Help trying to leave Talktalk!!

Having spent the last 3 days and many hours on the phone to various call handling centres in various countries I'm hoping someone on here can help.
I'll give you a basic summary of whats happened.As you can imagine, each phone call you have to start from the begining and if they understand what you're talking about, then you spend many minutes listening to pleasant (?)music.
I've been with Talktalk for about 3yrs now so contract issues. Over the last few months I've found the download speeds to be very slow and my connection keeps going (twice whilst trying to post this thread!!).
Also, I'm still wired up so I though time for change and time to go wireless. Should be a fairly simple process I thought. My first mistake!!
As I'm a Sky tv customer I thought it would be easier to have just one bill with one provider so I went on their website to order. However, it said my telephone number wasn't available. It was the same when I went on other providers web sites aswell. Next is a very,very basic summary of my calls over the next 3 days:
Contacted Sky to find out what the problem was - my phone line needs to be on BT, as Talktalk have taken it over contact them
Contacted Talktalk - no BT need to sort your line out for you
Contacted BT - no Sky need to do this on your behalf
Contacted Sky - no,its a BT line, they have to sort it
Contacted BT - no Talktalk have to release it
Contacted Talktalk - no Sky have to sort the problem for you

Enoughs enough. Can anyone tell me how I get my line released so I can change providers cos none of the above seem bothered about doing it and I've got absolutely nowhere with them. The only option I can see is contacting Offcom to see if they can sort it.
And once thats done, which provider do I actually go with? On reading your site it seems every one has its problems and no-one seems better than the other. Looks like I'll have to get a pin,shut my eyes and hope for the best!!

hey i work for a broadband company the reason sky cant activate new broadband for you is they do need an active BT line this means that you will have to go to bt and ask them to insert a line that will cost you £125 connection charge and you will then be incontract with bt for at least 12months

the only other way round it is if you go to a cable company like virgin who do not provide the braodband through a bt line but if your heart is set on sky then unfortunately you will have to go through the route of BT and pay the connection charge

your other alterantive is to ask talk talk for a new wireless router or go through the tech support with them and they should be able to resolve your issue

hope this helps you

I also have been with Talktalk for more than 18 months and wanted to go to o2 who have a good deal for people who have o2 mobiles, which I have. Again, I was told I must have an active BT Line, which I now haven't since Talktalk took it over. BT will take my line back, for a fee, but I will be tied into a 12-month contract with them and would have to find a separate broadband provider as BT's is expensive. I wish someone had warned me that going to Talktalk seems to be almost irreversible!

So it will cost £125 to leave Talk Talk, then you have to pay BT line rental for a year then if you transfer your line to another ISP that will cost you again and then if you want to move ISP you have to pay BT £125 again, seems to me that BT has found a way to recover the revenue lost when the local loops were unbundled.

There should be no need to go back to BT as long as you are going to take a Phone + Broadband package from the new ISP (needs to be an LLU operator), its only a matter of re-jumpering the cable in the exchange and the new ISP would have to do that anyway if it was connected to BT. If you are not taking a Phone + Broadband package then you would have to be reconnected to BT in the exchange to get a phone service.

I'm just in the process of cancelling my Tiscali Broadband and Phone service because my speed has now degraded so much it is actually slower than a dialup connection and I want to move to O2.

First of all I have to get BT to take back my phone service now this is a con because I have to stay with them for 12 months but contrary to the previous post saying it will cost £125 it does not cost anything at all and BT notifies Tiscali/Talk Talk that the line has been transfered.

This is the link to the page to transfer your phone:

BT phone UK – Telephone and home phone service provider

I just selected the cheapest Weekend call plan because I don't actually need a phone.

On the next screen just check "Yes I have a working phone number" and follow the instructions through.

Before you actually sign up it will tell you if an engineer visit is required and how much it will cost, in my case the cost is £0.00 and no engineer vist required, this makes sense because the phone line is already connected to the exchange it just needs repatching.

Once the line has been transferred to BT you can go with whichever ISP you want to but you will be stuck with a BT phone for 12 months.

My phone line is due to be transferred on the 7th July and so far it has been quite painless, hope this helps.

All done, phone was transferred back to BT on the 7th July at 00:05 (they didn't waste any time) and once this had been done I was able to place the order for a new connection, decided to go with O2. This took another week to complete and was done yesterday. Its not that difficult to move, it was a bit of a pain not having broadband for a week but everything else was OK. First impression with O2 is good, download speed went up from 3Mbps to over 6Mbps and the upload speed went up from 32Kbps to just over 1Mbps so I'm quite happy with that. I only moved broadband suppliers in the end because Tiscali/TalkTalk could not sort out the problem with my abismally slow upload speed and having a call centre in India was jut frustrating to say the least.

[gannite6364]

I know it`s to late now but instead of trying to sort your speed problems over the phone you should have tryed the talktalk forum. In my experiance they are very good at sorting problems.

I am on a broadband and phone package and I just got forced onto Talk Talk as I was with Tiscali - I never had problems with Tiscali, but since its been under Talk Talk control, I have frequent drop outs and a bad connection. They admitted to me that they are charging me more than others for a worse quality connection as it costs them more to get broadband to me from the exchange - what a crock! Then they cut me off for a week for not paying a bill that I had paid! After a week of phone calls to somewhere in India, I got sick and rang O2 as I have a mobile with them. The line cant be used by them as Talk Talk use their own lines or something (bad ones obviously) but if I go with O2 they charge £85 for a new line with them. I dont need to go back to BT at all, not even to change the line as O2 will do it all for me. Hope this helps.