Internet/telephone service provider

[DutchOma]

Pipex has been my internet service provider and I am also paying for my telephone calls through them.
I also have a BT landline. I pay between £40 and £50 per month for the lot.
No mobile charges are included.
I have now had a letter from Pipex to say that they are being taken over by TalkTalk.
Everything will stay the same: my internet address (which I am quite attached to) my telephone number (which I definitely don't want to change) and "my existing reliable broadband connection" Not that reliable.
Presumably also the price.

I have a feeling that I should change, but no idea how to do it or to whom.

Any advice gratefully received.

[niceguy2]

Well firstly I have to say that whilst TalkTalk's Internet connection is usually pretty reliable, their customer service is utterly shocking. That said if they are taking over Pipex, I'd expect them over a period of time to migrate all the exPipex customers to the TalkTalk network. Best case you don't notice. Worst case your line may go down a bit.

TalkTalk usually are very competitive in terms of price but the £40-£50 a month seems a little on the high side.

Personally I use Bethere for my Internet provider. I've been with them for nearly 5 years and they are rock solid. Their customer service is great and often wins awards. I pay £12 a month as a long term customer but you can join from £17 per month. If you want to move then you need to call Pipex up and ask for a MAC code. Give this to your new company and they will give you a date of switchover. You'll probably lose broadband that day for a while.

If you move ISP's, you will naturally lose your e-mail address if you are using the pipex name. However, I'm going to guess that at some point, TalkTalk will turn that off too. So i wouldn't necessarily let that stop me.

You can stay with BT but I found them expensive. You get the best deals bundling everything with one company. So check out savings if you move your phone to TalkTalk too. But I moved mine to Primus as I don't really use my landline and save on the monthly line rental too. You can keep your existing number no matter who you use so thats not a problem.

Hope that helps

[NetworkGuy]

I thought the 'ownership' of Pipex customers took place a year ago or more.

I suspect this is integrating customer accounts into TalkTalk's billing and other systems, so they aren't running multiple systems (TT bought the customers of AOL UK, Pipex and a few others, from memory).

BeThere are popular, but don't serve all parts of the UK, unfortunately. My sister switched from them to Plusnet in the spring (as her cost was due to almost double with Be There, which meant they did not keep to the "12 months minimum" clause in their contract).

While you might be able to keep your Pipex mail address, it would probably make life easier to switch to a free account from GMail or Live.co.uk or Yahoo and be sure that for any online services (and friends/ relations) know your new mail address, before you consider moving from Pipex. It means that important mail will reach you even if you decide to stay with Pipex/TT or if you find service goes downhill and then decide to leave.

TalkTalk was in the news *> here

[NetworkGuy]

As you are paying BT line rental, that should make a transfer much easier, and 40-50 quid sounds a lot each month. Can I ask what Pipex account you are on and whether they include "any time, landline calls" under the phone service you get?

[DutchOma]

Networkguy thank you for your comments. No I don't get 'any time' landline calls, just evening and weekend 01 and 02 numbers when I have 90 mins free.
I don't have a Pipex e.mail address but a .lineone.co.uk one and took that with me when I moved to Pipex. I have a hotmail and Yahoo address as well, but find it quite hard to check multiple addresses.
Niceguy2 thank you for your comments too.

[NetworkGuy]

Ah bad good old LineOne - I can understand the reason for wanting to keep an old mail address (I had one for 8 years with my US-based ISP) and see that LineOne customers went under the Pipex umbrella from 2001, before Pipex, Freedom2Surf and Nildram were swallowed by Tiscali and the TalkTalk absorbed the lot !

[NetworkGuy]

BT is better than that for the weekend calls as they include 01/02/03 and 0845/0870 at the weekend, and not just 90 minutes free but all calls (up to 60 minutes, hang up and redial to continue) are included.

I'm stuck with BT for a bit (free line installation in return for making 10 calls a month, every month, for 18 months, plus a 50 quid deposit [which they have refunded])... My 10 calls a month were easily used on redial to an 0870 ISP dial-up number (just to be 100% I made 10 calls for the month!) and then I made calls to friends and family (so if I tried someone and got no answer, I would never be hit by a penalty fee by BT).

BT does a line rental discount if you pay for a year in advance [hint: the saving is more than you'd get if you put the same amount of cash in a bank account given current rubbish interest rates].

But with the BT "offer" there is a drawback in that if you change to have calls charged by some other firm, the prepayment is non-refundable... it is their way to reduce people switching to Sky or TalkTalk, I think.

I've seen Primus mentioned with low monthly line rental fee, but I use 1899.com (daytime calls to 01/02/03 can be made to landlines for 5p per call no matter how long, and 10p/min to mobiles, but I don't know if 1899 is blocked by Primus, and if not now, then possibly blocked in future).

Plusnet offers a calls and line rental package from about 12 quid, and broadband on top for another 12 quid (depends where you are living, it can be up to 18 quid in rural areas), I've been with them off and on for last 8 years (gap when I moved and had no landline connected, when I started using Three mobile), and before them tried Eclipse, UKFSN and Freeserve (now Orange) broadband but that is going all the way back to 2001!