Don't subscribe to Talk Talk (Talk Talk)

Member Name: Mois

Product:	Talk Talk
Date:	11/03/08 (112 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: none

Disadvantages: Poor customer service, Poor broadband connection and throughput

I have had a very bad experience with Talk Talk, so much so that I wish i'd never signed up with them.
I signed up with them in Mid January, by mid February all i had had from them was a letter and the welcome pack. I called to query what was taking so long to find that no-one had any idea what was hapening. I was told that i would receive a call to let me know what the issue was. The call was supposed to happen within 48hrs. I did query the 48hrs as i thought this was a bit long but they insisted that this was the response time. 48hrs passed and i had not received a call. The phone line however 48hrs later was completly dead, no-dial tone and no broadband signal. I called Talk Talk to find out why and was on hold for more than 3 hrs with breaks in between with someone telling me they were chasing the issue and to hold. As i was calling from a mobile the bill is in and it's cost me a pcket. Anyway the response at this point was that the order was stuck in a queue in their internal system and it would be prioritised and resolved during the working week. They could not give me an idea of timescales. During the week I called several times to find out what the issue was as the line was still dead and was given several conflicting reasons as to why but there was still no note on the account and they would put me on hold everytime and spend about 20mins to half an hour to find out. Towards the end of the week i was told that there was a problem with the equipment in the exchange and they would ahve to book an engineer to visit the exchange. The engineer visted and found no problem so they had to book another engineer to go out to the exchange as i still had no phone. Over a week had passed and i was growing tired of the excuses and called BT to find out what the problem was. BT said there was no issue with the exchange and all that was required was that a telephone number needed to be allocated to the line (I had chosen to be allocated with a new number as i didn't want to pay £30 to port my old BT number accross to Talk Talk). BT told me that they can allocate a number and get me up an running by midday that day so armed with this information i called talk talk. they argued with me saying that it was a problem with the exchange so at this point i told them to cancel as i was going back to BT (I had instructed BT to take me back during the call with them). I was very promptly told by the call center muppet that i could not as the order was to far along in the queue. I was not happy with this and asked to speak to his manager. The manager was very abrupt and told me that yes the order cannot be cancelled but i stuck to my guns and insisted. I called back and went through to cancellations to cancel before after being told that my reason for cancelling was not valid. (i told them that my reason was that they are taking to long to activate the phoneline and connection). I was given a cancellation ref# and 2 days after i cancelled they took over my line. I was unaware of this and only found out after calling BT to ask why the answerphone was picking up the call after one ring. BT told me that the line was no longer theirs and they had realeased it to talk talk after receiving a transfer request. The date of the transfer request was 2 days after i was given a cancellation ref#. I was very annoyed and called Talk Talk to find out what was going on. I was told that there was no cancellation registered in the system. I asked to be put through to cancellations at which point i was cutoff. I called back again went through the same tired security routine and explanations to be told the same this and when asked to be put through to cancellations was cutoff. I called back a third time and when asked the security questions told the call center operator that i have been through this twice before and have been cutoff and wanted assurances that he would not do the same. So the thrid time i was not cutoff but was told that the cancellations dept was closed for the day. My blood was boiling at this point and i told them i would be registering a complaint with Ofcom. I called BT at this point and explained the situation to them and asked if they could register an Ofcom complaint for me. They agreed, I registered the complaint and asked them to take over my line.
Now i'm being billed by talk talk and am refusing to pay the bill. My argument is that they connected me to their service 2 days after i cancelled with them and they are arguing that they have no record of a cancellation so i have to pay. When they ported me over to their service they took my number with them and are trying to charge me for this. This is yet another thing that i did not ask for and so i'm now having to seek legal advice.

In short i would urge anyone not on the talk talk service not to sign up, As i'm on their service i can honestly say that it's not very good. The broadband doesn't connect most evenings and when it is connected the throughput is terrible. the phone works so i can say anything bad about that.

Summary: A stressful Talk Talk experience