Carphone Warehouse

Carphone Warehouse

Oliver Brown
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Ooh, drama. I recently received an email from a Carphone Warehouse representative asking me to remove the personal information about one of their employees I had published. Specifically, two of Charles Dunstone’s email addresses.

If one or both of the email addresses are actually personal addresses of Mr Dunstone and this is an attempt to protect them, then it’s rather futile. Firstly because I first heard of them from a commenter so someone else obviously knew it a while ago and as probably told others. Secondly, the fact that they were published for even a moment on the web means they’ve been scraped and stolen by hundreds of bots. So if they are being bombarded by emails offering cheap OEM software, fake Rolex watches, dodgy claims about various stocks or warnings about losing access to a PayPal account, I apologise.

As for the many emails from customers trying to sort out problems with their service? Well if people were getting the replies they wanted from the public emails then none of this would have happened. I should also point out that the email contained a standard disclaimer saying the correspondence was private. I figured that since it specifically regarded a public action (i.e. blatantly changing content on the site) then people would notice anyway and an explanation was in order.

As a final personal disclaimer I would like to say that unlike many others I still haven’t had any problems with TalkTalk as a customer.

AOL misleading with wireless broadband

Oliver Brown
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AOL UK (that would be Carphone Warehouse now) are advertising wireless broadband for the same price as regular broadband.

What this means is instead of getting a free ADSL modem, you get a free combined wireless router/ADSL modem allowing you to create a wireless home network with the Internet accessible from all the computers. Quite a few companies advertise a similar service as wireless broadband.

There are companies slowly appearing however offering genuine wireless broadband via WiMAX, for example now. Once the availability increases the issue of what “wireless broadband” means will become more important.

TalkTalk buys AOL UK

Oliver Brown
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In an interesting move, AOL have old of their UK business to none other than Carphone Warehouse. This will not mean in re-branding so it seems AOL and TalkTalk will remain separate. It also seems that AOL will take control of advertising through TalkTalk as part of the deal. More information is available from BBC News.

TalkTalk problems

Oliver Brown
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My post about free broadband from TalkTalk has got a fair bit of traffic, in fact it’s been the most popular page since a day after I posted. I don’t think that implies the post is any good but just that lots of people are looking for info about the offer. According to the Register, Carphone Warehouse have had to withdraw their advert claiming “free broadband” since it’s bundled and therefore not free. Personally I disagree. Since the service it’s bundled with was available before at the same price, the broadband is still technically free. The same people that made this ruling by the way also said that unlimited doesn’t have to actually mean unlimited (as with most broadband “fair use” policies) if the terms are displayed. This is far easier to disagree with since calling it unlimited is wrong both simply and technically. Anyway the comments have revealed the following issues it seems:

  • Limited P2P traffic - Sort of a non-issue since they clearly say they will limit peer-to-peer traffic. Worth noting if you didn’t know already though.
  • Limited gaming traffic - They didn’t say explicitly that this could be throttled so more of a worry.
  • Dodgy proxy server redirecting requests for non existent pages - Annoying and slightly disturbing although not a major problem. Installing Google Web Accelerator may solve this as it does it’s own proxying.
  • Generally bad service - Quite a few complaints about the service not being fast etc. Not very quantitative but certainly bad for people switching to get more speed.

Although I haven’t read the terms, it may be possible to back out of the broadband free of charge. Since it is bundled after all (you’re paying for the calling plan) you may still be able to switch providers afterwards. You’ll still have to pay the £9.99 a month though but you could just make lots of calls… Phil Jones has an unofficial guide to setting up TalkTalk broadband that bypasses a lot of the problems and can help you solve others.