Talktalk charging me for for a call out to repair fault caused by BT engineer..

powerful_Rogue

sparkiemalarkie wrote: »

No job sheet.


sparkie

Did you sign any paperwork when the BT chap was at your premises?

sparkiemalarkie

powerful_Rogue wrote: »

Did you sign any paperwork when the BT chap was at your premises?

Nope, I didn't sign anything....
shoddy, eh?


sparkie

powerful_Rogue

sparkiemalarkie wrote: »

Nope, I didn't sign anything....
shoddy, eh?


sparkie

In which case id ask them to prove that the non-existent work took place.

sparkiemalarkie

powerful_Rogue wrote: »

Talking to customer services was absolutely pointless. In the end an email to the CEO about the situation resulted in the charge being dropped from the bill.

Drop an email to Dido Harding (Talk Talk CEO) and hopefully her team will be able to resolve this for you.

[EMAIL="dido.harding@talktalkplc.com"]dido.harding@talktalkplc.com[/EMAIL]

Thank you for your help.


I sent an email yesterday and got a phone call this morning.
I was assured that the charges for the BT engineer will be dropped.


Coincidently, unknown to us our electricity tripped last night so we had no power for our cordless phone system throughout the night. My very elderly mother lives very close and sometimes phones during the night if she feels unwell. We are no longer able to have a wired phone in the bedroom because the second BT engineer cut the wires to the extension sockets. This has completely thrown me and has reminded me as to why we had the extension sockets installed in the first place.
Apparently, a Talktalk engineer is coming on Monday to reconnect these..... free of charge!
Since talking to the local Talktalk team this morning I have received an email from the complaints department.....
see what you make of it....


Further to our recent telephone conversation, I am writing in reference to your complaint regarding the Engineer Charge on your account.

I understand that you are disputing the engineer charge you have received however I can confirm that this charge was valid.

You were made aware of this charge prior to booking the engineer and we would not book an engineer without this consent.

We have investigated this charge thoroughly and have found that this charge is valid.

We understand that you feel this is incorrect however we have reviewed all the information on your account and can confirm this charge is correct.

Please accept our apologies for any misunderstanding this may have caused.

This constitutes TalkTalk’s position on this and this is confirmation of our full and final settlement of your complaint.

The community is a place for customers to get in touch, get help with technical issues, and ask questions about our service at http://community.talktalk.co.uk

Remember www.talktalk.co.uk/help is available 24/7 to help answer any questions you may have.

Kind regards,

Joy Saha
TalkTalk Customer Relations

powerful_Rogue

And Talk Talk wonder why they are voted low on customer satisfaction!

I would forward that email to Dido Harding and say how confused you are that Talk Talk say one thing and do another etc etc

Im presuming its from a different department and Dido's office have the overruling say, but no harm in complaining about it!

susancs

OP, we have Talktalk only because they were half the price BT charged and thankfully we rarely have a service problem. However we recently had a broadband drop out problem that eventually turned out to be a router issue. This took numerous calls, tests and a BT open world engineer visit. The BT engineer told me BT give the first call out free of charge, but further calls are charged to Talktalk. We then got a charge for the call out. When I rang Talktalk they initially tried to claim they were passing on the cost BT had charged them, but quickly backed down when I informed them that I had been given other information from BT and the charge was taken off. I must admit that I really hate speaking to their awful call centres as they are so poorly trained, with a low standard of English for the most part.

MrsGregs

Hi,

I used to work for the company in question in the technical support dept (before it was completely outsourced to India/Philippines). We were always advised in our training that any engineer charge such as you've described was passed on if the fault was due to customer's equipment. FYI, the master telephone socket is Openreach's equipment and they are the only people allowed to change the socket, but the removable faceplate on what is known as an NTE5 socket is the customer's equipment and therefore the customer's responsibility. (Google NTE5 socket for a pic as I'm not able to post hyperlinks yet on here.)
Obviously I don't know what master phone socket you have, but what you've described seems to me like you may have an older style phone socket, although if its only a couple of years old this shouldn't be the case, or he disconnected the wires to your extension sockets (which is a normal diagnostic test and my training advised they were not obliged to reconnect these). That said, the phone service itself should have remained working in your master phone socket if all tests were carried out correctly.
What you described sounds like the phone service was completely disconnected, which would be a fault caused by the Openreach engineer. In this situation you should not have to pay an engineer charge.
There is a way you can log a complaint with Openreach.
I can't post hyperlinks so will have to give step by step instructions:
First go to the Openreach uk website
Select "people at Home/Work"
Click "Who to contact" at the top of the page
Click "About recent Openreach work"
Then choose the "Tell us here" link next to "If we’ve haven’t put things back the way they were" and fill in the relevant details.

In the meantime, for continuity of service I would strongly recommend making payments as usual (unfortunately this includes the engineer charge), but continue to dispute this charge. Advise that you have made a complaint to Openreach and that you are awaiting the outcome of this.
Definitely liase with the CEO office as mentioned in an earlier reply but the thing that is most likely to clinch a refund is if you say that you are taking the complaint to the Ombudsman. This is because when a complaint is received TalkTalk will be charged by the Ombudsman, when I worked there (around 3 years ago) it was in the region of £200, regardless of the outcome the Ombudsman gives. Simple logic dictates its cheaper for them to refund you £65 than it is to be charged £200 or more simply because you lodge a complaint. There is a time that you have to allow TalkTalk to resolve the issue before a complaint will be investigated by the ombudsman (I can't remember how long) and you also need a deadlock letter from TalkTalk which basically indicates that you cannot come to a resolution between you, and TalkTalk cannot refuse this request, (I can't remember whether you have to allow the time limit to pass before a deadlock letter can be issued)
I hope this helps.

Nodding_Donkey

They have a deadlock letter. The words:

This constitutes TalkTalk’s position on this and this is confirmation of our full and final settlement of your complaint.

So either TalkTalk refund the charge or it goes straight to the Ombudman.

powerful_Rogue

Nodding_Donkey wrote: »

They have a deadlock letter. The words:

This constitutes TalkTalk’s position on this and this is confirmation of our full and final settlement of your complaint.

So either TalkTalk refund the charge or it goes straight to the Ombudman.

I wouldn't be to sure! Had a problem with T-Mobile a few years ago and although all the letter from T-Mobile had that on the bottom, ombudsman wouldn't accept it as it wasn't an official letter of deadlock. Had to wait 8 weeks from receiving the final letter before the Ombudsman would accept it as T-Mobile refused to issue a deadlock letter.

By all means try with the Ombudsman, just don't be surprised if they don't accept it.

robatwork

Not sure that is really a deadlock letter as it's from the customer services dept. rather than the complaints dept.

Follow their official complaints procedure which you should find on their website, then raise with the ombudsman.

If the facts you have given are all correct then you will win.

Just one tip - when you write your complaint to TT and the ombudsman avoid any sentence that starts "I feel" and "I think". Just put a timeline, and the facts backed up by pictures, and keep it as short as possible.