Talktalk - What should I do?

McrRed

In the early hours of Monday morning my router went down. As a result my daughter's phone started using data (mostly whatsapp updates - she was asleep at the time). As a result she went over her 1gb allowance and incurred charges of £52 in the next couple of hours :eek: before she woke up to a text from Talktalk informing her that she was approaching her limit and turned her mobile data off.

I rang Talktalk and spoke to one of their managers who accepted that my issue was a valid one and eventually offered me a credit of £25 towards the charge but said that was the maximum he could offer.
I said I would not accept this as the entire charge was a mistake and neither reasonable nor fair.

I asked for his supervisor so I could escalate the issue and he refused to give me a name - saying that I had reached the highest level of telephone support.


So, I have two questions:
should I just cave in and pay the £52 (perhaps with a chance of £25 being knocked off the charge)?
if not, does anyone know who I should write to in order to escalate the issue?

Many thanks.

JJ_Egan

Phone started using data as that was how your daughter had it set up .Nothing to do with the supplier so you should take the £25 offered and set the phone up not to turn on mobile data .

grumbler

McrRed wrote: »

...As a result my daughter's phone started using data...

It was a result of incorrect settings in the first place.
The correct is to allow updates on wifi only.

the entire charge was a mistake

Your mistake, not theirs.
If you erroneously leave a tap running when going on holiday, would you expect the water charge refunded?

Shrimply

Although, if the router is also TalkTalks you probably have some ammunition. Maybe not legally but if it's them that's supplying the internet that went down you could certainly suggest they are in part to blame.

If it was really only whatsapp messages she must have been very close to her limit already...

If the phone is android there is built in warnings and caps for data usage. There is really no excuse for going over the data limit over than not having the technology set up correctly.

jenniewb

OP, I don't know how far you got in terms of complaining to Talktalk, I've previously been with Talktalk and actually left them on poor customer service alone (before considering it was cheaper elsewhere and far more reliable with other providers given the sheer number of failures in my connection to both landline and internet and waiting weeks for it to be "fixed" at a time). Stupidly I was with them for about 5 years before I moved.

I managed to work out a way to at least get somewhere with complaining when issues went wrong but it was not easy and took a great deal of energy and patience in repeating yourself, re-phoning when they 'accidentally' cut me off after putting me on hold or just talking very quickly with incoherent heavily accented speeches when I tried to talk. I am pretty sure they do this to be difficult rather than because the call center staff are actually unable to speak clear English.

I first of all had to make it clear on paper to myself what the issue was and what I wanted as a resolution. It sounds pretty basic but once you've been given the run around that many times over a single issue and more issues jump onto the list it can be easy to forget what your original issue was about and what you actually want to have happen.

Next try to speak to someone from a UK call center. These do exist within Talktalk but they are very hard to get hold of. I would speak to the sign-up line and see if they can help pass you through or can give any idea on when the UK call staff work, they may not know but they sometimes do or can speak to a manager who does know. I would find that the UK call staff have a better idea of the importance of customer service being as important as price and I would say seemed to be far more experienced in working with people rather than treating everyone as a tool to get further (numbers, quotas and x calls an hour rather than on results). That's not to say overseas call centres don't do a good job, it's just been my experience that they are not as helpful as the UK staff because they have a different mentality.

Make sure if you don't get results first time, speak to the supervisor or manager, ask for names of who you can contact, if they wont give their name mention you are happy to take this higher and will be able to get details of call times and trace things back that way if they wont give their name.

I was at one point given the details for the CEO of Talktalk. I never did get as far to use them because as soon as I mentioned needing to contact either them or the Ombudsman (I was being asked to pay for a service when they had not fixed my loss of connection/no service and I had refused to pay for what I didn't have and also took issue with needing to visit internet cafes and Carphone Warehouse stores in order to contact them because I had no service at all so actually wanted compensation in addition to not being charged for lack of service and they wanted me to pay my bills as normal.)
I got put through to a UK call center staff person who got the connection repaired and refunded any payments taken and a small amount of compensation.

Keep a note of days, times and waiting times, you may need these when taking things further and making a hand written complaint which is your last port of call when you have given up with the lack of help via phone. Hopefully you wont get that far but if you do.

Don't be put off by the issue being small; it's the principal. I had massive issues and was getting everything from non-comprehensive staff to staff that were verging on abusive when I asked for their details. It seems to me that within any service if you don't nip the smaller things in the bud they become a growing problem and mushroom as those who allow those mistakes work their way through the company to higher roles with more power.

Hope you get somewhere, yes you were in the wrong to go over the limit and there are ways around having used data over wifi but you had paid Talktalk for a service which they did not supply. In my understanding they owe you not just a refund on the lack of service but the compensation on having to waste time chasing them for help and sort out using a service elsewhere (i.e via the mobile) If you'd been asking an unreasonable request on buying a whole new computer and internet connection from another provider that would be a bit much, but from my understanding you were simply asking them to allow the charge on their own mobile service to be written off as their router had broken at no fault of your own.

ratrace

Sorry op but the i dont think its talk talks fault this time (Ive never like them)

but

Who would you blame if there was a power cut for a short time, and the modem went off as it runs on the mains electirc, sorry I know it sounds bad but as others have said the settings on the mobile can be changed very easily.

A lesson for all I guess

McrRed

Thanks everyone for your helpful replies (especially you, jenniewb for the time taken in such a comprehensive reply!).

I guess I was just rankled by the thought of paying £52 extra for a few (3) hours of accidental data usage (yes, I too thought it was set to use data over wifi only whilst at the house but anyone who has used the new android lollipop setup will know how difficult it is to properly manage the plethora of settings. And I rely on my kids to tell me what to do usually!

Anyway, I wrote a letter using the MSE-linked Resolver service so we'll see where we get with that:

https://www.resolver.co.uk

Again thanks all, and whether you think I'm daft or not for trying, wish me luck?!

d123

McrRed wrote: »

Thanks everyone for your helpful replies (especially you, jenniewb for the time taken in such a comprehensive reply!).

I guess I was just rankled by the thought of paying £52 extra for a few (3) hours of accidental data usage (

I would also suggest you haven't been told the whole truth with regards to the "accidental" usage, "whatsapp updates" would only amount to a few MB if you mean messages and less than 45MB if you mean an update to the actual program.

What was the size of data allowance on the handset? There must have been significantly more use than just a whatsapp update to mount up £50 in charges...

grumbler

At 15p/Mb £52=350Mb - 1/3 of the monthly allowance.

http://mobile.talktalk.co.uk/call-charges.html

McrRed

It's weird, I've looked through the logs on my talktalk account and there are random charges occasionally (as opposed to the zero billed usage) and then at 3:39 am - and as I've said, my daughter was asleep - the usage goes off the scale and starts being billed at up to £4.50 per minute then stops at 3:52am.

What the logs don't say is what was happening, only that it happened in 2.86mb increments.

HappyMJ

McrRed wrote: »

It's weird, I've looked through the logs on my talktalk account and there are random charges occasionally (as opposed to the zero billed usage) and then at 3:39 am - and as I've said, my daughter was asleep - the usage goes off the scale and starts being billed at up to £4.50 per minute then stops at 3:52am.

What the logs don't say is what was happening, only that it happened in 2.86mb increments.

Could she have been watching a video before she fell asleep leaving the video running so that when the router went down it automatically used a different route...the mobile network...and continued playing.

Just take the £25 take it as a lesson. Either get a mobile with a bigger limit or always turn off mobile data except when needed.