Talk talk allowed Virgin to take over my line w / out permission - want to charge me!

auntie_prawn

Two months ago I contacted talk talk to take over my broadband, phone and tv. The go live date was 29 December. I received all the kit but had not installed it as the line was not live and I Was travelling from 24 December to 22 January.
When I got home on 22nd I found letters from talk talk saying they were sorry I wanted to leave. So at the first opportunity ( morning of the 23rd) I called to find out what was going on. They said that I had transferred my line to someone else ( which I obviously had not done) and therefore they had terminated the line. They refused to give me any information about the instruction to take over the line or the new supplier, citing data protection. Since it was my line I do wonder whose data they were protecting.
Anyway through some investigation it turned out the new line had been taken over by Virgin who simultaneously denied taking over the line whilst talking to me on the customer service number I had dialled from my landline. They could not tell me what my new number was which made no sense as it was now a Virgin number. Both talk talk and Virgin said they would investigate this two weeks ago and get back to me but have failed to do so.
Talk talk did call me up to try to persuade me to close my complaint whist providing no new information. They said they would only waive the termination of contract fee If I transferred the number back to them. I refused and they are now trying to charge me 225 pounds.
I don't see why I should have to pay this since it was not me who cancelled the number.
Both companies have been appalling and I am in dispair. Do you know of anyone else who has had this problem and what do I do next?
thanks for any info and ideas.
Prawn

System

Virgin don't provide telephone services over copper so they couldn't have taken over your line.

DCFC79

Send TT a message via twitter or send a tweet.

parttimeskint

Talk talk have bought all of virgins national network customers and is probably something to do with that as, from what I hear, they have started to move customers across. Sounds like there has been a mix up on the transfer across.




If you ordered a service with talk talk just before the switch happened it might have confused the process they had in place which has caused your issue.




If you want to know your phone number, just dial yours or a friends mobile and it will show up.


Who were you with before moving to talk talk?

macman

How did you conclude that you had been slammed by VM (which as pointed out above, cannot be correct, as they no longer offer Virgin National BT line-based services)?

John259

!!!!!! wrote: »

Virgin don't provide telephone services over copper so they couldn't have taken over your line.

Virgin do provide a service over conventional phone lines, it's called Virgin National and I'm on it.

However, I've read various reports that this service is no longer on sale to new customers and existing customers will by default be switched to TalkTalk. So far I've heard nothing to that effect from Virgin.

System

John259 wrote: »

Virgin do provide a service over conventional phone lines, it's called Virgin National and I'm on it.

Maybe I should have been more pedantic and said they do not provide new services and haven't since October last year.

Article on this site
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/phones/2015/01/virgin-media-begins-notifying-non-cable-customers-of-transfer-to-talktalk-

auntie_prawn

Thanks so much to everyone who has looked at this and commented so far.

There used to be a virgin line in the flat and I think the tenants before me had a virgin line.

But talk talk never asked for access to the line or the flat in order to take over my broadband service when I asked them to in early December and sent me a new phone number etc. the next day.

For me there are two issues here - one is the fact that I now have a Virgin line I really don't want as I generally try to avoid Virgin due to a previous bad experience.

The second is Talk talk trying to charge me for cancelling the contract which isn't something i had anything to do with - and they haven't been prepared to explain to me how it happend. Has anyone had any experience or advice on that type of situation which they can share?

Thanks again for your help in unravelling this.

prawn

auntie_prawn

Sorry - should have added in response to some questions -

I assumed I had been slammed by VM because the landline (which talk talk told me they had activated but then stopped on instruction - although they wouldn't tell me whose instruction) turned out to have a Virgin Media rep at the end of it when I dialled the customer services number.

When I worked out what the number of the Virgin line was, it was not the same as the number the previous tenants used to have on the Virgin line. So I assumed that meant that Virgin had made some decisions about the line in December.

I wasn't in the house to check whether it ever went live with Talk talk, so maybe it never in fact did - it doesn't sound as it that would have been possible anyway. Talk talk never told me they had to visit to install a separate line to allow me to have a talk talk landline.

There is another line in the house, but it's completely dead, so it does not seem to have been taken over by another supplier at all.

I'm really very confused about the whole thing.

prawn

macman

Is this new VM service cable or ADSL? VM do not curently offer ADSL services.
Cable uses an entirely separate network to TT's BT-based ADSL lines, so separate lines are required for each service.