Breach of contract [Incident: ????????
Dear Talk Talk/Tiscali
I have previously gone through all the correct channels in attempt to resolve my issue with the lack of service that we have had to endure over the last 9 months. I have contacted the ‘so called’ Customer services department, I have filled in the online complaints form, and I have even emailed one of the TalkTalk Customer Relations operatives. This lady, a ?? failed also to adequately deal with the problems and concerns that I brought to her attention. In her reply dated 11 September she stated “As per our records dated 30th Aust 2010, you have confirmed that the technical issues have been resolved. However, I can see that you are still unhappy with the service, therefore I have now re-escalated your issue to our Technical Support for an update on this issue and to request a technician to call you back to assist you with these problems. The reference number for this escalation is ??????????? . The Technical Support team will endeavour to contact you within 72 working hours, so your continued patience during this time would be appreciated.”
I have two points to contest here.
1. I am not sure what records she was referring to because I did not confirm that the technical issues have been resolved.
2. The Technical Support team will endeavour to contact you within 72 working hour. No one has endeavoured to contact me. It is now 13 days later and still I have received no call.
So now I am forwarding all the correspondence that I have had with Talk Talk to you, so that you can gain a full idea of why it is that I am extremely unhappy with the service Talk Talk/Tiscali have provided, both in services and customer services.
The first is the original letter sent to the customer relations department and the second the follow up letter.
Dear Sir/Madam
In December of 2009 we changed service providers from BT to Talk Talk. You claim to have been “voted The Best Bundled Provider for Value for Money in the Consumer Choices Awards 2010”. I only wish that this experience was true for ourselves. Ever since connection we have had many problems with our services, particularly the broadband and TV services. We have contacted your customer services department no less than twenty times in these past 9 months. The actual figure probably being much higher. The complaints have been many and varied, but mostly about the lack of service to the TV. Often it is pixilated or freezes. Sometimes Talk Talk TV will not even start. Sometimes it has failed to record programs. Only two weeks ago, I rang up to complain that the TV kept freezing and one of the operatives said that he could see that we had had 50 Drop outs in the space of just two days. We have had three set top boxes replaced, on each occasion losing all our recordings. We have had many occasions in which our broadband connection has failed. And then recently, just last week in fact, we were left almost three days without any services because the phone line failed, leaving us without any of the three services. This simply is not the level of service that we expected and we are very disappointed. We recently worked up a mobile phone bill of £15 trying to get our phone line sorted. I eventually got through to the technical department after being put on hold for almost 20 minutes, don’t forget I was having to contact you using a mobile phone because we had no landline connection, upon talking to a man I was promised that our fault would be investigated within 12 hours and that some one would call me back on the phone number that I had supplied. 12 hours later no-one called back and I was forced to contact your very poor customer services. Again using my wives mobile phone I talked to someone and had to explain the whole situation again. I was again promised that someone would contact me by 1600 that same day to report on the fault. At 4 o’clock no-one called and by 5 o’clock I was forced to ring again. I was again put on hold and when I eventually spoke to someone, I was told that I would have to wait until the following day to receive an answer. I asked why it was that still no-one had resolved the problem or even given me a progress report, the lady could not give me an answer. I asked that someone look into it immediately and contact me that same day. I then received the reply “ you shall have to wait till tomorrow”. I asked why this was, and was told that there was no available timeslots to forward my request. I reminded the lady that I had already been allocated a slot over 24 hours earlier and still had not received an answer. I was obviously being derailed because after much persistence the lady agreed to put me through to the relevant department. I was again put on hold, however after 10 minutes I hung up because ringing you was costing us a fortune and I had no faith in your customer service operatives and their ability to resolve my problem. This service is not good enough.
You are in breach of contract simply because I have not received the services that I requested and pay for. For this reason I am exercising my right to demand financial compensation in the form of a refund. As a goodwill gesture from yourselves, a multi million pound profit company I would expect you to refund at the very least half of the charges that we have paid to Talk Talk for this very poor service, service really is not the correct term in this instance. Additionally I would expect you to recompense ourselves for the cost of having to use our mobile phone contact you. I used my ‘pay as you go’ phone and spent £5 and as already mention we have used £15 on my wife’s phone. We can supply invoices from our mobile contractors if necessary. The total charges we have paid to Talk Talk since December are £253.78. I would also expect to not charge your customers when they are contacting you regarding faults with your services, to do so is morally wrong.
Our phone line and services have now been restored, hopefully this shall rectify some if not all the problems that we have been experiencing, if indeed it is sorted then why has it taken over nine, yes 9 months to do so?
I look forward to your prompt reply.
Dean Gerstel
The reference number for your question is ???????????.
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Dear ??
Thank you very much for your prompt reply. May I begin by saying thank you for the ‘goodwill gesture’ of £30. I can only assume that this is to make up for the cost of repeatedly contacting Talk Talk with our mobile phones during our recent service disconnection. As you say in your email this will ‘part make up or the fact that we have experienced a level of customer service that were we unhappy with’. This is a satisfactory gesture on your part for the lack of customer care and service that we received during this spell, however it is far removed from explaining why we have had to endure a poor quality of service from the outstart in December of last year. I am still very unhappy and you have not brought this matter to a satisfactory conclusion.
You said in your letter and I quote “I hope this is a satisfactory explanation, and I do apologise for the issues your were experiencing. Tiscali does take these issues seriously, and it is always our intention to bring the concerns of our customers to a satisfactory conclusion”
I do not wish to be rude but where in your letter do you explain the reasons for the very poor quality of service that we have been paying for? If I may, I should like to bring your attention to my previous email. I wrote, ” Ever since connection we have had many problems with our services, particularly the broadband and TV services. We have contacted your customer services department no less than twenty times in these past 9 months. The actual figure probably being much higher. (this figure does not include the occasions that we rang during the month of August). The complaints have been many and varied, but mostly about the lack of service to the TV. Often it is pixilated or freezes. Sometimes Talk Talk TV will not even start. Sometimes it has failed to record programs. Only two weeks ago, I rang up to complain that the TV kept freezing and one of the operatives said that he could see that we had had 50 Drop outs in the space of just two days. We have had three set top boxes replaced, on each occasion losing all our recordings. We have had many occasions in which our broadband connection has failed.” Forgive me, but nothing in your email explains the reason why we have been experiencing so many problems.
Under the Supply of Goods and Services Act the law says that I should not have to pay for a service that is not delivered to the agreed standards and can demand compensation. Talk Talk have failed to deliver on all three parts of the ‘Supply of Services Act.
Part 1 ‘Care and Skill’.
Talk Talk have failed to ‘carry out the service with reasonable care and skill’. Your technicians failed to diagnose the fault. I have it on good authority from a BT field technician that your technicians could have diagnosed this fault long ago. If this is correct why has it taken almost 8 months to diagnose and correct the fault?
This situation also fails to meet Part 2 of the Act. ‘Time and Performance’
IF our ‘Full and Reliable Service’ has finally been delivered, it has taken a very long time to achieve the agreed level of service. Talk Talk as the ‘supplier (have failed) to carry out the service within a reasonable time.
Part 3 ‘Consideration’
…party contracting with the supplier will pay a reasonable charge.
As previously mention we have been dutifully paying you for a service and quite frankly Talk Talk have not delivered on the agreed standard of service. At the last invoice point we have paid you £253.78.(this does not include the invoices for August and September) Almost £7 of the call charges during this time were to the Talk Talk customer service line, again to complain and inform you that our services, either the broadband or the TV had yet again failed.
One reason why we have been very careful to contact Talk Talk each time the service has failed is that in doing this a log is being generated. We have consistently reported the faults and informed Talk Talk of our displeasure and dissatisfaction of the service provided.
Under the Supply of Goods and Services Act I demand compensation to the amount of £253.78 for the lack of service and breach of contract with myself the consumer.
I wish to continue my contract with Talk Talk, hopefully this time with a proper service delivered.
Thank you for your time in reading this email
Dean Gerstel
I am now reconsidering my initial wish to continue our contract with Talk Talk and I am seriously considering finding another supplier. If you take the time to investigate the number of times that I have contacted customer services to inform them that our service has failed, I am sure you will agree Talk Talk have continually failed to deliver a FULL and RELIABLE service and are in fact in breach of contract and because of this I have every right under Consumer Law, specifically the ‘Supply of Goods and Services Act’ to demand compensation.
If you fail once again to bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion I shall be forced to take this matter to the Independent Alternative Dispute Resolution Scheme.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter and I look forward to your prompt reply.
In eager anticipation
I am so fed up with talk talk rubbish performance, every day we average less than 1mbite,
today we are at 936 kbites when we pay for a 10Mega bites deal. it has been the worsted service that I have ever had from any company. Can you ever get through too them? No that’s a surprise there lines always so busy with people complaining. They think we have nothing better to than to sit on the end of a phone listening to some freak telling me that I am VERY IMPORTANT customer and the longer I hang on the more money the phone company makes!!!!! Of coarse I’m a very important customer they stealing my money and my time. Yes All the staff are very efficient at taking our money from our accounts that they all have forgotten that they are supposed to give us a high quality service every day of the year. So Please deal with this Now!!! and give me the service we paid for.
My family went nuts when I stupidly listened to the poisoned lips of a sales lying machine offering a better deal and how wonderful there product is!!!! and of coarse I agreed to continued the deal. what a sucker I am. I suggest that you rename the company “Dumber & Dumber” ly’er ly’er your bum’s fire!!
Talk talk has got to be the worse company I have ever had to deal with. We did not have the internet from when the line went live. We have had 3 enginners out and 2 of them did not even know they had to come and they said there was nothing they could do and it was BT who had to fix it and we got told we did not have to pay for them. We where getting texts saying some one will contract you in 72 days and of course nothing ever happen then we cancelled cause they where so crap got told we where not going to get chardged for anything then i looked at my bank and they have taken over £100 out of my bank for no reason and now there saying iv got to wait a whole month to get my money back that they STOLE from my bank, and when i spoke to a ‘customer service’ member he laughed at my problem. The worst customer service ever and vile people to talk to!!!!!!!!!!!!!
this is my letter to talktalk today following nothing but poor serviceIand misinformation I have no idea how this company is allowed to exist.
have today received another debt collectors letter for your bill. This the 2nd time this has happened. I paid my bill in full on 17 October 2012 and was informed by your operative that my contract was terminated and the phone line was cut off immediately that same day. I had no reason to disbelieve him, but have only been informed today by the debt recovery agency that I was supposed to cancel my account in writing. I consider this to be deliberate deception and extortion as on no occasion was I informed by your employees that I had to do so but was in fact told that the account was closed. I am now aware that it is in the terms and conditions bit like most people I mistakenly trusted your operatives who were quick to inform me of the cancelation fee but never mentioned putting it in writing. Previously to this I had tried to move to Sky who had offered me a much better deal and was informed no less than 5 times by your operatives again that the line change would go through only to find out later that you had not done as you promised, and refused to turn the line over to sky. Therefore again why was this cancelation by letter never mentioned in nearly 12 months of correspondence. I am not going to pay a bill for a service that was disconnected and when I was told that everything was in order. I suggest you listen to your recordings if necessary. I have the bank statements showing my last payment.
d j greenaway
AVOID, AVOID, AVOID Especially if you are a business their supplort is diabolical !!!!
TALK TALK I am ready to WALK WALK!!
you need a UK call centre for a start, I am not going to go on and on about my experience as it just makes me even madder! just needed to vent a little!
talk talk shame on you, you are rubbish
They tried to tell an electronics emg with 18 years exp in it industry as eng that there’s no fault on fttc today with 29 million fec errors in 24 hrs guess what talk talk I am considering talking you to talk 10 months since live and the faults persisting
Hi I’m so glad that I’m not the only one. I made a complaint in jump me about my speed being worse than dial up and paying fibre optic premium prices. I was also informed an engineer would contact they didn’t. When icontacted them a week later I was told that it was my fault because I didn’t answer the land line ( that they knew I didn’t have and had already contacted my mobile initially to check). I later contacted numerous times by email then eventually contacted by landline. After spending over two hours on the phone I was told I would be contacted in 24hrs with the issue. Guess what no phone call I contacted them 72hrs later and decided to cancel as this was ridicioulous. I’ve been using my photo data because I’ve been getting worse service than 15years ago when we had dial up. I was told by the person closing my account I wouldn’t be charged for leaving as my complaint was over two months ago and I wS free to get another supplier just paying for the usage until the change over. I received an email charging me for the remainder of my contract . Upon contacting them they were unwilling to listen to phone calls supposedly recorded to hear the advice I had been given by their advisors regarding cancellation of the service. The customer service advisor was reading from a card could hardly speak English and was unprepared to investigate. What an absolute sham this company is. Because they didn’t contact me to update me on the service on the number they had they decide to ignore the first date I had complained and charge me even more money to cancel a service wher I have had to pay excess money in mobile data from my mobile phone just to get basic Internet. Do not ever use this company they lie about everything and refuse to investigate when they know you are in the right. The phone calls are obviously not monitored otherwise they would listen to them to see what their representatives are saying to customers.