Talk Talk cuts off loyal customer and baits him with restricted access

markmas

My elderly father has had his phone calls with Talk Talk since they took over Tiscali.

Recently he decided to swap to haveing line rental and broadband with Talk Talk too. We called up and spoke to them and the switch over went fine. He had telephone and internet services.

Last week there was a message on his answerphone from someone (only now I realise it was probably Talk Talk). He just said he was from the 'Accounts department' and that there was a bill outstanding. I needed to listen to it 3 times since the callers spoken English was poor, and quality of the line he was calling from was really bad. Since he caller had not said which company he was from there was no more I could do.

Then as of the weekend the phone line and internet have been cut off. I tried to call them, phone calls are redirected to Talk Talk accounts department, which was fine, but it was closed as it was Sunday. That is fine I thought I will use the internet. But although some pages on its website are available the useful pages on their website were blocked, so for example I could not reach the 'Contact us' part of the website, even that is blocked.

I have been busy at work, so only today did I manage to get to my Father’s house at lunch time and try to call them from his phone. But there is the ridiculous situation where the call is just bounced between two menus. The automated voice says you are being redirected to the accounts department, then you press an option to pay a bill for example, then it says you are being redirected to the accounts department. I tried all the different options (there is only a total of 4) and each time it just goes around in circles. So even Talk Talks own accounts number is barred.

The frustrating thing is that Talk Talk have happily taken direct debits from him a couple of years, and now Talk Talk have messed up by presumably trying to change the direct debit and having some sort of admin problem, and as a result have cut off his services.

It would not been so bad if they had cut him off in a sensible way, but by unblocking him enough to only reach two automated menus of its phone system, and by allowing some, but not all the pages on its own website (not allowing us to reach the 'contact us' page) just rubs it in.

markmas

The Talk Talk accounts department were accessible from my Fathers phone today, so they must have fixed that problem.

Good news is the call was answered within 4 rings; that was the high point of the conversation.

The guy sounded pretty fed up, as he deals with these sorts of problems for the whole day.

He acknowledged they had messed up with the direct debit. We paid the balance with a debit card, and now just need to wait 24 hours to have services restored. There was not one word of apology.

I think I would have let it rest if they had apologised, or perhaps even had the slightest sound of regret.

I think I will send a written complaint.