TakTalk and Tiscali

JanMGreen

I can't believe how TalkTalk is treating its new former Tiscali customers. Today I got a letter referring to me as one of their 'most valued customers' and offering to add Weekend Talk to my package and reduce my price to £14.99 a month from the £15.99 I had been paying Tiscali.

Very generous, you may think, if the recipient has a Tiscali phone line, but as BT is my phone provider and I don't wish TalkTalk to take over my BT line, I will just continue to get the 8Mb broadband I'm getting now - but from January at £19.99, £4 more expensive than Tiscali!

So they're actually giving me no choice at all but to accept their proffered favour and ditch BT for them, if I don't want to pay £4 more a month - except the choice to resist TalkTalk's smarmy pressure techniques and switch to another broadband provider!

tonymc

Same problem here. I have a further problem in that I'm fairly sure that when I signed up to BT for their inclusive weekend/evening calls package (bundled in with line rental) it was a 12 or 18 month deal.

As with the poster above, if I am still locked into BT I will either have to:

(1) Pay whatever the cost is to bale out of the contract with BT and sign up with Talk Talk (that said, I could get anytime phone, line rental and internet for £28 as against approx £35 I am paying now for BT phone bill plus Tiscali internet)

(2) change to BT but this would mean the hassle of making sure all of the family's contacts, on-line accounts, subscriptions to forums ete etc would have to be changed to a new e-mail address

(3) pay an additional £4 per month for absolutely no further benefit!!

The joys of consumer choice :mad:

macman

It's simple economics. If they LLU your line, they reduce their overheads, and so can lower your charges. While they continue to pay BT the wholesale line rental rate (which I think is around £9?) there's not much room for reduction.

andyinyorkshire

JanMGreen have the same problem.

Apparently I can cancel my contract, however is this contract agreed by both parties or just me?...

if I cancelled my 12 month agreed contact or decrease my payments then I would still be charged for this.

if Tiscali/TalkTalk increase or cancel my agreed 12 month contract nothing!?!

Now i have to look at signing up to a new 12 month contract! (shall post which one i am going for later...)

tonymc - save yourself the hassle with email addresses, register a cheap domain something like £2 for 2 years etc, ensure you can forward/redirect emails with it then give everyone the [EMAIL="whatevername@newdomain.me.uk"]whatevername@newdomain.me.uk[/EMAIL] (which is redirected to whatever email account you want making it easy to move or even a web mail address (which doesn't have to change when you move isp's)).

edit: balmore correct - can cancel now that they have changed contract.
I had mean't to say that they have changed the contract whilst into it, yet if I wanted to do this such as wanting to pay less or just cancel it I would have been laughed at or had to pay the remaining fee! How this fair is beyond me!
On principle I am now going to have to accept another tied in 12/18 month contract... unless they change the goal posts!

balmore_2

No, andyinyorkshire, you don't have to pay the balance of your contract with talktalk/tiscali. They don't say this in their letter, but their first point of contact and supervisor in customer services (a joke, surely) confirmed that the contract can be ended in this case with no penalty. This position confirmed by OfCom when I complained about it all to them.

It's an appalling way to treat customers - unilaterally obliging them to take services they don't want and which have other financial consequences or paying 33% more on a contract which in may case still has 16 months to run. I'm surprised it's legal, but OfCom say it is.

tonymc

andyinyorkshire wrote: »

tonymc - save yourself the hassle with email addresses, register a cheap domain something like £2 for 2 years etc, ensure you can forward/redirect emails with it then give everyone the [EMAIL="whatevername@newdomain.me.uk"]whatevername@newdomain.me.uk[/EMAIL] (which is redirected to whatever email account you want making it easy to move or even a web mail address (which doesn't have to change when you move isp's)).

Good idea, but unfortunately the problem is that my wife and myself both have tiscali e-mail accounts which we use for banking, loyalty cards, other forums etc. I can foresee that if we change our e-mail addresses we will miss out a few of these sites (and these will undoubtedly be the ones which will incur the highest charges!!).

What we want to do is avoid this hassle now, and it seems that the only way is to remain with Tiscali.

That said, I have just called BT regarding the cancellation charge for my calling plan, and it would be around £40. If I remain with BT's call plan and choose not to upgrade my Tiscali account, I will be £30 worse off due to Tiscali's additional charges.

Interestingly, I was also told that it is possible to "take" an addres over to another provider, so in theory I could use my [EMAIL="XXX@tixcali.co.uk"]XXX@tixcali.co.uk[/EMAIL] address with another ISP. Not sure how true this is - possibly marketing hype to tempt me over to BT?

macman

Takes about an hour to get a GMail address, and change your online accounts over? Once done, with an ISP-independent address you never have to worry again, and can change your ISP whenever you like.

tonymc

I guess the problem is that it all has to be done manually, and whilst I have most of my details to hand, I'm fairly sure that isn't the case for DW!! Regardless of using a domain e-mail, I am still going to be £30 or £45 out of pocket that to the ineptitude of Tiscali/Talk Talk in pushing this "alignment" of their charges through.

What I am really hacked off about is that Tiscali/Talk Talk have only given 6 weeks notice of this - they must know that people will be locked into contracts with their existing phone providers. It really does smack of extortion on their part.

Maybe TalkTalk Company Representative could shed some light on this sharp practice??

macman

Excellent opportunity to dump CPW and switch to a decent ISP. Well worth an hour or so of your time.
If you're not prepared to switch email, then you are stuck with TT for life anyway, so you won't lose out by letting them LLU your line and take over your line rental.

tonymc

TBH, we've had very little in the way of problems with Tiscali other than the odd occasion when the servers appear to have been down. I don't mind staying with them - it's just the way in which the "upgrade" has been enforced on people with no apparent regard to any contract they may have with other providers.

shauniebabe

Has anyone phoned and spoke to customer service to see if they will reduce this price? I have phoned twice now and both times they say someone will ring me back but no call! Im going to rephone tomorow!