Contract cancellation

Scotia55

Out of the blue i received an email from my broadband provider, TalkTalk, telling me I had requested a cancellation of my contract. This came as news to me because I didn't. Still wrestling with it 3 days later. I told them repeatedly that I made no such request. Eventually they said it was something to do with BT and my landline which don't even use! Has anyone heard of this before?

Grumpy_chap

Were you always Talk Talk or did they inherit you from another provider?

Scotia55

Have been with TalkTalk for years.

Jemma01

I recall that my talktalk used openreach (for the physical wiring), which is owned by BT

It appears your issue is to do with the physical setup. Are they able to provide any details? Is openreach disconnecting the line?

Scotia55

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82124395#Comment_82124395

I hope not. If BT are doing anything to the line I wasn't told. When I rang TalkTalk today, twice, they said it was BT but I don't know in what capacity. BT did indeed do the wiring but it was a long time ago and I expect this was done recently but no one contacted me.

Scotia55

Why would BT disconnect the line? I'm rather baffled by it all. How can an entirely different company cancel your contract with another? I suspect someone has stuffed up somewhere.

Scotia55

I really don't know. I just received the email saying I was apparently cancelling my contract. How would i find out if BT was to blame?

Jemma01

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82124401#Comment_82124401

its a very odd situation, did they tell you that someone requested a switch on your behalf? Did they give you a next step or someone else you need to check with? Did you ask them if this is final, or you can reject it and what authority BT was acting under?

Virgin media use their own physical line if they're available in your area. There might be other providers in your area like cityfibre that also delivers for talktalk.

southsidergs

From what you said in op do you have split service, ie landline with BT separately? If yes it's for the digital switchover as can't have split service on it.

If yes, you should have been contacted by BT too

Scotia55

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82124420#Comment_82124420

It is indeed odd. No they didn't tell me someone had requested a switch. I asked them if this was down to BT and they said yes and my landline. But wouldn't they tell me if that was the case? You can't go willy nilly cancelling people's contracts. Even if you are BT. Aren't BT changing out analogue phones or something? Talktalk assures me that they won't cut me off and the cancellation has been, well cancelled. Still showing as pending on my account though..

iniltous

Did you have Talk Talk for broadband (and pay them just for that ) and had a separate ‘line rental’ bill from BT , so you paid two bills , BT and TT but only had the one ‘line’ ?, this is called SMPF , shared metallic path facility and is a very old type of broadband, where you added a separate broadband provider to your ‘BT’ line, this was very common 15 -20 years ago , but the vast majority of these type of arrangements, were moved to MPF (metallic path facility) where you paid just one company for both line rental (and calls) and broadband it was on one bill and BT no longer had any involvement at all , basically the likes of Talk Talk and Sky put their own equipment in the ‘BT’ exchange and the only thing used from ‘BT’ was the ‘line’ to the property, and that eventually was Openreach anyway (and not BT ) and TT paid Openreach for the line behind the scenes so to speak, this is what the majority of Sky and TT customers are on , some legacy customers may still be on the old arrangement if they were never asked to change , or were asked but refused.

If you don’t recognise SMPF as the type of service you have , then TT are feeding you bullsh*t as BT will have nothing to do with this (Openreach and BT are not the same company) but there may be a situation, especially if you are connected to a very small exchange, where TT never installed their own telephone equipment in that exchange so basically they were a just a reseller of BT products, basically they bought services from BT and then resold it to their customers (so the bill said TT on it , but underneath it was just a BT service) , TT basically paid BT the wholesale price and you paid TT the retail price , however this is even rarer than SMPF these days and I doubt you are on this , but if you are on it , or are on SMPF , you can’t stay on it any longer , you need to reassess your situation, TT should make this clear , but TBH , I recon TT just don’t know what they are doing.

TT are undergoing many changes mainly because of their precarious financial situation , selling off customers to other providers , not offering new services in places where they were once active etc , so in short you should expect the unexpected with them at this point in time, and don’t expect any sense from their staff , many of which are ‘off shore’ and pretty clueless.

TBH , unless you really want to stay with them (and I can’t imagine why you would want to) use the opportunity to move to someone else , there are many other options available