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TalkTalk POA
Hi,
There's ongoing service issue affecting my 75‑year‑old mother‑in‑law, who is a TalkTalk customer on the Fast Broadband (non‑fibre) package. For approximately 4–5 months she has experienced extremely slow speeds and frequent loss of service. Multiple devices connect to the router but regularly show “No Internet”, confirming the fault lies with the broadband line rather than her equipment.
Despite repeated calls to TalkTalk and the provision of a replacement router, the issue remains unresolved. Speed tests consistently show around 4 Mbps, and TalkTalk have stated that 2.3 Mbps is the guaranteed minimum for this service. She has been paying £30 per month for a service that has not met its contractual minimum for several months.
Openreach have confirmed that her property is capable of receiving speeds up to 1600 Mbps, yet she has continued to pay for a significantly inferior service without being informed of suitable alternatives.
We have requested that TalkTalk remove the outstanding £61 balance due to prolonged service failure. My mother‑in‑law has emailed TalkTalk directly, confirming in writing that I am authorised to communicate on her behalf. Despite this, TalkTalk continue to demand Power of Attorney documentation, which is not applicable as she has full capacity and is simply delegating communication.
I am preparing to escalate this matter to CISAS, however I would be great to gain some confirmation that the steps taken so far are appropriate. All email correspondence is below. Thanks in advance :)
Dear TalkTalk Complaints,
I am writing on behalf of my mother-in-law regarding her ongoing broadband service issues, which remain unresolved despite repeated contact with your support team.
For a prolonged period, she has experienced extremely poor broadband speeds (approximately upto a rare maximum of 4 Mbps), intermittent connectivity, and repeated service instability. Each time she has contacted support, she has been asked to repeat the same troubleshooting steps without the matter being properly resolved or escalated.
We have now confirmed via the Openreach Broadband Checker that the property is capable of receiving modern fibre services up to 1600 Mbps, yet she has continued paying approximately £30 per month for a legacy broadband service that has proven unreliable and unsuitable.
Additionally, as a 73-year-old customer, she has found it extremely difficult to access meaningful support from TalkTalk. Without family assistance, she would have been unable to progress this matter effectively.
Given the ongoing unresolved faults and repeated service failures, we formally dispute the fairness of continued billing at the current level while these issues remain unresolved.
We request the following:
- A full investigation into the intermittent broadband faults
- A review of the charges applied during periods of poor or unstable service
- Appropriate compensation or billing credit
- Confirmation of available upgrade options
- Assurance that no collections activity or penalties will occur while this complaint is under investigation
- A deadlock letter should TalkTalk be unable to resolve the matter promptly
Please treat this as a formal complaint under your complaints procedure.
She is copied in to this email should up need any security verification.
Kind Regards
Hello *****,
Thank you for getting in touch and for explaining the concerns regarding your Mother-in-Law, *********’s broadband service—I completely understand how frustrating and concerning this situation must be, especially given the ongoing issues and the difficulty in getting this resolved.
I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this situation has caused while you are trying to assist your Mother-in-Law, ************, with her account. We genuinely appreciate you reaching out on her behalf and understand the concerns you’ve raised regarding her broadband performance, billing, and overall service experience.
TalkTalk offers Accessibility Services to our more vulnerable customers and these cater to those with permanent health issues or were they may be having a problem or illness for a short time.
These enable those customers with physical or cognitive disabilities to make the most of the Phone, Broadband and TV services we offer. For example, Free directory enquiries enables a visually impaired or blind person who cannot read or hold a printed directory to get the same access as an able-bodied person at no additional cost. And there are more.
You can register your accessibility needs in My Account. When you log in, you can go to My details, My information and My choice to make your selection.
However, I do need to advise that, in order for us to investigate or discuss any account-specific information in detail, we must follow strict security protocols. As you have contacted us as a third party and are not the account holder, we’re unable to share or discuss specific account details without the appropriate authority in place.
These requirements are in line with data protection regulations and are essential to ensure your Mother-in-Law’s information remains secure.
To allow us to fully support you in resolving these issues, we would recommend that you are registered on the account with Power of Attorney or an equivalent recognised authority.
Once this is in place, you will be authorised to manage the account and discuss all aspects of the service on her behalf, including faults, billing reviews, and any potential compensation.
In the meantime, please reassure your Mother-in-Law that we take these concerns seriously, and we will be ready to carry out a full investigation and review as soon as the correct authority is in place.
If you wish to proceed with this, you can request Power of Attorney to be added to the account, and once confirmed, we will then be able to look into this matter further and provide full support with restoring access to the email service.
Please let us know if you require guidance on how to submit the necessary documentation, and we will be happy to help.
To put this in place, we need you to complete the form and return it to us. You can download the form here. https://m3.ttxm.co.uk/gfx/help/forms/iomd880_4._power_of_attorney_form_proof4.pdf
We also need a copy (NOT the original) of:
The signed Power of Attorney document
or a solicitor's letter
or medical consent
or court order
You should only include a copy of the proof as we are unable to return it to you.
You can also see full details of the process here. https://help2.talktalk.co.uk/power-attorney-authority-act#9691
We can only accept a solicitor's letter or court order in order to progress a Power of Attorney request. Please note: Only send us copies of the above information as documents are not returned once received.
If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to reply or visit http://help2.talktalk.co.uk/ for more information.
Once we receive the completed form, we’ll update the account within 28 days.
If you have questions about anything else, feel free to get back to us.
If you'd like more information, there's also a lot of detailed help and advice online in our Help Pages and our online Community. We're also here to help on Live Chat (click the tab on all our help pages).
Best Regards,
Your TalkTalk Team.
Formal Cancellation Notice & Billing Dispute – Mrs ***********************************
Dear TalkTalk Complaints Team,
I write again on behalf of my mother-in-law, **********, whose account details are referenced above. ******* is copied into this correspondence and confirms her authority for me to act on her behalf.
We are writing to formally notify you of the cancellation of *******'s broadband service, effective immediately, and to dispute the outstanding balance of £61.40.
CANCELLATION
******* is vacating the property at **Address** and will be residing at a new address not served by TalkTalk. As the service cannot follow her to the new address, we expect this to be treated as a straightforward cancellation with no early termination fees or penalties applied.
FURTHER, we wish to place on record that TalkTalk has failed to resolve ******’s reported broadband faults for a period in excess of three months. Despite repeated contact, no meaningful fix was provided and no escalation was carried out. This constitutes a prolonged breach of the service TalkTalk is contractually obliged to provide. Under Ofcom's guidelines, this alone entitles ******* to exit the contract without penalty.
DISPUTED BILL – £61.40
We formally dispute the balance of £61.40. ******* has been billed for a service that TalkTalk demonstrably failed to provide to an acceptable standard over an extended period. It is unreasonable to pursue payment in full for a service that was consistently faulty and unresolved.
We request that this balance be waived in full, or that a detailed breakdown be provided showing what, precisely, ****** is being charged for — with TalkTalk's explanation of how this represents fair billing for a service that was not fit for purpose.
We also reiterate our earlier request for a review of charges applied during the entire period of poor and intermittent service, and appropriate compensation or billing credit for that period.
ACTIONS REQUIRED
We request the following in writing:
1. Confirmation of cancellation with no exit fees or penalties
2. Confirmation that the disputed £61.40 balance will not be pursued or referred to collections while under dispute
3. A review of charges during the fault period and any applicable compensation
4. A deadlock letter if TalkTalk is unable to resolve these matters promptly
Please note that the 8-week clock for formal complaints is running. Should this matter remain unresolved, we will escalate to CISAS without further notice.
Kind regards,
************
On behalf of **************
**Address**
Dear TalkTalk Complaints Team,
I would like to confirm ********* (copied in to this email **********@hotmail.com) has my authority to manage this complaint on my behalf.
Regards
Mrs ***************
Account Holder
Hello *******, Subject: Re: Account number #######] – Authority Confirmed, Please Proceed Dear TalkTalk Complaints Team, As you will have seen from **********'s email sent immediately prior to this one (Account: ########, Ref: ET-########), she has now contacted you directly to confirm her wish to cancel her service and to formally authorise me, ******* , to manage this matter on her behalf. We wish to be absolutely clear on one point: Power of Attorney is a legal instrument designed for individuals who lack the mental capacity to manage their own affairs. ******* is a mentally capable adult who has chosen to appoint a trusted family member to assist her. Power of Attorney is therefore entirely inappropriate and was never a relevant requirement in this case. The authority you required has now been provided directly by the account holder herself, and there is no lawful or procedural basis to continue withholding action on this complaint. We also formally request that ********** is copied into all future correspondence on this matter. We have noted that previous responses have been directed solely to myself, excluding the account holder. Please ensure all replies are addressed to both *******@hotmail.com and *******'s email address going forward. Your requirement for direct account holder contact has now been satisfied. There is therefore no remaining barrier to progressing this complaint in full. To summarise the outstanding matters we require you to address: 1. Immediate cancellation of *******'s broadband service with no exit fees or penalties, on the grounds of both her house move and TalkTalk's failure to resolve reported service faults for a period in excess of three months 2. Confirmation in writing that the disputed balance of £61.40 will not be pursued or referred to any collections agency while this complaint remains open 3. A review of all charges applied during the period of documented poor and intermittent service, with appropriate compensation or billing credit applied 4. A formal deadlock letter should TalkTalk be unable to resolve these matters to a satisfactory conclusion Please note that we consider the 8-week complaints clock to have been running since our original complaint was submitted. We will not hesitate to escalate to CISAS should these matters remain unresolved. We expect a substantive written response addressing each of the above points. Kind regards, ******* ** On behalf of *********** Account Ref: ############# Hello *******, |
|---|
PLANNED RESPONSE
Dear TalkTalk Customer Relations,
Account: ######## | Ref: ET-######
This will be our final communication before escalating this matter to CISAS.
We are deeply disappointed by your most recent response, which has once again ignored the substantive complaint entirely and repeated the same Power of Attorney deflection for the third time. This is despite the fact that Mrs ******** — the account holder — contacted you directly on 23/06/2026 from her own email address, copied to this correspondence, explicitly confirming her authority for ###### to manage this complaint on her behalf.
You have chosen to ignore that email entirely. We can only conclude that TalkTalk is deliberately obstructing this complaint.
We also note that despite our explicit written request, you have again failed to copy Mrs ********** into your response. This is unacceptable and we formally request once more that all future correspondence includes Account Holder Mrs ******** at ***email****
For absolute clarity, we restate the following:
Power of Attorney is a legal instrument for individuals who lack mental capacity. ****** is a mentally capable adult. It is entirely inappropriate and has no relevance to this matter whatsoever. Continuing to demand it is a misrepresentation of both data protection law and your own complaints obligations under Ofcom's General Conditions.
TalkTalk has now failed on every count:
- Failed to resolve ******’s broadband faults for over three months
- Failed to treat this matter as a formal complaint despite repeated requests
- Failed to respond to the account holder's direct communication confirming third party authority
- Failed to copy the account holder into correspondence as formally requested
- Continued to pursue a disputed bill of £61.40 for a service that was not fit for purpose
- Repeatedly issued copy-paste responses that do not address any point of the complaint
This constitutes a clear deadlock position. We will now be filing a formal complaint with CISAS and will be providing them with the full correspondence trail, including TalkTalk's repeated failure to engage with this complaint in good faith.
We also reserve the right to refer TalkTalk's misuse of data protection legislation as a complaints obstruction mechanism to the ICO.
No further response from TalkTalk is required unless it constitutes a full and substantive resolution of all outstanding matters.
Kind regards,
Comments
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There is masses of text there so hard to assimilate everything ,but a couple of points:
Has your MiL now explicitly contacted TT herself and given the permission as they have requested?
For reference, a PoA is not exclusively for when someone has lost capacity, it can be used in a variety of situations so probably not helpful to keep arguing that it is.
You say that the minimum line speed guarantee is 2.3 Mbps and she receives 4 Mbps - so above the guarantee But you say " …has not met its contractual minimum for several months." ?
Is your MiL within a minimum contract period term? A house move on its own is not grounds to cancel if she is.
1 -
She hasn't contacted them to give permission - are TT correct to request this?
As for the minimum line speed guarantee - her internet is intermittent and more often than not it isn't working, therefore she's getting no internet hence not getting her contractual minimal speed.
We are trying to determine whether she's within her contract period term - however the conversation via TT and ourselves which you may or may not have seen (as you say, there's masses of text) has been them addressing nothing except they require me to register as POA. If its not hugely necessary it seems a lot of work to become POA for a service she is about to cancel.
The two stand out points here are
- Drop outstanding bill based on the fact her internet has not been working correctly for 4-5 months despite her being in contact with TT
- Even if Contract is still within MCP it is void because TT have broken agreement by not providing her with Internet. She has also moved into my accommodation and therefore it isn't possible to continue with TT (I am with VM)
- Cancel her service - this bit she can do over the phone whilst I'm with her.
0 -
- If as seems likely the bill is caused by your 73 or 75 year old mother or yourself cancelling the DD details, then that's purely on yourselves and is absolutely the wrong thing to do in any circumstance. You breached the contract.
- It doesn't void the contract from TT's end due to occasional or even frequent BB issues as you've stated that the speed (such as it is) is above her minimum guarantee. Moving house also doesn't automatically terminate a contract, if you'd told them she was moving (or rather she told them since you seem reluctant to get proper authority) and they couldn't supply the service they would have cancelled it with possible ETC's to pay. Of course this would have required payment details on the account. This leads us to point 3.
- Why didn't you just do this from the start, I didn't read everything (sorry, TLDR) but you've made a rod for your own back and hers.
You need to reinstate payment details, pay the outstanding payment, tell them she's moved and pay off whatever the balance is.
By the way, it sounds like she was on the old ADSL service, I've no doubt that if FTTP is available she would have contact about changing so the fact that a much faster speed is available is neither here nor there.
0 -
It is standard procedure for the account holder to have to give formal permission for information to be shared with a third-party such as yourself.
With talktalk she needs to request that you are added as a nominated user.
https://m0.ttxm.co.uk/gfx/help/forms/iomd880_3._nominated_user_application_form_v1.pdf
It used to be enough for people to consent over the phone, but that is no longe adequate to meet data protection requirements for some companies.
With regards to power-of-attorney, it should be something she is considering anyway at her age because you never know when ill health or accident might happen with little warning. I am power-of-attorney for my brother who has cancer because despite having all his marbles, he was worried about the effects of the treatment and whether it would mean he just didn’t feel up to dealing with finances.
never needed to use it, but it is there just in case. Can be done online quite cheaply without the need for a solicitor.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
Pedant alert - it's could have not could of.1 -
I appreciate your response, however I think you're building a few assumptions here. First of all, she hasn't cancelled her direct debit - I'm not sure how she normally pays but she hasn't changed it.
Secondly "I've no doubt that if FTTP is available she would have contact about changing" - excuse me for saying but this sounds like a response that would come from someone works for TT. I'm not suggesting you actually do but how are you so certain that she has this contact? the truth is you 'assume' that she has, and unfortunately your assumption is wrong.
0 -
There are a few things to point out , if poor service is to be used as a way of leaving penalty free , it’s not the consumer that can arbitrarily decide that what they want , it’s a process …unfortunately you need to convince the ISP that the service they are providing isn’t meeting guaranteed levels of performance, you need to allow time for the issue to be addresses and there is no improvement after a period of time , penalty free exit is normally offered , it’s only after an impasse that the dispute resolution people get involved (after 8 weeks AFAIK , and after a deadlock letter provided by the ISP ) .
What’s unusual here is why TT are not involving Openreach if it’s as you suspect a network issue , this costs Talk Talk nothing , if it’s Openreach network or equipment at fault it’s repaired or replaced as part of the ‘rent’ TT pay for using Openreach , I suspect the reason may be , that irrespective of your diagnosis, TT can’t ’see’ from their end any instability or poor performance (things they can easily check) so don’t see any need to involve Openreach on what they woukd see as a wild goose chase, and the other thing that’s odd , if FTTP is available (and presumably it is if 1.6Gb speed is available) then why a change to FTTP hasn’t been offered as clearly speed and reliability improves , and Openreach financially reward ISP that move customers off copper onto FTTP , it’s a win win situation….you don’t need to take a higher speed either so no increase in cost , although it may increase any minimum term .
TBH , I reckon the POA thing has simply confused things , in lots of cases , the account holder just needs to convince the customer service rep they are the account holder , then pass the phone onto a more ‘capable’ friend or relative, saying I give permission for this person to speak on my behalf….
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Have you actually asked TalkTalk if fibre is available? They aren't likely to just offer it if you're complaining about problems with an old ADSL line.
The other question is have you worked out if the problem is with the phone line or the WiFi signal in the house? Unless you are paying extra for a service with guaranteed WiFi, that's not their problem.
If it sticks, force it.
If it breaks, well it wasn't working right anyway.0 -
I used the word"If" in both points.
You stated there's a £61 outstanding balance, what is that for then?
As pointed out by others if she's on ADSL and FTTP is available then 100% she'd have been getting communications that they would upgrade her for free to the lowest tier, giving her much better speeds and stability, in the hope that she'd pay more for a higher speed.
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I've discovered by looking on the internet myself that Fibre is available in her area.
The route of internet access is; 1. signal from phone line into property —>2. From property BT socket to router using wired connection —> 3. Router to devices.
The devices pick up the router so issues isn't with step 3. Router has been replaced and devices connect to router without issue which rules out step 2. So the remaining route is signal from phone line into property, which would correlate with the message on devices that are connected to the router displaying the message "No internet connection" under the Router status. Therefore its a fault with the line. This service has not been fixed despite various communications.
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You suggested earlier that your relative had moved out if the property where this TT service was , so it’s pointless going over where the problem may or may not have been located , it’s irrelevant now .
As far as being excused the £61 , presumably this is the final invoice amount and you feel it’s not justified because the service was unavailable for the period the bill covers , given the process is to allow TT to resolve any issues and then look at compensation , that clearly is now not possible as the account holder has vacated the property in question , so you are basically looking for a gesture of goodwill , unfortunately I doubt that will be forthcoming.
1
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