Door to door broadband?

[Dr Lobster*]

have any of you good ladies and gentleman had the displeasure of having been disturbed from your evening repast by door-to-door sales representatives from talktalk who proudly proclaim that 'talktalk broadband is now in your area' and that it's 'up to 20mbps' etc etc?

surely door-to-door selling is the pursuit of religious cults such as the catholic church and jehovah's witnesses, whatever the hell they are. i'm really surprised that a fairly reputable company like talktalk would recruit door to door sellers. any sort of commission based selling like this is open abuse with the likely consequence that the elderly and infirm will end up signing up to get their broadband and phone service migrated to a new provider inevitably losing service for a few weeks, as is customary.

what are your thoughts on this very important matter?

[Beep]

Can't say I've had TalkTalk but I did have a young irishman from BT claiming Infinity was here and it was the fastest in the area at up to 40mbps, kindly informed him I had Virgin Media 50Mbps, without throttling and showed him SpeedTest (which showed 56.31Mbps, slightly more than I pay for so no complaints) on my iPhone to guarantee he took his wares elsewhere. Also mentioned Virgin begins it's 100Mbps service very soon, he just left.

Edit: for some reason Chrome dislikes the word "wares", odd.

[Nick Harvey]

have any of you good ladies and gentleman had the displeasure of having been disturbed from your evening repast by door-to-door sales representatives from talktalk?

YES, and with a disgusting level of regularity.

'Er indoors keeps chastising me for shouting "FUCK OFF" at them at the top of my voice and sending them for a long walk back down the drive.

British Gas and E.ON are others who appear on the doorstep far too often and get the same treatment.

If I want to change my supplier of anything, from broadband to condoms, I'll do it myself without any pressure selling on the doorstep, thank you very much.

[Neil Jones]

surely door-to-door selling is the pursuit of religious cults such as the catholic church and jehovah's witnesses, whatever the hell they are. i'm really surprised that a fairly reputable company like talktalk would recruit door to door sellers. any sort of commission based selling like this is open abuse with the likely consequence that the elderly and infirm will end up signing up to get their broadband and phone service migrated to a new provider inevitably losing service for a few weeks, as is customary.

Actually if it's handled correctly, there is no or very little downtime between provider switches. It's what your MAC code is for that you hear horror stories about on Watchdog about providers taking forever and a day to issue one, even though you're supposed to have one within five days. If you change provider without a MAC code for whatever reason, it'll still go through but it'll take a lot longer, two subscription costs (old and new) and on occasion physical work at the exchange, aka "unplug it and plug it in again".

As to the door-to-door selling, I haven't actually seen any for months. Although I do live on a screamingly obvious council estate so they don't tend to come round offering to insulate the walls, fix the roof or sell contents insurance. As of late, they seem to want me to buy pizza instead.

Anyway if you buy anything at the door, you're covered under the 7 day cooling off period. Just phone them up and tell them you're not interested. If it goes through anyway even though you're told them not to go ahead, get Ofgem or whoever involved.

[Ronnie Rowlands]

repast by door-to-door sales representatives from talktalk?
YES, and with a disgusting level of regularity.

'Er indoors keeps chastising me for shouting "FUCK OFF" at them at the top of my voice and sending them for a long walk back down the drive.

Is this you, Nick? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLeW3tsywrs

[Critique]

I only get Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door and try to convert me, along with the man trying to sell me his sofa cleaning wares.

[Sput]

I don't even get that, I just get drunks who enjoy pressing the buzzer

[ashley b]

The joys of living in a gated complex, people struggle to get in, even if we want them to, so havn't had a door to door sales person in the year I've been here. There's not even a buzzer on the gate.

So there are avantages to the stupid set up we have after all, hmmmm.

[Critique]

Peoples near me would vault the fence to get into a complex if they had too.

[Alexia]

I used to sell doors door to door. Pointless exercise.

[Sput]

You are the Keith Chegwin of comedy, Alexia