If you are currently thinking of joining talktalk then I suggest you read the following.

I first applied to join talktalk in March 2005, after three migration codes and a little assistance from Charles Dunstones office I finally got connected after 3 months. I truly wish I hadn\'t!

The deal I signed up for was ?14.99/month for a 1mb service. They spent the first month of my service telling me that I couldn\'t get 1mb, in spite of the fact I live just half a mile from a major exchange. They instead put me on a 512mb line and charged me an additional ?3 a month for the privilege. After sending them copious numbers of emails and making numerous telephone calls I finally got upgraded to 1mb. Even though I was now receiving the correct 1mb service, they didn\'t believe me or any of the data, speedtest etc I sent them! They continued to bill me an extra ?3/ month. Once again numerous telephone calls were made before they decided that I was in fact right. However, nobody knew how to tell their computer this so for the last 12 months I have been receiving a bill for ?18.99 and receiving ?3 credit back to my account.

After a long 12 months of below average service I was finally free to request my migration code and leave them..woohoo!!! Well, you have to remember this is talktalk where nothing is straight forward. There is no way to request a migration code from their web portal so I I emailed them for my MAC code and waited, after all their code of practice says they\'ll respond to all customer service emails in 7 days! A week came and went and no reply, so I emailed them once again still no reply. In fact those emails went 5 and 4 weeks ago respectively and I\'ve still to receive any reply. Knowing that this was going to be a cause of stress, I rang the dreaded customer services. A representative kindly filled out my MAC request on the phone for me and told me I\'d get my code within 14 days. He sounded convincing, I actually believed him for a moment..but sadly it was to no avail. So I once again called them and was told my request would be passed to the \'problem department\'!! Does any company really have a problem department??? Anyway, I was told they would call me within 48 hours with my code. Yep, you guessed it, it never happened. In fact in the 12 months I\'ve been dealing with talktalk customer services they\'ve made over 20 promises to call me back and I\'ve never received even 1 call back! Since then I have been calling them daily and each time I call I\'m told different lies! So far I\'ve been told that MAC codes take 30 days, 18 days, 17 days, 14 days, 5 days and 48 hours to generate but here I am still waiting! Tonight I was told my case was a special priority and they would get me a code and call me back in an hour, nobody called so I called them. I was transferred to the mysterious \'problem department\' only to receive the message that their offices were now closed and I should call back tomorrow. I was hoping that the janitor would answer the call because I think he\'d be more clued up than your average talktalk customer services representative.

So, if you are thinking about joining talktalk and are tempted by their free broadband offer..my opinion is stay away..even free it\'s too expensive!!!