TalkTalk billing after cease

masonic

This is a very frustrating one. A brief summary of the timeline

• Contract end date: 15th March
• 26th Feb: Initiated switch away to Sky. Completion date 12th March. Received an email from TalkTalk with cease date wrongly recorded as 26th Feb and estimating early termination charges. Followed this up and confirmed the correct date and that no charges would be applied as I was in the last 30 days of my contract.
• 12th Mar: Switch completed without incident
• 13th Mar: Contacted TalkTalk via live chat to confirm services were being terminated. They initially told me I had to cancel the switch and start again, but on challenging this, they confirmed this was a mistake and they could see the pending cease estimated to complete that day.
• Checked online account on 18th Mar (normal billing date) and 31st Mar (just to make sure). No bill and no further charges. I left my direct debit active just in case.
• 17th Apr: Receive email with payment reminder for a balance owing of £31.50. Logged in to find a bill backdated to 18th Mar that wasn't there before with advance charges for 18th Mar - 17th Apr.

When I queried this, I was told "I have identified that your cease order was completed on the 12th of March 2025, and your account was under investigation for a potential bill after the cease. This means the bills were suppressed during that period, so we were unable to generate bills or take payments, which is why your bill was delayed." and "Since the account was under suppression, we are unable to process payments. This means that since the bill due date has passed, you will need to make a manual payment."

I was not happy about this, pushed through to a manager to review and was then told "The cease order that I'm looking at right here was placed on the 12th of March 2025 and was estimated to complete on the 13th of March 2025 however looking at the effective date it stated on the 8th of April 2025."

They could not confirm whether they were intending to bill me until 8th April.

I don't think they have any right to do so, and I don't know what more I could have done as a customer. I knew nothing about the investigation for bill after cease or the billing being suppressed. Had I received a bill I would have challenged it straight away.

I'm not really sure where to go from here. Probably should pay under protest while I work through the complaints process, but this is poor even for TT.

Neil_Jones

It didn't really matter if you were going to be billed until the 8th because you always pay for your internet/phone a month in advance in any case.  You'd just get a pro-rata refund after the switch.

If the bill was suppressed for whatever reason it doesn't mean you don't owe them for the unbilled period you were with them.  Presume you were paid up with them until probably Feb 18?

masonic

Neil_Jones said:

It didn't really matter if you were going to be billed until the 8th because you always pay for your internet/phone a month in advance in any case.  You'd just get a pro-rata refund after the switch.

If the bill was suppressed for whatever reason it doesn't mean you don't owe them for the unbilled period you were with them.  Presume you were paid up with them until probably Feb 18?

My switch date was 12th March and the suppressed bill contains charges for 18th Mar - 17th Apr. I was paid up until 17th Mar.

I was not connected to TT services (and not in a contract) for the entire 18th Mar-17th Apr period billed.

Even TT don't dispute that. They are saying that because the cease took longer than it should on their side, even though my service had been switched by Openreach, I may need to pay both TT and my new ISP for the same period.

masonic

Update: This appears to be resolved. I shall keenly await the money landing in my bank account, but the complaint handling was actually quite good. I was able to negotiate a reasonable sum in compensation given all the misinformation and insistence yesterday that I must make a manual credit card payment immediately that is now being refunded in full less than 24 hours later.