Hi Trish, THis is the first time ive used this site, but HAD to reply to your message! I tried doing exactly the same thing.... Talk Talk told me that BT had to put the line in, and BT told me Talk Talk would do it. Talk Talk even told me that if i cancelled the 3 month contract with BT, they would refund me the cancellation cost of £18..... However, its nt that easy, whatever they say.... BT have to activate the line, and after months of trying to sort this out with Talk Talk....(since October 2005) I have gone `back to BT, yes they are more expensive but at least you can speak to somebody when you ring! The biggest problem I have now, is that Talk Talk repeatedly set up direct debits on my bank account, which i have to go to the bank and cancel on a weekly basis!! The bank have told me they cant stop this happening, so again I called Talk Talk, they assured me that it wouldnt happen again........ one week later and guess what!!! this is the third direct debit they have set up on my account since cancelling, and after threatening them with legal action, they have stopped..... for now. My advice, dont touch them, get out, a complete nightmare from start to finish...... Free broadband,,,, yeah right!!!!!!

I had exactly the same problem - was told the same things. I kicked off my house move with Talk Talk three months ago. I have spent more hours than I can count arguing with people over different technicalities and conflicting information. All the way through I have insisted that all I wanted them to do was get my braodband and phone line connected at my new address. Three months on despite all my efforts I have:

A BT landline complete with a bill for £73 - a lot of which was spent ringing Talk Talk

Talk Talk Broadband which is costing me £30 a month instead of the £15 it cost in my old address

A bill from Talk Talk for a "disconnection fee" of £53

An extension to my contract of 9 months

Yesterday I got a letter to say that I have no direct debit details set up with them even though they have been taking money out of my account for over a year

Talk Talk wont tell me what their complaints procedure is. The problem with that is that you can not get a third party involved until you go through the complaints procedure - catch 22. My strong advice to you is to ring Talk Talk up - pay whatever disconnection fee they ask for and go with another provider in your new house otherwise you might end up in the same position as me.

Talktalk are the pits. They have finally connected my broadband nearly two months after moving in, this after first saying it would be 'instantaneous'. If it's useful I can post the four page letter I sent them. I was told that the complaint address is:
Higher Level Complaints
Carphone Warehouse PLC
1 Portal Way
London
W3 6RS

Well well..... is anybody happy with their service? The adverts plastered everywhere for either free or very cheap broadband are the biggest load of cobblers, for 4 months my broadband (which i kept with BT while Talk Talk tried to sort it out for me!!) and my broadband were costing me between £70-80 a month!!! A far cry from the £20 they told me I would enjoy paying!!! I cancelled my contract when i moved house, after having to sort everything out myself with BT, no cancellation fee was mentioned, and if it is.... I will refuse to pay it. BT have some brilliant offers on at the minute, even tho im paying a little more for it, the equipment was here when promised, always somebody you understand on the phone, text message updates all the way through letting me know what was going on, and peace of mind!!

Hi,

I have been reading your comments - thanks!

We're with TalkTalk at the moment and are about to move house- i know i know, it's going to be hell.
There's a BT (unactive of course) line in the new place.

Have any of you TalkTalk customers ever had any breakthrough's with moving house, such as actually getting TalkTalk to refund the cancellation of the BT contract? Or finding a smoother transition?

Any advice on getting through to people who can actually get something done on the phone?

Your comments aree much appreciated!

I'm already planning a complaint to Ofcom, BT, TalkTalk - this is totally ridiculous!

Hi,

 I'm in the same position as many people on this thread - moving house and trying to take my TalkTalk account with me. After several hours on the phone this morning I think I have worked out what the problem is. I was lucky enough to eventually get through to someone at talktalk who knew what he was talking about. Although he evidently wasn't allowed to tell me all the facts, reading between the lines this is what I think the situation is:

Old arrangement: BT owned all the phone lines and other companies leased them. Moving house meant getting a new line from BT and signing up to a three month contract with them. The cancellation fee for this was £13, which talktalk were happy to refund to keep the customers.

New arrangement: The phone lines are owned by a separate company, Openreach (a subsidiary of BT, but legally distinct, to put all phone companies on a level playing field). Now all phone companies, including BT and talktalk alike, are allowed to activate telephone lines, allocate numbers, and anything else necessary to move accounts from one address to another. However, talktalk do not have the systems in place to do this yet, so BT won't do it because it's talktalk's responsibility and talktalk won't do it because they physically can't.

At the same time, BT have changed their rules so that instead of signing up to a three month contract and having a £13 cancellation fee, you have to sign up to a one year contract with up to a £70 cancellation fee (less after six months). TalkTalk are understandably reluctant to pay this cancellation fee to keep their customers.

Therefore, until TalkTalk get their systems up and running, it is not possible to keep your talktalk account without paying a £70 cancellation fee to BT. There's no knowing how long it will take them to fix this, but they're losing customers in droves at the moment, so you'd hope they'd make it a high priority.

I hope this helps ease the frustration of anyone else in this situation.
 

Hi there,

 

I found that no matter WHAT talk talk say, they CANNOT activate a line when you move house.  You will have to get BT to do it...... as for them refunding the cancellation fee..... I never got that far!!!

 

I moved home last November and posted a report then about all the hassle I had moving my Talk Talk line.  After a lot of stress I got absolutely nowhere so when I moved I took out a 3 month contract with BT, took on a new phone number and stayed with BT for the 3 months.  I knew it would take Talk Talk 3 months to refund any BT cancellation fee so I didn't bother pursuing it and stayed with BT for 3 months for phone calls only and was without broadband for this time.  Luckily I have access to the internet at work.  Despite plenty of reservations I have rejoined Talk Talk and I must say I have had no problems in my new home.  For £19.99 a month for broadband and unlimited local and national calls I could not fault the price and I do think the service has improved since they are part of AOL.  However saying that I dread needing to talk to Talk Talk Customer Services!

I totaly agree TalkTalk are rubbish I had the same problem I only had broadband twice in three months was lied to all the time and in the end cancelled my contract when BT's engineer told me that it was there exchange that was causing the problem, I would not recommend this company to anyone they are a bunch of useless so and so's and you are forever talking to Indian call centres! Have since gone back to BT.

Hi,

Apparently complaints should go to this address. If you are really unhappy check out Otelo, I believe they are the watchdog for telecoms. After writing to this address, about no voice mail for almost 8 weeks, I did get a call within a couple of days, that was yesterday, however no contact today, so we will see. If anyone else has better info please let me know.

Customer Liaison Manager
Carphone Warehouse
1 Kelvin Close
Birchwood
Warrington
WA3 7PB

 

We're moving this week, and are having this same problem.

Big thanks to Rachel for her very clear explanation of what the situation is and why.

I just wanted to provide a counterpoint to the criticism of TalkTalk - personally, I've found them very easy to deal with. I had a bit of a problem a while back with email, and when I got in touch, they were very helpful and speedy. And this morning when I called them twice on this currwent issue I got through almost immediately and they were friendly and sympathetic (although unable to actually fix the problems for the reasons Rachel explained above).

BT, in contrast, took an Ice-Age to answer the phone and were then rather obstructive and difficult.

IMO, the problem here is two headed:

1 - TalkTalk haven't the infrastructure to do the activations themselves, which is a pain in the behind for us customers but is not a failing of their service as such, just a bit that they cannot/will not do at present. I think they need to look very seriously into providing this service, but I would imagine that it's not a simple matter to suddenly acquire engineers and all the structure needed to run what is an entirely different operation from just renting a line from BT and billing customers differently. It's irritating, but IMO understandable, that they haven't quite hit the ground running on this.

2 - BT are forcing customers in this situation to either pay them a one off £70 or to pay £11 a month in line rental - even though we ALREADY pay them £11 a month when we pay TalkTalk our (in my case) £21 a month. £11 of that £21 goes straight onto BT for the line, so in effect, BT are asking us to pay it twice for the one line. They are taking the p*** quite frankly.

I'm considering just taking the £70 hit on this in order that our phone/broadband service suffers a minimum of disruption after the move. However I'm furious with BT for effectively cashing in on the Openreach situation by ceasing to provide TalkTalk and its customers with the support as it previously did without making this rather mammoth charge for it.

Very cynical BT, very cynical indeed.

Hi All

I have run into the exact same problem. I signed up with Talktalk 5 months ago and by and large have had no complaint with the service. Until that is I foolishly decided to move house. I will spare you the gory details (I have to say out of all of Britains incompetentent and idiotic utilities services BT are the rudest and the most deceptive) but only 15 phone calls and only a week later I have got it sorted. BT have to provide an active phone line service to a house no matter what (this is not for a fixed period with a cancellation fee and this is because BT still control the infrastructure) . They will charge you 11 pounds a month for line rental which talktalk take over when you transfer. BT operators are programmed to tell you that they cannot offer anything less than 12 month contract but it is as I found out through some very helpful lady in ofcom (who I thank for my sanity)all in the wording. You have to say I want an 'active line' in the house not a telephone line or BT line but an active one then it was like they had been found out and one was set up. apparently to make things 'easier'  BT has been broken up into several different companies that don't know anything about the other and hire very rude customer service people to throw you off the scent don't get roped into calling them it is the BT customer 'service'  you need and if the spod insists they cannot do it ask to speak to a supervisor.

So now I have got it all done it is only going to take 48 hours to switch on my active line (I already had a dial tone I think it may be more helpful if you don't tell them that) a week to get the number and three weeks for talktalk to switch on the broadband now thats service.

Good luck and don't give In Ofcom were brilliant however I do now know more about British Telecommunications than I ever wanted and having also done battle with the gas and electric companies that major incompetence and idiotic bureacracy is Britains fastest growing industry

"They will charge you 11 pounds a month for line rental which talktalk take over when you transfer."

So, just to be clear they'll start off charging the £11 a month, but as soon as I get TT to take it over BT will just stop charging me? Nice.

Thanks for that info, will go and have another go at BT shortly! ;-)

Yes because 10.50 of your Talktalk contract is for line rental

I'm in exactly the same position as some of the other correspondents to this. I can only say that both BT and Talk Talk are incompetent in dealing with customers as experienced by me this afternoon. Despite the technical explanations surrounding why Talk Talk can't do this and BT can't do that I find it amazing that a process that used to take a few minutes in the days before competition now takes ''a minimum of 14 days'' and ''there's no guarantee that you can keep your exisitng number''. Surely the world of technology is meant to make imporvements in the service us poor mortals receive and not exaserbate an already stressful time?