OneGuyFromBarlick

Two notable matters today. First was a repetition of the scam I nearly fell for a couple of weeks ago. The caller claimed to be from Talktalk and said my account was corrupting the server. This scam aims to get control of your computer and download data hoping to find bank details. I sent them packing.
The second one I'm not sure about. An email from Amazon thanking me for an order (£11.25 worth of CDs) which I have not made. I have emailed Amazon with the details and repudiated the order. Is it a mistake or a scam?

Ebay is a favourite topic for scammers. We had two yesterday but Plusnet quarantined them as spam and didn't pass them on. They just sent us their usual message saying we can have them if we think otherwise. Assume everything like this is spam or scam, delete it and forget it. If anything turns out to be genuine it's up to the sender to let you know and to make sure their messages don't look like scams!

I 'renegotiated' my Plusnet deal last week. I thought Lord Sugar couldn't have done better . I dropped the £6 charge for anytime phonecalls, intending to spend this on an all inclusive sim card, for my very underused mobile, and make this my main phone. They gave me half price internet plus line rental, and I agreed to 2 years at £22.49 per month plus phone calls.

I then found that their phone calls are 10p per minute plus a fixed connection charge. Doubts creep in. Then I thought Tripps - who are you kidding? - you'll never use a mobile for real calls; small screen, fat thumbs, and failing eyesight is not a good combination.

I phoned back (tip always choose the option 'I'm thinking of leaving you' - they answer that very quickly), quickly cancelled the earlier deal, which you can do within 14days, and told him I'd just got a flyer from Talk Talk offering free broadband for 18 months. He then reinstated anytime calls and offered free BB for 12 months. So £22.99 for 12 months - That'll do.

I've got a customers machine on my bench now, I just picked up, they got a call from Talktalk which because they could furbish details about their account , they took to be genuine, they gave them control of their computer and they did various things which they couldn't remember then they said there was a £250 refund (for inconvenience) to come to them and they wanted their bank details. They didn't do on-line banking and then they suggested Paypal, they didn't do that either, when my customers said just send us a cheque, they said they didn't do cheques. They got suspicious and hung up, then they called Talktalk themselves who surprise, surprise, had made no such call, they phoned their bank because they were worried, the bank said they hadn't made any payments and would notify them if anything suspicious showed up and to get their computer checked out, which is where I came in.

Your customer was lucky in that they had no bank details on the computer because if they had the scammers would have cleaned the accounts out. The lady from Talktalk told me this when I reported my first instance. The problem then is that the bank say that if you have allowed someone else to have access to your PC you have voluntarily given them control of your accounts and therefore they can give no refunds. The lady had had one customer that day who had lost most of his money.
Amazon were very quick to respond assuring me it was a 'technical error' and no charge will be made to me. I shall wait and see....

Tripps wrote:So £22.99 for 12 months - That'll do.

Tripps, are you on unlimited fibre broadband with Plusnet? Fibre has only just become available in our village and we haven't changed yet.

Our account with Plusnet has no fixed term, but they now seem to want to get everyone onto fixed term contracts as with smartphone companies. At present we are on a monthly bill of:
£12.99 `Plusnet Value' broadband (10GB included). No fixed term contract.
£15.99 Line rental
£5 Anytime calls
Total: £33.98

The restriction to 10GB is OK because we don't download much and don't stream films etc. They've now offered the following but it doesn't interest us because we don't need the unlimited broadband:
£15.49 for 18 months on an 18 month contract (Unlimited broadband)
£15.99 Line rental
£5 Anytime calls
Total: £36.48

I'm more interested by a further offer which is on fibre because the extra speed would be more useful than extra GB:
£20.49 Unlimited Fibre (Speed: 40 Mbps), on an 18 month contract. If Anytime calls and line rental remain as above then it gives:
Total: £41.48 per month.

That seems expensive to me but they claim: "One of the reasons we are unable offer you broadband at a lower rate is where you live at present, it is more expensive to supply broadband to you. This is due to to the number of suppliers in your area. At the moment there are only 2 suppliers in your area which is the reason we are charged more by our suppliers." I don't know what they mean by suppliers - I thought BT was the only supplier.

What are the conditions of these broadband contracts? Do they charge you if you leave before the contract ends?

We must have a lot of available providers in Barlick as there are a lot of cheaper deals than Tizer's

Sky have just hiked their broadband prices and, as of December 1st, I'll be paying £17.40 line rental and £8 for unlimited calls which does now include calls to mobiles. The 17MB ADSL unlimited broadband service is free.

Thanks Kev, it's useful to know what deals other folk get!

I've just checked the Plusnet website - looks like he gave me just one of their current deals - so I'm not special Line rent £16.99 + free broadband, with anytime calls added for £6.00.

I don't have fibre connection, I find that the ordinary is quite fast enough for my needs. I use it a lot (too much?) and the speed is proportionate to the speed of my brain. I don't download large files such as films, but I watch quite a lot of live events, such as chess tournaments, and the horse auctions. I've just checked, and find I use from 20 - 30 Gbs per month.

I'd be a bit suspicious of fibre which didn't come fully to the house. A copper tail doesn't seem ideal to me. I'm very reluctant to switch any service, being mindful of Hutbers Law - 'Improvement = deterioration'.

I'm still sticking out with EE, a special, given to the last hangers oners of an obsolete service they shut down and it was a sweetener to stay. £20 all in, Line, rental, anytime UK calls & anytime international to 30 countries and 500 minutes to UK Mobiles. Standard (17Mb/s) unlimited broadband. Funny numbers are charged extra, but most months its just the £20. Way better than what they advertise on their website.

Barlicks Exchange Data : https://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/LCBAN
Tiz's Exchange Data : https://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/WWBURR

Barlick for once isn't the bottom of the pile.

I am quite happy with the Talktalk offering except for the fact I think I have got a £5 boost to my international calls that I don't need. My fault, I got lost in the choices when setting the Fibre contract up. I am waiting for my next monthly statement when it will be clearer because I will have the simple bill with no one time charges for the change over. I'll report. Connection is rock solid at just under 40mps and the smart TV likes it, I've got quite addicted to play it again to fill the gaps I used to fill with the old Sony recorder. Now I have working graphics the FM3 likes it as well.....
I think back many a time to the wonders of dial-up before ADSL.... It makes you wonder how we put up with it.
Later.... I have just noticed that the icons on my desktop on Ubuntu have sprouted numbers.... (and a letter t on the wastebin) Anybody know what this is all about? (they seem to be working as normal.....)

Can't cast any light on your Icon numbers, its not something I've come across.

Further to the talk-talk customer, I got some more of the story when I took the machine back, Talk-talk rang them the day after (while I had the machine) and admitted their database had been compromised. It didn't involve bank or card details apparently. Which explains the scammer trying to extract it from the customer. I went snooping around and found this from February :

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/f ... -customers

The story sounds very similar to what the customer told me, except they didn't get any money out of them.

I knew they'd been hacked and while Talktalk say no account details were compromised the hackers got enough to make their scam more plausible. For instance the one yesterday said he could give me my account number and address.
The numbers on the icons haven't appeared since......

Stanley wrote:I have just noticed that the icons on my desktop on Ubuntu have sprouted numbers....

Have you been buying your baccy from a shady dealer?

I tried to get through to Plusnet a number of times yesterday on the `I'm thinking of leaving' voicemail line that Tripps mentioned but every time it says the waiting time is 15 minutes and I can't cope with holding on the phone for that long. I'll try again and if I still can't get through quickly I'll look for different ways of contacting them. They've done the usual thing of leaving me on a poor deal because I've been loyal and I'll be able to get unlimited fibre for less than I'm currently paying for non-fibre and 10GB/month limit by just asking for what they offer new customers. (If ever I can get through to them!)

No Tiz and it's not happened again..... Your experience with Plusnet is so typical. The last thing these companies want is 'face to face' contact with their customers. Up to press, Talktalk customer communications appear to be OK.

It's mind boggling now....I still can't get through to them on the phone. They won't discuss it via the so-called Help Assistant or the Online Chat option. I've posted my complaint in their forum `Your Feedback' page but there are others complaining about not being able to get any response out of the company. It's so unlike the Plusnet of the past. I joined 8 years ago and it was all fine. I've got to admit that I've almost never had any technical problems. But this is very frustrating...if I can't get through to them I can't cancel my account and go elsewhere. It could come down to me contacting the CEO and PR team.

"It's so unlike the Plusnet of the past"

I would agree. It took me a while to get through - in fact I gave up and went back the next day - that's when I used Option 3.There was a time when you got to speak to someone very quickly.

What about trying this Plusnet twitter
My lad tells me that companies respond better to twitter since they fear the problem getting more exposure. Seems unnecessarily complicated to me. Stick at it though - I'm sure you'll emerge the winner.

PS - remind them that they still describe their customer service as 'award winning.'

PPS just had a look at the 'twitter feed' - realised I don't have the faintest idea what to do next.
Perhaps I need a twitter account (no chance), or one of my grandchildren to explain it. I tried the phone, and they said 15 minutes. I think I'd wait.

Not sure if it is OK to put this on here (I thought we had a For Sale topic) - I have for sale an Epson Stylus DX8400 printer with instruction book & new black ink £15, - may need a clean as it has stood for a little while. Also a hardly used Belkin 'N' Wireless Router £10

Tripps, I went into the Plusnet forum - its under the `Community' button at the top of their page. You need to make a separate username and password for the forums, it's not the one you have for the main Plusnet site. Then I clicked on the sub-forum called `Your Feedback' and posted my problem there. I think the secret is to post a firm but polite request for help and an outline of the problem - too many people just rant and then wonder why they don't get any replies. I had several replies and one of them from a Plusnet person who was helpful. He said if I phoned the `Options' number just then the waiting time was 2 minutes...and he was right (or he had given a heads up to the Options team to fast-track my call!).

I spoke to a polite, clear-spoken man called Dan who, after hearing my brief summary, took one look at my account and said "Oooh, that's a bit expensive, especially when it isn't fibre"! I told him how I could get unlimited fibre and 38Mbps speed from TalkTalk for £8.75/month - that's on TalkTalk's main web page at the moment. I ended up with an arrangement for unlimited fibre and 40Mbps guaranteed speed for 18 months at £8.50/month. My line rental stays the same at £16.99/m (which is cheaper than TalkTalk) and the Anytime calls stay at £6/m (apparently they cannot do any discounts on that). A BT engineer will come on Friday afternoon two weeks from now and fix it all up. I'm happy with all that, it's a lot better than the deal I had before and it means we can cope better with the influx of baby photos and baby videos from my sister-in-law who has two new grandchildren! I'll report back on progress when the fibre is installed.

Don't clap hands yet but it looks as though you have penetrated their firewall! I wish you well.
Moh, you are allowed to post wherever you want. I'm afraid that the country is awash with redundant computer peripherals that have been overtaken by progress. I have a pile of such stuff and will shortly get my daughter to come up and transport the lot down to the recycling centre where I am told there is a place for disposal. The eventual trigger for this was a conversation with Pluggy and I think it was Kev. Nobody is interested in the stuff and so the bin is the only alternative even though it is all in working condition.

I have to agree with Stanley's comments on second-hand computer stuff, nobody seems to want it unless it's some latest top price trendy gadget. But the same applies to a lot of other stuff these days; austerity or no austerity, folk have got used to having everything new and often getting it on credit.

I think Tripps's son is right that I might have been better to use Twitter to get Plusnet to respond. But like him I'm a Twitter virgin and would have to set up an account. I clicked on the Twitter `Register Now' button but it then demanded that I give my full name and an email address or phone number. It wouldn't let me register if I left both of these blank. And underneath, it said "Others will be able to find you by email or phone number when provided." In other words, any of the millions of people worldwide who use Twitter would have my email address or phone number. No wonder the scammers have such an easy time! As they used to say in the NoW, "I made an excuse and left".

I once saw an interesting key fob. It was the old memory card out of the original Amstrad, removed when it was upgraded to 512kb (those were the days!) I remember changing mine and being at the forefront of technology! I wished I had saved mine and done the same. With that in mind....



Here's the defective graphics card we took out of the FM3. I like the sculptural quality of the heat sink and even before this topic cropped up I was thinking of mounting it on a piece of nicely polished mahogany. In 100 years it will definitely be a curiosity!

See THIS for a BBC report on the Talktalk fiasco. At the moment you can't access the site to change your passwrod, as soon as it is up again I shall do this. Beyond that there isn't a lot anyone can do. Now I have even more proof of the dangers of mass data. If you aren't affected, don't feel too comfortable. There are intelligent and dangerous people out there and nobody is 'safe'.

Have we lost posts from this thread in the last few days? It shows the last post before Stanley's as being on Sunday. Surely we've had posts in this thread over the week?

Either TalkTalk have poorer security or someone is specifically targeting them. They've been hacked several times this year. There was a spate of denial of service attacks on Wednesday, so it wasn't just TalkTalk unless their attack was a coincidence. But I haven't heard of any of the other targets being compromised - yet. The CEO of TalkTalk didn't inspire confidence on Radio 4 this morning when she couldn't answer the the question of whether customers' data is encrypted on their servers. Companies should always field someone with the technical knowledge and who is equipped to answer the obvious questions. The crisis management consultants will have been tearing their hair out listening to her.

I don't think we have lost any posts Tiz, I seem to remember Stanleys post of his graphics card as being around for a while. Have we not discusses computer related matters in other threads?