It was billed as ‘free broadband forever’. But UK telecoms provider TalkTalk‘s offer has led to a flood of complaints.

In today’s Guardian Money, Miles Brignall reports on the consequences. The sub-head summarises the situation perfectly: ‘It sounded too good to be true, and for many, it was’. Thousand have been left waiting to be connected, and can’t get through to TalkTalk’s customer service centre.

It’s easy to get carried away with marketing hype. We all love a bargain, and ‘free’ is the biggest of the lot. But the sayings ‘you don’t get something for nothing’ and ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ are based on hard experience.

In the case of TalkTalk, the broadband offer was based on switching your landline to the company – prompting calls to ban TalkTalk from calling it free broadband in its ads as you had to buy something else as a condition. Despite that, it’s not a bad offer but bargain basement products usually come with awful customer service. (What do you expect?)

Sky is a worse offender, as I reported in an earlier post. Its talk of free broadband is a classic case of dangling a great offer in front of consumers and then saying you can’t get it for a year but we can offer a more expensive product in the meantime. I’ll be sticking to Virgin Net, who offer a good service at a reasonable price and every now and again upgrade me without charge. I’m happy to buy my own lunch!