So, what they don't tell you about moving house, is that you will not have a phone line. No phone, no internet and an exceedingly high mobile bill. You will also become incredibly frustrated every time you have to speak to someone in a call centre abroad who doesn't understand what you want and will not tell you why you have no phone line, what the problem is and when it will be up and running again.


We moved in on the 20th of April. A lady from TalkTalk promised our line would be up and running on this date. However, when I picked up post from our old house, there was a welcome pack which had been sent (to the wrong address), informing us that our line would be up and running on the 1st of May. On the 22nd of April I spoke to another person at TalkTalk, we had a landline and the internet was working, so I called them to double check that this would now be our new number and that the service was up and running. They confirmed this. The next day the line was dead. Hurrah!

On the 1st of May I waited patiently for the phone line to be set up. It wasn't. On the 2nd of May I called the number which TalkTalk had informed us would be our new number. A lovely lady answered and said that it was definitely her number. Cue another call to TalkTalk. Please wait 24 hours the operative told me. When 24 hours had passed and there was still no line, I called them back. Please wait 24 hours the operative told me. I am so sorry for the delay. I tweeted the company the next day. They told me to wait 48 hours. I called after said time and spoke to a charming young woman who kindly informed me we are not being charged for the service. "I should think not" was my response, "given that we do not have a service currently". She informed me that we would have to wait 10 days.

So it looks likely that it will be nearly a month since moving in before we get a phone line or internet access. It is beyond frustrating. I am using my mobile to call TalkTalk and all the other places I need to call to sort our home move out. I dread to think how much it is costing me. My free minutes ran out a long time ago and these are all 0870 numbers. There are so many places I haven't updated yet but I just can't afford to call them all from my mobile. My husband works from home regularly and I can't download my Uni work which means I am unable to keep up with our tutorials. It's utterly frustrating.

I don't know if we would have had better service with another company. We have been with TalkTalk since 2004 and have never had a problem. The line in the house we moved into was a TalkTalk line so I really don't see what the problem is.

Thank you to my Grandma for letting me write a huge batch of blog posts on her computer!