This is a letter I was going to send to the CEO's office until a representative from TalkTalk on the money saving website suggested posting here. I hope I can get input here and if any account details are required please do let me know and how I can securely provide these.
I am writing to express mine and my fiancé’s dissatisfaction with the exceptionally poor level of customer service my fiancé and I have received from TalkTalk. In addition, I am writing to request that the CEO’s office remove the £70 charges from my fiancé’s account, which we feel justified in light of our experience with TalkTalk. We have had services from TalkTalk over a number of years and have generally been satisfied. In Around February of this year I was living in a rented property with my fiancé. Our fibre optic router developed a fault which we promptly made TalkTalk aware of. We had several discussions with your technical support where various solutions were proposed (switch it on and off, reset etc.) which did not resolve the situation. They then suggested sending an engineer to test our line and the router. However, we were informed they didn’t have a slot available for an engineer to come and look at it until after a week. As my fiancé is a teacher she relies on the internet to plan her lessons this was very unhelpful. In addition, her grandmother in Lithuania was ill and she was using Skype to contact family there. This was made clear to TalkTalk but they stuck to their original time scale of it taking around a week.
Whilst discussing this issue I was informed I was out of contract and could upgrade. I stated that if there was a fault on the line it makes no difference. The agent responded that upgrading would probably resolve the situation and they could send a router within several days rather than having to wait a week. The agent also offered a better deal than I was currently receiving for the same price as I was currently paying as a form of compensation. As it was a quicker process than waiting for an engineer and it was a better deal as compensation I agreed. Within a few days a package arrived from TalkTalk; however there was no router included! Instead they sent a free view box and signal boosters. I then had to phone them and explain they needed to send a router and again go through the traumatic process of dealing with their services. I also explained we did not want the other equipment but was told it was just part of the package. Meanwhile my fiancé cannot work at home and she ran up significant bills phoning Lithuania. This was explained to customer services who offered no compensation or sympathy. We asked for a manager to phone us back to escalate it further and we received no phone call.
Once the router arrived with the contract details I found that it was exactly the same contract for 18 months! I had not been sold a better deal at all. I phoned and spoke to several customer service agents and got nowhere. Again we were promised phone calls back from managers but did not receive one. As other providers would take around two weeks to provide us with a line we decided grudgingly to stick with this package as we had been without internet for nearly a week by then.
In August 2016, I moved out of the rented property as my fiancé and I bought our own house. As it is a new build we are waiting for it to be constructed, and in the interim are living with my parents. I notified TalkTalk and asked could I freeze the contract. I was informed I could not, but I could continue to pay it and then inform them when we moved into our new house and they could transfer the service there. I accepted this as I had agreed to the contract and therefore was duty bound to pay it. I was not informed that if another provider took over the line in the rented property we were in, an early disconnection fee would be applied.
On October 6th my fiancé received an email stating we were liable for several hundred pounds of early disconnection fees. I phoned TalkTalk on the 7th and informed you that I was still willing to pay the contract and I fully intend to use their service in our new house once it is built, however currently I do not have a home to put the line in. Their proposed solutions are: 1) We ask the new tenants to take over our contract 2) We ask the landlord to keep their line and make the tenants take a new line with their new provider 3) We ask my parents to install a new line in their house.
Clearly none of these solutions were viable and I found them bordering on the ridiculous. This lead to a series of phone calls which included:
On 10/10/2016 I spoke to Preeti at 19.04 from your customer service department. She was unable to resolve my complaint and escalated it to Pranay. He offered similar solutions to those proposed on the 7th. He said he would phone me back on the 11th but never did. I spent around 1 hour and 16 minutes speaking to Preeti and Pranay.
On 11/10/2016 at 19.15 I spoke to Sunita who said that I could cancel the account as it was an unsolicited cease on the account and that if my fiancé said she didn’t give permission for the account to be cancelled we could continue with the account until our house was built. To complete this I was transferred to Leo in cancellations at 19.40. He was rude and generally unhelpful and said the complete opposite of Sunita. He stated we were liable for the charges as we had breached the contract! In addition, he said he would raise it with the CEO’s office but clearly never has. He then offered to put me through to a manager which I waited to happen for around 15 minutes until I was informed by an automated message your lines were closed. This call lasted 1 hour.
On 14/10 I spoke to Rachel at 17.16 who then escalated the call to Indranil at 17.32 who was also unable to help me. This call was then at 17.43 passed to another colleague called Rochelle who again was unable to provide any solutions. This was then passed to Adam at 17.47 who said I could put the account in an ‘in flight’ mode which meant we could move to our new build provided it was within 3 months. Adam was unable to do this due to not being able to find my address on the system. He advised speaking to the Royal Mail to confirm if the postcode was correct. This call took around half an hour.
On 17/11/16 I spoke to Susan after speaking to the Royal Mail to confirm my postcode. She said that because we were fibre optic customers we could cancel the contract anyway without charge and this was in TalkTalk’s terms and conditions. She put me through to Tony a manager who (again) said the complete opposite. He stated that although it is true in principle we can cancel if we move to a non-fibre area, we had early disconnection fees on our account already and therefore we could not cancel without charge. I stated we did not initiate the cancellation, did not request it and did inform TalkTalk we were moving out of our old address. He stated that this was not proof we had not initiated the disconnection and could not state what proof he would require it was not us. He told me he would phone back the next day, however this never occurred. This call lasted 1 hour and 22 minutes.
I spoke to Manish on 02/12/2016 at 16.16 who promptly passed it onto a manager. Albrin the manager who took the call at 16.16 stated that he would wipe the early disconnection fees from the account as we weren’t in a fibre optic area. However, this left a charge of £70 as we have to return a TalkTalk TV box. This call lasted approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Exacerbating our poor experience is receiving charges for a SIM card we have not requested nor used. We are unaware of how or why this has been set up and how long we have been getting charged for it.
During our move to my parent’s house we have lost the TalkTalk TV Box. Therefore, we are unable to return it. However, as stated previously, we feel as a good will gesture on TalkTalk’s part that it is proper we are not charged for this equipment.
To reiterate why we feel this to be reasonable and proper due to:
- TalkTalk technical staff being unable to provide an adequate solution to our internet problem and us having to make numerous phone calls to resolve it. This caused emotional distress and cost to my fiancé due to her grandmother being ill in Lithuania and her being unable to use Skype and to make international calls. There was a significant lack of empathy on TalkTalk staff’s part when dealing with this sensitive issue.
- TalkTalk sales staff providing misleading information about the contract we took out in February of 2016 stating it was substantially better than our previous one, when in reality it was the same deal. When we called to complain about this we got nowhere.
- The wrong equipment being sent – we needed a new router and instead were sent a TV box and signal boosters.
- An early disconnection fee being applied to our account despite TalkTalk being informed in August of 2016 we were moving from our address.
- The exceptionally poor customer service provided by staff who were dealing with the situation including: providing contradictory information, promising to call back and then not and promising on two occasions to escalate it to the CEO’s office without actually doing so. This has resulted in calls amounting to approximately 6 hours and this letter which has taken around an hour to write.
- That we are being charged for a SIM card we did not authorise, request or have used.
- The significant distress incurred from this poor service and the subsequent time and effort to attempt to resolve it.
- That we have been TalkTalk customers for a number of years and feel we have been badly let down.
Due to the above points we hope you’ll concede that the service we have experience has been below the standard expected of a service provider. Furthermore, we hope you will agree that it is a reasonable good will gesture to remove the charges from our account and close the account and any associated services fully.