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Where in that definition does it say that you should fiddle with the content on the way through ?

Your job is to route packets from A to B and back again in a reliable manner, that is all.

It's actually ISP -> Internet Sales provider these days.

I'm with Virgin - often the "S" means Shit!

It's a Jedi mind trick: This is not the servicing you are looking for.

> The Register has asked TalkTalk to comment. We haven't heard back yet,

The reply probably got redirected by Talk Talk's DNS

There is now a fly-by-night "enlargement" outfit wondering what a technical support is and whether they should be selling it.

Make sure you have a good supply of books, coffee, and all other refreshment facilities before locking into a wait position for Talk-Talk to come back. Probably your message will take till after the Coronavirus is a distant memory to get through. It is perhaps a shame they do not really know how to run the technical side of the business. Though the rest has not always been that hot either!

Start up Age of Empires... By the time you get a reply, you'll have already taken over the world with water powered nuclear generators.

They'll probably reply just as you are about to go for a leak, so make sure the PFY's briefcase is within easy reach...

Yes, I'm going through the BOFH chronicles. That was 2003 episode 23.

In all fairness it is not just TalkTalk: it took 3 hours and 3 minutes on hold to get through to Key Bank, a bank I did not have any business with until the government decided to use to process benefit through.

if you can. That is what they listen to. Written complaint about what is wrong, what issues it causes, and therefore allowing instant-termination of their service no matter what is written in the contract. Including refusal to pay.

At least that is what works in Germany, does it work on the other side of the tunnel?

If you refuse to pay, expect court action and the bailiffs knocking on your door and your credit rating destroyed.

In the UK NEVER stop payments for a service.

Depends. You can get to their cancellations department. Then after the cancellation fee/termincation confirm your are going to trading standards/financial ombudsman about it. Sometimes you may have to pay up front then get it back later.

If a company is in the wrong, and willing to charge you the cancellation fee, they obviously have something very wrong with their service because they need the cash more than you do! So must be desperate.

This does not include the fee for the hardware and postage though, but you can offer to send that back to them.

I got a 30 day no quibbles option to cancel when I set up one ISP, cancelled with no charge and saved £££s at 29 days as the service was dire, and the promises to improve were mute as going on for 12 months on their forums.

I did not do the same with a mobile operator, as it did turn out to be occasional signal loss during the 5g upgrade, and thankfully is sorted now.

Don't be silly! There's a whole game to be played here, especially if there is a genuine fault caused by Talk Talk.

Register your complaint. Register the failure of the resolutions.

Demonstrate the effect as unreasonable. Waste their time as much as possible.

If company is ISO9001 certified, ask for the quality managers details, raise a complaint and demand a copy of your ISO9001 complaint reference number. Make constant requests for updates. Register any lack of resolution and communication. Politely waste as much time as possible and eventually, when they see it as a "cost saving" to get rid of you, voila! Success.

Just pissing off the quality manager enough to force technical meetings about registered ISO9001 complaints is surprisingly effective in all industry sectors.

If company is ISO9001 certified

FFS we're talking about Talk Talk. They're not even ISO 3103 certified.

I had to Google it, but you now ow me a keyboard... Mines been damaged by an ISO 3001 beverage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103

M

You're probably right

Man, I've worked for some dire small companies that could fill in ISO 9001 docunentation.

"ask for the quality managers details"

First ask if they have one.

My mum's bank stopped payments to talk talk after she passed away; repeated calls to customer 'service' did nothing to stop the tide of threatening letters.

We wrote "return to sender - deceased" on various correspondence and popped in the post back to them. Not sure whether that did the trick or not as we're no longer getting post forwarded.

My mum's bank stopped payments to talk talk after she passed away; repeated calls to customer 'service' did nothing to stop the tide of threatening letters.

You quite possibly have a chance of getting them charged with harassment under those circumstances. See [1]the Citizens Advice page here and remember you're not even a debtor.

A few years back friend of mine was being hassled by carrion eating debt collectors over a debt that was more than 6 years old and no longer enforceable. One snottagram to them threatening to take the matter to the police made them vanish.

[1] https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/debt-and-money/action-your-creditor-can-take/harassment-by-creditors/

In the United States this is not unusual, Spectrum-TimeWarner has been doing the sane thing for years (mistype a URL, get a Spectrum search results page). Although Spectrum is certainly a company that pretty much doesn't give a damn about its customers (taking cues from Verizon, trust me), I'm just surprised that it took TalkTalk customers this long to complain.

Freudian slip?

I dunno, given the Talk Talk data breach and their famously woeful customer service, I'd pretty much say that their users are a self-selecting sample of absolute numpties. Hmm, I need an ISP, I know, why not these guys, they've won worst UK ISP of the year loads of times!

Hmm, I need an ISP, I know, why not these guys, they've won worst UK ISP of the year loads of times!

More a case of "I need an ISP, I know SFA about it, look, these are cheap" I suspect.

I eventually ended up as a TalkTalk customer after they bought Tiscali, after that bought WorldOnline. I never really noticed this because I always used Google's Public DNS. Mainly because, at the time I did it, the DNS servers of whatever-it-was-called-at-the-time was up and down more often than a drunken fiddler's elbow during a lockin.

That said, I can't really say I'm surprised by TalkTalk being shady. I seem to recall this DNS hijacking was actually inherited, probably from Tiscali, which was very fond of doing shady things like that.

The most annoying thing about it is that you can't just go back to the URL and correct the typo

TalkTalk are the same knobs that decide to, by default, block Teamviewer on their routers because "The bad guys use it" yes, and they use other fucking apps as well. And us good support people also use Teamviewer so now everyone is staying at home, we're having to try and talk people through logging onto their router to unblock Teamviewer so we can then connect to them.

I hate TalkTalk, the dicks.

..rule of Internet Club is to use your own router.

The second rule is Dont Use TalkTalk.

..rule of Internet Club is to use your own router.

The second rule is Dont Use TalkTalk.

If one and two are ranked in importance, I think I'd swap those around.

If you think this is bad, anyone remember when Network Solutions did it for the entire Internet in the root DNS?

These crappy consumer services seem to introduce things that break stuff with regular monotony. Virgin break VPNs, BT break SMTP, Sky break being able to use your own router. They all seem to have one thing or another than they do, and none of them actually offer just a 'pure' internet service

unless you have NO. OTHER. OPTION. (or were born yesterday) - you deserve ALL you get from talktalk.

A quote from their current UK TV advert.

What a load of bollocks.

easiest fix: Hard code PC's DNS and DISABLE DNS Service. (1.1.1.1, 1.1.1.3, 1.0.0.3 [Cloudflare]; 4.4.4.4 [Level 3]; 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220 [OpenDNS]; 8.8.8.8, et. al.)

best fix: Pi-Hole (a self-contained personal DNS server) which is well worth the investment to setup the Raspberry Pi and Pi-Hole! Blocks WAY more crap then you know was even there,...

You know, that's a good idea. I need to get around to doing this. :P

I'm surprised that actually works. I wonder if they'll "fix" it.

They can just intercept port 53 and return what they want.

Not if its dnssec, you will know. That said I would think that if Talk Talk decided on intercepting and then hijacking plain UDP port 53 dns, the remidy would come under section three of the 1990 computer misuse act.

"Unauthorised acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, operation of computer, etc."

It's their network though. Would the act even apply?

best fix: Pi-Hole (a self-contained personal DNS server) which is well worth the investment to setup the Raspberry Pi and Pi-Hole! Blocks WAY more crap then you know was even there,...

And just to prevent ISPs from pulling that hijacking trick, also use an Unbound server on that Raspberry Pi, the Pi-Hole by itself won't protect you from hijacked typing errors.

I do feel bad for the customers. Still, this so bizarre, it is amusing. Maybe El Reg should have a section "Curiously shitty companies".

Maybe El Reg should have a section "Curiously shitty companies".

Wouldn't "Curiously goof companies" be easier to maintain?

I designed and implemented a system to do this for in 2006.

Optout is a doddle to do, and doesn't need to require users reboot anything at all.

Worked with TT in 2015-17 - on DNS related stuff.

If only they had asked. The optout method was pretty much public domain by then.

Opt-out should be the default, opt-in should be by special request.

I'm paying at this momen more than £20 for the cheapest sky broadband and isn't so different than dialup

I have a TalkTalk Sagem router, and found it is a bit confusing. There are two DNS settings, the one to alter is TalkTalk Wifi Hub" -> "Static DNS Server Configuration" which actually sets the DNS addresses sent by DHCP to connected devices. Set those to your preferred provider. Leave the "Internet Connectivity" DNS settings on 79.79.79.79 / 79.79.79.80 so the router itself gets DNS from TalkTalk,while your devices get it from elsewhere.

And that elsewhere preferably being your Pi-Hole, which in turn gets it from your Unbound. The first will double the perceived download speed of websites, the second will prevent this type of Man In The Middle attacks.