Talk Talk £50 charge

dangerman7uk

Hi all, I'd really appreciate some advice.

I had a fault on my Talk-Talk broadband line in September and called them to report it. The line had previously worked fine and suddenly stopped. I spend hours being passed from pillar to post and eventually someone tested my line and said that it all seemed to be working.

They told me they would send an engineer but this would incur a £50 fee should the issue be found within my property. I told them that that wasn't ok because I couldn't possibly know if the engineer has fixed something inside my house or not. I'm not an engineer. I told them that it seemed likely to me that they had given me a dodgy router. But I couldn't be certain what was going on and the £50 charge seemed extortionate.

They passed me on to a manager and then to another manager until eventually I was promised that they wouldn't fine me the £50.

Unfortunately I have no evidence of this and they sent an engineer out who now claims that he fixed a wire in my house. My bill this month is near £80!

I called them and said "no, that charge is well out of order, I was promised that there would be no cost". They offered me a resolution: "you pay!".

I was again passed to another manager who (after 45minutes on the phone) still demanded I give them my money. I told them to find the recording of the phone call - I have no evidence but they do. By refusing my at this stage is tantamount to calling me a liar! I told the lady that and she wasn't happy. "I did not call you a liar! You be careful how you speak to me!" etc.

So, she was upset with me and I was upset with her and all of a sudden she said to me "right, I will cancel the charge". "Come again?" I said. She repeated "I will remove the fee from your bill you will not be charged."

I was a bit surprised about this - she was adamant until that point that she was going to take the money. Then all of a sudden a 180˚.

So I've been dwelling on it and I've just checked my account. It still says they're going to debit the full amount including the £50 charge. The money is due to be taken on Thursday.

Is there anything I can do? They've got me over a barrel - they're promising things and it seems they have no intention of following through! They seem to be blatantly lying to me knowing I'm powerless. How can I combat that?

I need rid of Talk Talk asap I think. Problem is I've got a contract that runs until Feb 2015.

penrhyn

Did you check if you could get a connection by using the test port in your master socket?
TT would normally ask you to do this basic check before they called in BT Open Reach.

If they did not then they are at fault.

Note: BT are responsible for the line up to and including your master socket, any faults up to the test port should be rectified at no charge.
All internal wiring is your responsibility to sort out, or be charged for the service.

macman

You could have avoided this charge by testing from the BT test socket: CS should have taken you through this procedure, which is a five minute job.
As above, the internal extensions as your own property and nothing to do with the line rental provider: the normal OR minimum charge is £130 for a call out, so how you've got this for £50 puzzles me.
You are now discovering why TT is so cheap.

dangerman7uk

They did some line checks on the phone while I waited but they didn't ask me to do anything as such.

Actually, I think they did ask me to turn it off and on again. In true IT Crowd style.

macman

dangerman7uk wrote: »

They did some line checks on the phone while I waited but they didn't ask me to do anything as such.

Actually, I think they did ask me to turn it off and on again. In true IT Crowd style.

This does actually solve a sizeable proportion of IT issues. And you don't need a call centre to tell you to try it.
Given the £50 fee, was the 'engineer' who attended a proper BT OR one, or just a 'Bright Sparks' sub contractor? TT are just an ISP, they don't have any engineers, and Bright Sparks people cannot work on the actual line or master socket-only OR can do that.
http://help2.talktalk.co.uk/troubleshooting/about-brightsparks-engineers

aleph_0

Do you know what the engineer actually did? Is the broadband plugged into the master socket, or an extension? Did you test the broadband with the router plugged unfiltered into the test port on the BT master socket? Do you know if the engineer was from TalkTalk, or (BT) Openreach?

I suspect it was a TalkTalk engineer.

You are paying TT for a service up to the master socket. Any internal wiring is your responsibility. So it is reasonable for TT to charge to fix this. It's not a fine.

I think you just need to work your way through TalkTalk's complaint procedure, based on the fact they agreed to waive the charges. If they didn't suggest testing at the master socket, I would bring this up to:
http://help2.talktalk.co.uk/manage-my-account/how-do-i-make-complaint

One thing, direct debits are submitted a few days in advance. So it could be that the charge has been removed, but it's too late to stop the DD. If that's the case, call them and they should refund the amount.