TalkTalk "verbal contract"

ShakeyStacey

My lovely mum has been with TalkTalk for her internet for a year and a half. She had no problems for the first year. A TalkTalk representative called her and asked if she was happy with her service and she said yes. He asked if she was thinking about changing her provider and she said no. Now she is getting intemittent service at best and occasionally complete blackouts. She rang to ask them to fix it and they said they charge £50 to send someone out. They give this money back if there is a problem on the line, but if there is a problem with the router or the house, they keep the money and dont fix the problem, even though it is TalkTalk router. They say they do not cover their routers after the first year. My mum then asked to cancel the service and planned to switch to someone else, but they said the above phone conversation was a verbal contract tying her in for another year! So she is stuck paying for a service she is not receiving and faced with spending more money for an engineer who might not even fix it. If it is the router she will have to pay for another one herself. Can she get out of this contract? Does she have any other options?

macman

She first needs to do the standard tests to establish where the fault lies. OR do not charge unless the fault is on the subscriber's equipment, extension wiring, or if the damage is user-inflicted. So if it's a line fault, no charge is made.
The router is a freebie, so it's not in warranty after 12m. Nothing you have said indicates a router fault though, but even if it is, they are available for about a fiver on ebay anyway.
She certainly needs to dispute the agreement of a new contract (hough a verbal contract is perfectly valid, that's the way they are all done now, or online).
If it is a line fault, then swapping providers will not make any difference. If this is a broadband fault, has she tried swapping out the ADSL filters for known good ones? If it's a wireless set -up, has she tried connecting by ethernet to the master socket? If the problem goes away, it's a wireless issue and all she probably need to do is change the wireless channel via the router interface.
These are all simple tests which can be done by the user, rather than wasting time with TT's non-existent tech support.

TalkTalk

Hi ShakeyStacey,

If you tweet us @TalkTalkCare or join the TalkTalk Members Forum we can investigate in more depth.

Regards

Mark
TalkTalk Online Community Department