Help! Talk Talk Cancellation Fee

So you didn't inform them in writing then that you were cancelling within your minimum term due to their breach of contract?

Still arguing the toss with them, have sent one letter already and received a standard response from them yesterday "charges are valid and cannot be waived...." I will be sending the following response in a day or so, it might be useful for someone to use as a basis for their complaint letter to talk talk or anyone else?


Dear Mrs xxxxxxxx,

Thank you for you response, dated xxxxxxxxxxx, to my letter regarding charges made to my account.

Whilst I appreciate that under normal circumstances you would be within your rights to charge a cancellation fee I would still dispute the legitimacy of the charges in this instance. Had I been receiving the service I was paying for I would not have had reason to cancel my contract. I realise that faults occur and these can take time to rectify, however, it is not reasonable to expect a customer to wait months and still have the issue unresolved. OFCOM states on their website that a time scale in excess of 8 weeks is unreasonable and cause for complaint. I would also like to draw your attention to the following statement from OFCOM;

“If the contract and any early termination charges are fair, the supplier may insist on consumers fulfilling their commitments or paying the charges.
This does, of course, work both ways.
If the supplier is unable to fulfil its own commitments, it may be required to pay compensation to consumers”

Your commitment was to provide me with the contracted service and I was contracted to pay for this service. I paid throughout the time my account was open, although for a significant time I was not receiving the service as set out in my contract. Talk Talk did not fulfil its commitment and therefore broke its side of the contract. It should really be me asking for compensation, and not Talk talk.

I would also like to point out that I was a customer of Talk Talk previously at this address. Having suffered the same issues then as I have done recently I cancelled my contract with you. At that point you attempted to charge a cancellation fee, I queried this for the exact same reasons I am querying the charge on my most recent account and it was immediately waived. As Talk Talk admitted they had no clear grounds to make this charge then I would be grateful for an explanation of why you feel you do now, as a clear precedent has already been set by yourselves. I am also very disappointed that you felt the need to refer my account to a debt collection agency before I had received a response to my initial letter of complaint which has subsequently incurred extra fees on the account.

I would appreciate it if you could investigate the points raised above and respond as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely


Will post an update when i get a response but i'm expecting the same drivel i got in response to my first letter. Not sure where to go from there, Watchdog perhaps?

I can't see how they can charge anything if you were never connected? Did they tell you why they cancelled the order?

Letter from Talk Talk arrived today in response to the one a few posts above.

Having carefully checked my account they have admitted that they did have a reasonable amount of time to rectify the fault. As a result of this they have waived the contract breakage fee and called off the debt collectors :j

Whether this is the real reason or whether its because they had already set a precedent for themselves when they waived it on the previous account i don't know.

It just goes to show, if you think your right then fight them for it, a few hours of my time and a couple of stamps has saved me £60. But to be honest it's not so much the money (although thats an obvious bonus) it became more of a principle thing.

So take note Maisy, it sounds to me like they have no right to ask for a breakage fee from the info you've posted, send a complaint letter if you are in the right.