code to transfer the phone/broadband. On phoning I was asked why we were moving our account. I refused to say. And we now don't need the code to transfer accounts to Sky. Why do they need to know. And I got an email this morning with a survey to rate the TalkTalk agent's performance. I gave a very low score, as you may have guessed. So, you can see why I would never recommend TalkTalk as an internet/broadband/telephone provider.
There was one other issue with TalkTalk. When the account was originally set up we paid by Direct Debit, as with most services. It's the easiest way to pay most regular bills. You aren't likely to forget and it's generally cheaper than paying by cash or card.
The only problem was the time of the month it goes out of your account. It would have been better at the beginning of the month, as that's when we are paid, so, logically, there will be cash there to pay bills, such as Council Tax, water, etc, etc. But, no, for some unaccountable reason, best known only to themselves,it had to come out on or around the 20th of each month, by which time there probably isn't sufficient funds in the account to cover the Direct Debit payment. This happened a couple of times and as  result meant we incurred an unauthorised overdraft payment.  I then had to ring TalkTalk and attempted to get them to move the date the D.D. was taken to the beginning of the month, but no amount of trying would get them move it. So I had no alternative each month to either pay using my debit card on line or ring up, which meant we had to pay a good deal more than if we'd paid by Direct Debit, which, over a year, was around £35.

Talk Talk Poor Internet Connection

My internet service provider is Talk Talk. We have had quite a few problems with the internet  We have a wi-fi connection. It seems to be fine for other internet-connected computers and gadgets, including Carol's iPod Touch and Daniel's laptop. The iMac has been set up in our bedroom, but the wi-fi signal seems to drop out several times over the course of the day. You have to turn off the Airport on the iMac, and then the actual modem which is downstairs in the lounge, so there's quite often a fair amount of running up and down stairs until the thing resolves itself, but then there can be absolutely no internet connection for a whole day. This has been going on for several months now, but I rang TalkTalk to try and get them to resolve things. There is a point where you have to do something about this sort of thing, so I rang their number and then had to go through quite a few  'menu options' before I managed to speak to a human. I was THEN put through to someone in the 'Technical Department' and they decided that they'd do a test of our line to see if they could detect a problem, because they told me that it wasn't the wi-fi which was causing the problems (but I personally doubt it.) We had to unscrew one of the telephone line boxes, the one in the hall, and then plug the 'splitter' in to the socket which was underneath the cover.
They had my mobile number, because the phone was cut off during this 'line test.' About half an hour later I got a phone call from TalkTalk to say that they'd tested the line and that there had been a poor connection or something somewhere or other and that it was now sorted. So we put the front panel back together and reconnected the splitter (the thing that splits the line into 'broadband internet and telephone, so they can be run together from the one telephone socket.) It seemed to work fine. But I have since found that the iMac upstairs didn't connect any better. Infact, it was just as confounded awkward as it was before the line test. I'm more than ever certain it has to be something to do with the wi-fi and I have since bought the computer downstairs and connected it direct into the modem instead of using the wi-fi. The internet connects quickly and there's no problem. So, to conclude, I reckon that it has to be the wi-fi that has been causing all the problems.

Internet Off-Line

We had problems with the internet, starting last Tuesday, when the modem/router got damaged. I had to ring TalkTalk (our internet service provider) to get a replacement. Have you ever had to deal with a company through it's call centre? I bet you have, and I bet it's been a really awful experience, having to listen to dreadful music when you're put on hold, and the droning voice of a woman who say 'your call is important to us.' The endless waiting, the patronising tone of the person who eventually answers. The ridiculous questions. The security checks. I could go on and on. And then, eventually,  getting through to some sort of menu and THEN having to make the decision on what key to press. Or to just 'hold' until 'one of our agents is free to speak to you.'

I eventually got through (after about three attempts. I almost lost the will to live, or to throw the phone out of the window . . .) I had to go through a load of nonsense to find out what was wrong with the router, at one point having to stick a sharp point in a hole in the back of the thing. I used a ball-point pen. It didn't get the thing to work, as you would imagine. I was then passed on to another person, and each time this happened I had to go through all the security rigmarole. They decided that the old router wasn't going to work so they'd have to send us a new one. This arrived yesterday, when I went into Central Milton Keynes yesterday morning. There was a  card from the Post Office stuck through the door when I got home to say that they couldn't put the parcel through the letterbox as it was too big (and thank goodness they didn't as it would most likely have broken the router.) and if I went to the sorting office after three hours I could collect it.

Anyway, it took most of the evening to set up the new router (a considerably smaller and less complicated gadget compared to the old one.) and get the internet working again as we couldn't work out which password and username was which, as the broadband had one and the connection between the iMac and the router had another.

On a different matter, but still with TalkTalk. You have to pay your monthly bill by direct debit. By the time this is due there is never enough money in the bank account to actually cover the bill, so this gets returned to TalkTalk (as it would with any company who you pay your bills with.) As a result the amount we owed got into arrears. I rang up last week and payed the outstanding bill using my debit card, a simple enough task. But the whole idea of setting up a direct debit, you would have thought, was that it's an easier, simpler means of paying your bill, as you can just forget it and the company gets it's payment without any fuss. Further to this, you tell them when you want the money to come out of your account, usually at the time when you have money going IN to the account, so that the direct debits are covered. Well, this is what I tried to explain to the person I spoke to at TalkTalk. They told me that it wasn't possible to change the day that the money came out of our account. I said that virtually all the other companies we pay our bills to by direct debit allowed us to set up the day they are paid. But TalkTalk won't play ball over this issue. I said that they were totally inflexible. I will have to wait for them to phone up so each monthly bill can be paid by debit card. I'd just like to know if other people find this a really annoying business and totally inflexible. There must be  a few as I'd expect them to have quite a lot of customers.

Anyway, all this to explain why I havent' managed to post anything to this blog for a week.