Talk Talk Complaints

richard121

Box_of_Tricks wrote: »

I'm new to the forums and am wondering if anyone can give me a bit of help.... I've been disputing some money that TalkTalk are trying to bill me for an old Tiscali account I had, which was cancelled in August of last year. I was in contract at the time of cancellation, however because I had had to spend so much of my life without the service I was supposed to have actually working (and therefore so much of my life on the phone to their ridiculous excuse for Customer Services and writing letters demanding to be reimbursed for the calls), they eventually wrote off the cancellation fee of something like £88 and the monthly rental that they had continued to charge me for months after I cancelled. This took me months to get agreed. Months of calling and waiting for 30 minutes to be answered, only to have to explain the whole story again, be put on hold and then hung up on.. Over and over again... They also never sent anything in writing confirming that the fee had been written off despite my asking repeatedly.

Anyway, then this weekend I got a letter from a debt collection agency called Roxburghe saying I still owe the money. I am going to write to TalkTalk, yet again and try to get them to issue a deadlock letter so that I can try to get Otelo involved, as I've read on the forum, but my question is, have I shot myself in the foot by paying off some of the debt today?

The rep at Roxburghe said that if I paid some of it off I could still dispute the debt and get a refund if my dispute is upheld... but I'm worried that that's not the case as I'm wondering if paying some of it is taken as acknowledging the debt. Is it? I have never acknowledged the debt. I only paid some because I was worried about my credit rating and am in the middle of being credit checked to move house and the guy said that I could still dispute it once I had paid.

Can anyone help? I'm feeling a little like I have no choice, but to pay off the money because I never got anything in writing...

I can't even face calling TalkTalk again. I have spent literally hundreds and months calling them. How can a company get away with having such abyssmal customer service?! And it's not even free! Argh!

Anyway, any help anyone could give me would be much appreciated.

Thanks

RE BOX OF TRICKS

If you want to take your complaint to Otelo and want a 'Deadlock letter' to do this I recommend sending a letter setting out what you consider reasonable as a 'full and final resolution'. I would send this by Special Delivery so it’s signed for and the letter is tracked, (so Talk Talk cannot pretend they have not received it), I would address this to the CEO. I now will only deal with Talk Talk by written letter as I have found them not to be entirely consistent and trustworthy.

Also talk to Otelo and Consumer Direct on how to set out this letter. Consumer Direct also has form letters on its website.

You could also put in a 'Subject Access Request' demanding all the information Talk Talk has on you with a payment of £10. The Information Commission Office has form letters on this on its website. By law they have to furnish you with this within 40 days (Data Protection Act 1998).

You never know this might even keep them honest!

consumerdirect.gov.uk
ico.gov.uk
otelo.org.uk
adviceguide.org.uk



As to your other enquiry asking if you are liable I do not know, talk to CAB and Consumer Direct, they are sure to know.


I hope this is some help.

happycat43

TalkTalk have taken £212.13 from my bank account over the last five months. I am not a customer of theirs and because of this they won't help me. I think this qualifies as theft.

I was a customer, up to May 2009. Then we moved house, changed our number and left TalkTalk. In December 2009 they started taking our money. Due to a domestic !!!!-up we only realised on Wednesday night. (I know, not good enough, but I'm not the one stealing).

My husband tried calling their helpline on Wednesday evening at about 7pm. After 18 minutes he was getting frustrated so I had a turn. After 35 minutes I had been told that I needed to get the receiving Talktalk bank account details from my bank, then it could be sorted. I later found out this was neither possible nor true. (Rajish and Alisha on 0870 444 1820 - thanks for wasting my evening)

I went into my bank, Halifax, on Thursday. A lovely man there tried calling Talktalk for me at about 16:25 (a genuine thank you to Halifax for great customer service). After 1 hour and 5 minutes we had:

- twice been given the name of the man who now has my phone number. To Mr Gordon Clarke, whoever and wherever you are, I hope you are enjoying your free calls on my old number. (To Nicholas and Adriano on 0870 444 1820 - I believe this is a breach of the data protection act.)
- been ranted at and hung up on before I could even explain the problem. (Thanks Riesa on 0845 6553 528. You get paid for being rude - nice one!)
- been told it was a case of fraud, but they couldn't take my details because the computer form would not open (Nicholas and Adriano again). I don't believe it is fraud, but had to give up at that point because they were locking up the bank!

The conversations were so ludicrous we got an audience of Halifax staff in the open-plan branch. People were swapping Talktalk horror stories and there was a Blitz spirit.

I have now claimed the money back from Halifax (another trip to the bank) using the DIRECT DEBIT GUARANTEE.

To the Talktalk rep who sometimes posts - I would like an apology (at the very least), explanation and compensation for my time, petrol, parking and 35 minutes on the phone.

MrsSMW

I joined this site just to ask advice about Talk Talk's complaints address, just as on the first page of this very long thread. I cant believe how many people are having the same problems with this sham of a company!!

My complaint in a nutshell is them threatening us with disconnection and bailiffs if we didnt pay 2 months outstanding payments (we only were due the previous months) and told us that WE had cancelled the direct debit and hadnt paid the bill and if we didnt pay that months and the next months they would send debt collectors in. We hadnt cancelled the direct debit, nor had the bank. After 2 1/2 hours on their 5p a minute "helpline" they decided it was their fault after all and there had been a problem requesting the direct debit payments that month!

It goes into more detail than that, but I wrote a complaint letter when we had this months bill, asking them for the £6.41 it cost us to ring them (to sort out THEIR problem) to be removed from our bill, but can I hell find out an address to send it to. I tried their website where you can upload a document, but I'm not convinced it went and I refuse to ring the so-called helpline anymore and speak to another muppet!

We didnt even ask for this, we were quite happy with Tiscali and now we find we cant even change to a supplier of our choice just because our line is wiht TalkTalk. What a sham company they are. If I dont get any joy in the next couple of days, I shall be sending the complaint to OFCOM and Watchdog!

keefyb

I have just moved house and I am trying to set up with Talk Talk. We were previously in a cable area with Virgin, but as we were moving to a non-cable area I tried to get Talk Talk up and running. I phoned them on the 8th to say we wanted to use them. The woman on the line said we could use the current number and there would be no re-connection fee, just the normal £30, so I asked for TalkTalk Pro and broadband. They said 5- 7 days to kick in so would be fine for the move. We then moved in to the house and found the line was dead... tried using the order tracker and that wasn't working.... waited a few more days. I called customer help yesterday and they said the system wasn't working so she would call me back on Wednesday as she had the day off today, and so did her manager who apparently was the only other person who could call me back. I thought that was too long so I called again today. I was told that the order had been logged in twice so they had to cancel both and put a new order in. I now won't be getting connected until JUNE 1ST!! a full 23 days after placing the order.... plus the phone line is dead... so we will only have mobiles until then- no way of receiving calls or calling 999!!! ... I asked to speak to her manager, who was busy and would call me back, but she said that her Manager would say the same.... I tried to find a different customer complaints number, but the only one I can find is the same one I called before... Any help or advice would be great!!

recyclotron

No response from Talk Talk on this board - am I surprised ?
My router fault recurs every couple of weeks, so I call TT and ask for a new router, but as I fixed the problem myself they can offer me nothing. I tell them its a new router or I'm off to O2 and they tell me to have a nice day. I call TT to request a MAC code and am told that I can have a new router no problem. I tell them that it is too late I now want a MAC code to transfer. They say that customer support in India is not their problem. I say it is. Good bye Talk Talk.

Bamber19

Posted about my issue before but since discovering the TalkTalk Rep looks at this thread I figured I'd post again.

I had been a Tiscali customer for a few years without any issues.

I then moved away from home for about a year but there were still people at home using the phone.

During this time our broadband was hardly used but I noticed when I was back every so often that the broadband connection seemed slow and a speedtest confirmed that it was running at 200kbps rather than the 4-5 Mbps that i experienced with Tiscali (On an 8Mb package which is what i remained on with TalkTalk)

I should explain that absolutely nothing about our home setup changed, nothing was ever plugged in in a different way or moved, all wires and devices stayed in the same place.

A complaint was sent off but things took some time as I wasn't at home.

Once I moved back here permanently I made contact again, although by now (perhaps in response to the previous complaint) the speed was now around 1Mbps. After a few messages the situation was passed onto the Tech department.

When I received a call from the Tech department the lady asked me to run a speedtest then plug into the test socket, i agreed and she went off the phone saying she'd call back in 5 minutes (as I was going to be unplugging the phone line) I ran a speedtest and got a speed of around 1Mbps. Now before I unplugged anything other than the first cable that goes into the phone socket I asked someone else in the house where the test socket was. This revealed that it was somewhere in the attic that would take more than 10 minutes to access...

So i expected when i got a call back from Talk Talk to have to tell them to wait a while before calling back again... however, the lady jumped straight into a claim that she could see my line was better already and to run a speedtest, I did this and amazingly, would you believe it, I was getting a speed around 5Mbps... I was very quickly told that this therefore proved it was a problem with my equipment/wires and the call was ended.

Isn't that amazing, i hadn't changed a thing but TalkTalk thought I had and coincidentally my service improved miraculously. Straight away I was thinking, due to the high likelihood they had temporarily unthrottled my connection that as soon as i disconnected they would throttle again and it'd go back to 1Mbps, and sure enough within 15 minutes I was back to 1Mbps.

Over the next week or so my speed was actually better for a while but now it's consistently between 900kbps and 1.1Mbps.

I've tried to join the talktalk forums but because I have a tiscali account number i can't (and on the experience i've had thus far i'm hardly going to commit to a talktalk contract)

I would like to hear someone from TalkTalk's explanation of the joke that occured with the tech department miraculously finding a solution to my problem for 15 minutes without me doing what they suggested.

To me it seems they've throttled the connection when they've seen it wasn't getting much use but now that it is why not respond to the complaint be permanently sorting the issue instead of temporarily solving it and lying to a customer.

Bullwinkle

Looking for your opinion on my complaint. I had no TV/broadband service between May and September 2008 when I upgraded to a Tiscali package, called customer services over 30 times, was told of conflicting problems and engineers failed to turn up. I was still being billed for my old Homechoice account and the new package, plus BT line rental which Tiscali should have taken over. Also, four engineers had to come to fix my telephone points, causing damage to my walls and leaving exposed cables.

My complaint was transferred to another person in High Level Complaints at the end of 2008 and it took me until this April to finally speak to the new HLC guy in person. This was after 27 calls via Tiscali and TalkTalk head offices, receptionists emailing him on my behalf, countless voice messages and a message forwarded by the complaints department, who told me my case had been flagged as resolved.

I have been paid £400 but this covers the payments I made to Tiscali for no service, Homechoice and BT bills and damage to my home. He has come back with £150 as a full and final offer which as a level of compensation I find derisory. He has also provided no explanation why he ignored my messages.

Do you think this is an adequate amount to receive as compensation?

jenheiffer

I signed up for TalkTalk on 12/06/10 but changed my mind and managed to cancel (after spending a small fortune on phone calls) on 21/06/10.

Now this morning (24/01/10) I received a delivery via Royal Mail of a broadband router. Of course when I tried to call the 0870 number they gave for returning it they kept me waiting for ages and after asking all sorts of questions, then claimed their systems were down and I would have to call back tomorrow.
:mad::mad::mad::mad:

hermum

Glad I came on this part of the forum. I was considering switching to talk talk. I went via cashback site to check out the best deal several months ago. I then started getting loads of phone calls, told them to not call me as IF I switched I would do everything online, ( I want my cashback)I told them that if they called again I would go to a different supplier.
Stupidly took a look again the other day as I've just given notice to Virgin & now for the last 3-4 days I'm getting about 4 calls an hour, haven't got to it in time yet to answer but having googled the number it's Talk Talk.
Anyone got any suggestions on who is good?

RussJGraham

Just had a call from my mum, fairly distressed (and angry). Two TalkTalk salesmen turned up today, and just walked into her house - the door was open in the heat. When she tried to make them leave, one of them got sexually threatening with her, saying some disgusting things. My mum's not backwards in coming forwards and bodily threw them out, but was shaken and disgusted. They continued to stand in the driveway talking about her, again sexually, in loud voices.

I asked her to phone the police, but she's not happy doing that. She is going to tell her local Neighbourhood Watch, though.

This follows three months after a TalkTalk guy turned up at my door and claimed to be from BT, wanting me to sign something to say he'd been. It was obvious he wasn't from BT and eventually he admitted being from TalkTalk. I turned him away and called the police, who came out and stopped him. He claimed that he was clear he was from TalkTalk and I was abusive, and suddenly had ID he couldn't provide a few minutes before. The police called to ask me if I was telling the truth as he was considering making a complaint about my behaviour - classic bully tactics, of course. I told them to ask other people in the street if he was BT or TalkTalk. They asked, and were all told he said BT. The police moved him on, but said they were powerless to charge him with anything.

It's worth reminding people that, if you are sold anything by a TalkTalk liar, or intimidated into signing up to something, or sign something and it's not what the salesman said it was, then you have a right to cancel and a right to go to OfCom to complain. You don't have that latter right if you don't fall for it in the first place and this non-crime goes unrecorded.