Talk Talk poor service

Jon_Stubberfield

I'd like some advice on how to proceed with my predicament, has anybody had anything similar to this;

We have been with Talk Talk since the middle of January this year. I understand we are tied to an 18 month contract.

It was satisfactory service to begin with, they offered us an instillation time of two weeks, fine.

On the 25th February we were due to move into an new home. On around the 18th/19th February we contacted Talk Talk to advise of the house move. They said that there was a cost for this and we begrudgingly accepted this.

Within 72 hours we were contacted by a representative at Talk Talk.

AND SO IT BEGINS...

We were offered a connection date of 28th March. This is in excess of 1 month!

We had already explained that we are both self employed travel agents and that we require internet for business use, this is besides the point, fairly erroneous really but thought I'd mention this... I'm not just watching fluffy kittens on You Tube of an evening, I NEED the internet.

I exclaimed in a polite manner to the member of staff that this was not satisfactory. I believe it was reasonable for me to have said to the member of staff that up to 14 days is sensible, I wasn't expecting miracles and had they have said 14 days - although disappointed, this wouldn't have been cause for complaint.

I was told that it was because there were no engineers available until this date and that they had to rely on BT Openreach. I'm not sure why I was told this, perhaps they were after sympathy but to be honest, as their customer, I'm not interested in their outsourcing agreements. I want them to fulfil their obligations.

I believe this conversation happened on the Monday. I made a point of being calm and collected without raising my voice. I offered them 2 options for which I would be satisfied;

1, Re-schedule the installation date to a date that is more sensible.
2, Cancel my contract so that I can go elsewhere.

Had they agreed to either of these I would not have been angry, simply a little disappointed.

They told me that they could not change the date and they were unwilling to even contact BT Openreach to even entertain the request. Moreover they said that if I wished to cancel then their would be a cancellation charge of £225.

I said that I would give them until the Thursday at 5pm to give them a chance to consider what I had asked them. They told me their would be no point in calling back as their is nothing they can do. I maintained my position and just repeated I'll contact you on Thursday afternoon, it's only fair that I give them the opportunity to see what they can do.

Of course on the Thursday they had done nothing.

So a couple of weeks pass by, we've had to go and purchase dongles costing us around £60 and we have to pay for 1 months internet use with Talk Talk despite us not even being able to use the service during this period.

Here is the icing on the cake... the day prior to Talk Talks arrival, we receive a text message from BT Openreach saying;

'Good news! It isn't necessary for an engineer to visit your premise to set up your new line, so the visit that was scheduled 28/03/11 will not take place. You can set up your router and start using your new phone and broadband service from Monday morning.'
:mad:

Anyone got any advice on how I can claim for compensation for this unfair treatment?

Sorry for the long read!

macman

I'm puzzled as you why you entered into a new contract only 5 weeks before moving house, assuming that you knew you were moving?
Are you on a business contract with TT? If not then you are technically in breach of your contract anyway if you use it for running a business. A residential contract does not offer any SLA, and therefore you are not going to be able to claim any compensation.
3 weeks is about average for provisioning a new line (which is presumably what is involved here), 4 weeks is a little slow but hardly the end of the world. BT OR have a monopoly on the local loop and therefore TT have no control over the dates that are offered.
If you want a priority service then you have to pay for it. If the internet is so crucial to your business, then why choose one of the least reliable suppliers, with the worst customer service, on the market?

Jon_Stubberfield

Thanks for your reply.

We weren't aware that we'd be moving within that time. That's somewhat beside the point though surely? On TT website they say that it should be up to 14 days... this is reasonable.

We're just on a normal contract with TT... what difference does this make? We don't exceed our usage.

You say that 3 weeks is the norm, 4 weeks is a little slow... this was closer to 6 weeks. Considering we pay £35 per month for our contract and had no use of our internet then surely we should be offered 6 weeks free internet use?

I know that BT OR have a monopoly over the 'local loop', but this is not my concern. It is up to TT to look after me suitably, I am their customer, I am not a customer of BT OR.

What time delay would warrant recompense? 8 weeks? 16 weeks? 6 months? a year? Lets say they said that they would not be able to connect my service for a year, would I have the right to compensation then?

I was unaware that Talk Talk service was so poor, they're a very large organisation, I would have expected them to have a good customer service department. They portray themselves as an ethically grounded company... I see no evidence of this.

Mark_In_Hampshire

The big players all have fairly appalling reputations for customer service, all seemingly getting steadily worse, the exception being O2 which more people seem happy with. But O2 don't do business connections anyway any more.

You're right in that it's an unacceptably long time. However all providers supplying phone lines or things down phone lines have to use the monopoly company BT Openreach. There have been reported delays of up to three months getting new lines in recently.

It has no competition other than in cabled areas since VM cable is their own network and their lines are their own.

Funny really in that we were all sold the benefits of privatisation - no long waits for lines, better service, competition etc and actually, what we did was create a privatised monopoly instead of a public one. Anyway I digress.

Unfortunately though I have to side with macman in that you're the one that has breached the contract by moving home, you accept this, so your negotiating position isn't strong. In theory will find the lead times for a "new line" identical regardless of who you use, unless you get a cancellation slot.

For business connections, I'd look at the lines of AAISP, IDNET and Zen Internet in particular. Forget Talk Talk, BT and the like.

In conclusion - no it doesn't seem very fair, but when you have a monopoly with the degree of power BT has, the people to criticise are the people who created the situation - and that (I write as a Conservative voter) was the last Conservative government.

macman

Jon_Stubberfield wrote: »

Thanks for your reply.

We weren't aware that we'd be moving within that time. That's somewhat beside the point though surely? On TT website they say that it should be up to 14 days... this is reasonable.

We're just on a normal contract with TT... what difference does this make? We don't exceed our usage.

You say that 3 weeks is the norm, 4 weeks is a little slow... this was closer to 6 weeks. Considering we pay £35 per month for our contract and had no use of our internet then surely we should be offered 6 weeks free internet use?

I know that BT OR have a monopoly over the 'local loop', but this is not my concern. It is up to TT to look after me suitably, I am their customer, I am not a customer of BT OR.

What time delay would warrant recompense? 8 weeks? 16 weeks? 6 months? a year? Lets say they said that they would not be able to connect my service for a year, would I have the right to compensation then?

I was unaware that Talk Talk service was so poor, they're a very large organisation, I would have expected them to have a good customer service department. They portray themselves as an ethically grounded company... I see no evidence of this.

If you're on a residential contract then you are in breach if using it for business. In reality, TT don't give a monkey's what you use it for, but you can't then turn around and demand compensation for loss of business. You are paying a very cheap rate and so you can't expect a priority service.

TT/poor service?
I suggest that you do a little more research on this board...

kwikbreaks

For once this isn't TalkTalk's fault. It is OpenReach lead times causing the delay. As a monopoly they don't have any real need to provide a good service.

OpenReach weren't needed to provide the phone connection as it was already in place at the exchange but they are needed to connect up the tie pair for the ADSL to a DSLAM (in this case probably TalkTalk's but it would have been no different whoever the ISP was.

All the rest of the comments about poor TalkTalk service, need for a business service for business use, etc. etc. are all perfectly correct but imo irrelevant to the cause of the delay. There is an outside chance that a decent ISP may have been able to negotiate a faster connection but OpenReach are pretty much a law unto themselves.

Jon_Stubberfield

I'm not suggesting that they should provide me with compensation for any loss of business, I am suggesting that they discount the 6 weeks that we have paid for not having the use of the service that we are paying for.