Hi everyone,
As I am sure you will be aware, TalkTalk is supposed to be one of the UK’s leading telecommunications companies. Right? Wrong!
On 26 November, 2015, I noticed that all emails sent or received prior to that date had disappeared from my client account. Since then I have experienced problems in sending, receiving, retrieving, deleting and moving emails together with delays in processing “send and receive” commands and slow downloading.
I suspect that I have also failed to receive some emails whilst some genuine ones are known to have been incorrectly designated and treated as spam. To confound matters further, others have been duplicated and many deleted e-mails have remained stubbornly in my inbox. 41 previously “lost” emails did reappear, however; 35 were designated “unread”, (despite having been previously opened and moved to a sub-folder), and 6 were red flagged for “follow up”, (despite having been previously actioned and moved to their relevant sub-folder). How strange, then, that the first set of 35 emails disappeared again before I could complete moving them into a new folder!
The number of tasks performed whilst sending and receiving has inexplicably increased and I frequently receive messages telling me that “the IMAP server has closed the connection”; “connection to the server could not be established (because) mail.talktalk.net is now in offline mode”; “Outlook must be online or connected to complete the action”; one or both of the following errors “0x8004DF08” or “0x800CCC0E” has occurred or that I have been “timed out”.
I have also experienced problems whilst trying to log on to “My Account” and on to my webmail. It would seem that somebody in TalkTalk has a problem from time to time recognising my password. But the good news is that, having just been told that “My Account” will be offline for the next 48 hours, I was able to access it with no problem!
Having spent many hours on the telephone to TalkTalk’s customer services department, and despite having been repeatedly informed that my problems had been fixed, I am no nearer a resolution than I was over three weeks ago. It has been difficult, bordering upon impossible, to understand the Indian call centre staff and those based in the Philippines, whilst being incredibly courteous and desperate to help, have been unable to do so other than by “escalating” my enquiry.
I have also experienced inconsistencies between my web-based accounts and my client accounts together with inconsistencies in the level of service provided on both.
For the last week, I have been unable to send any emails, including one addressed to TalkTalk’s CEO, and, for the past couple of days, I have been unable to receive any.
To add insult to injury, although I was aware that the quality of my 3G mobile signal had been exceptionally poor recently, (it’s never good), I only realised that it had completely disappeared following TalkTalk’s repeated insistence that a text message had been sent to me on 17 December, 2015, requesting me to advise them whether or not my problems had been “fixed”. I never received that message and I have only just succeeded in replying to it after driving several miles to a location where a signal was available. When I discussed the lack of a signal with TalkTalk, they denied all knowledge of the problem…. Sound familiar?
So, in summary, thanks to one of the country’s leading telecommunications companies, I am being prevented from "communicating" via either email or mobile voice calls and text messages. I guess that that puts us on par with each other….. All I can say is Thank God I have still got an old fashioned landline and Skype on Wi-Fi!
*****
Ps. If you are experiencing any problems with your emails, don’t bother navigating to TalkTalk’s “email status page”. The chances are that, like me, you will find it to be a complete waste of space and you will be no wiser in respect of the cause and nature of the problems; their extent or when they will be resolved. Furthermore, as I have discovered the hard way, any assurances you may receive from the call centre staff will almost certainly prove to be false. I just pity those TalkTalk customers who are trying to run a small business.