Hi Stephen,

I am taking the time to compare broadband providers, deals available plus CUSTOMER SERVICE, I realise that there must be some happy customers out there, but having accidentally stumbled onto this forum and read the number of very angry and frustrated customers (and not quite customers but that cannot go anywhere else as they apparently are official customers). I have come to the conclusion that I cannot afford to get into such a pickle and that I will be taking a gamble that switchover and customer care will be your top priority as the evidence state to the contrary.

You have therefore lost a potential customer- I was seconds from signing up til I read all that I read and based on that I have come up with a new slogan for myself.

Talk Talk,..............I would rather Walk Walk'

regards mongster

I am sure, that under the data protection act, DPA. by law, a company has to provide you with a transcript of calls on request. As for the charge, I think that a company would be breaking the law to charge you an 'admin fee' for this legal requirement. I may be wrong on this. The whole point of a company recording calls, is for legal compliance and for the consumers protection. IF A COMPANY DO NOT HAVE THE MANPOWER TO INVESTIGATE COMPLAINTS AND POTENTIAL BREACHES OF CONSUMER PROTECTION, THEN IMO, THEY SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO TRADE.

Thanks for your comments... However not sure how they help the OP.... :(

Thanks "access" ;)

Dear J E F

Unfortunately your comment can apply to virtually every Broadband supplier and behind the scenes, in my observation they couldn't care less. What the consumer needs is muscle which can only be provided by effective Government policing including swingeing fines per day for the customer victim when things go wrong and are not put right due to the incompetent systems the companies use for cheapness or because the companies won't put something right - too much traffic - because it's too expensive to switch customers to a different path and maximum monthly contracts. Until then companies hate DP Act SUBJECT ACCESS REQUESTS because they are expensive to do because of the way they calculate overheads AND they worry what may be spewed out which could "incriminate" them. Also if they get enough the issue becomes newsworthy.

TALKTALK_SUPPORT:Hi Margaret-Rose, Unable to comment on CPW for the simple reason that I don't know any of their processes or what they can and cannot do however it does sound like they have provided a less than great service.. ;( I would suggest that you put a complaint in writing also if you call them and ask for the process to complete a SAR which will allow you to request a copy of the call recording for yourself, there is a fee for this however you will be able to get a copy of every piece of info CPW hold on your son including call recordings. TalkTalk charge an admin fee of £10.00 to do i would imagine that CPW have a similar fee. Thanks Stephen

LMAO

so your trying to screw another £10 out of a mentally handicapped boy? you guys are the worst scumbags on the planet, and regarding writing a letter? what good will that do, you ignore all other communication and qutoe the usual "its in the ts and Cs small print" crap.

I'm glad people are getting the message about TT shiesters, just because you're a big company doesn't mean you're reputable, but there will always be the gullable people who fall for the word 'FREE'.... in your case the cliche "nothing in this life is free" definitely applies!

Hi huckster

Absolutely! Years ago they could pop the phone number in and get all the calls out. Unfortunately if you look on the BT site as an example they say "Date and Time" and they bounce applications back if you don't give them that information.

access

Over the last few years the technology for call recording has advanced considerably. Some can filter the search using the telephone number of the caller and therefore you don't need exact date/time. A list then comes up with all calls from the number(s) concerned.

In regard to government departments, the number of calls and the terrible track record of sound investment in IT, may be the issue. Companies line CW should have the very latest technology being a telecommunications company. It will be case of whether they can be bothered or good will as you say.

huckster

Hi TT_S

I would be surprised if getting a copy of the call recording was as simple as you intimate. You need the date and time and in my experience of a Government department the catch there was that they insisted on the exact time to the second which, in practice, is near impossible while priding themselves on their openness. My understanding in the commercial world is that there is a significant element of goodwill.

Hi Margaret-Rose,

Unable to comment on CPW for the simple reason that I don't know any of their processes or what they can and cannot do however it does sound like they have provided a less than great service.. ;(

I would suggest that you put a complaint in writing also if you call them and ask for the process to complete a SAR which will allow you to request a copy of the call recording for yourself, there is a fee for this however you will be able to get a copy of every piece of info CPW hold on your son including call recordings. TalkTalk charge an admin fee of £10.00 to do i would imagine that CPW have a similar fee.

Thanks
Stephen

This is the same company as Carphone Warehouse, from whom my son bought a mobile phone some years ago. After almost a year, they phoned him and offered him an upgrade, about which I knew nothing until it arrived. My son is mentally handicapped and could not have answered any security questions, as he doesn't know the answers, not even his own date of birth. The "upgrade" was not as good as the phone he already had and when I rang them and got past the usual crap of "I can't talk to you; you are not the account holder", I was not only told that he had answered security questions, which is quite frankly impossible, but that they couldn't listen to their recording of the conversation as there were too many of them to dig through.

Anyone hearing him on the phone would know that he had no idea what they were talking about.

I will have nothing whatever to do with this company, or its offshoots. What has Stephen got to say about this?

hey guys my names ricky i used to work for a company doing door to door for talktalk.

omg if i knew it wos that bad i would had quit sooner i feel bad cos i have signed people up to this mess. i done a line check for my own house on the phone when i worked they told me 10 meg wen i done it on the website it said 3meg its all a con if someone comes to ur door dont let them in cos once they r in they will sign u up.

i thought the offer wos amazing til now, i nearly signed my mum up im glad i didnt.

talktalk you are a disgrace to this world and rippin people off.

oh and also i got told i will get paid for the accounts i do and i didnt get a penny so if u do suddenly get a job involving talktalk walk out its not woth it.

thanks

ricky

The modem that was allegedly sent was charged at an initial fee of £30.

This increased over the year with each threatening letter I recieved. 4 in total. On each occaision I called, advised them of the error, recieved an apology, requested that the error & its acknowledgement be sent to me in writing, which was always agreed, and never materialised. The cost of the calls was in the region of £35 all told because I could only seem to be able to communicate directly via a premium rate number. By the time the matter was passed to the debt collection comp, they had added thier own fee to the original 'debt' to Talk Talk, which was about £42.

This was finally resolved last August when I choaked up the money. As said, a quick tot up bought the total to just under £200 with the premium rate calls that lasted upto 20+ minutes in length, while I engaged in endless circular arguments with idiots, thier managers, & thier manager's managers!

I didnt keep the documentation, as I was so totally ground down by the experience and to be honest, was just relieved to get the matter closed & dealt with. I therefore have no evidence of what transpired in hard copy or otherwise to demonstrate the unethical nature of thier conduct.

Extortion & blackmail - yes to both.

Unregulated companies are able to do this.

Hang on?? You paid £200 for a service you never received? And they had already apologised to you for it? Why would they hand you over to a debt company if they already apologised and said you didn't owe them any money???

I know it's probably a bit more complicated than that but if that summary is anywhere NEAR the truth I would get on to their CEO Charles Dunstone immediately and demand your money back. What they did amounts to extortion and blackmail and you shouldn't let them get away with it.

If writing to CEO doesn't help, go round in person to their HQ and demand to be seen by someone at the top. Cause a scene! Embaress them! But above all, get your money back!!

I made enquiries about signing up, they allegedly sent me a modem, then spent a year hounding me with threatening letters demanding money for a service I hadnt even signed upto, and a modem I hadnt actually received!!

Like you, I spent ££££££££s and hours talking to every person imaginable to resolve what appeared to be a simple issue, but apparently to little avail, despite profuse apologies & promises that the matter ended with them and I would no longer be troubled for the alleged debt that I owed them.

They passed the matter over to a debt collection company, who began to harass me with the vigour of a Rottweiler. "Not our problem" they said. The debt was passed to us by Talk Talk. "Too late. Pay up". By now the debt had quadrupled in size, and was beginning to be more than a minor irritation. In this day and age, who needs a neg on your Credit Rating?

So guess what?

I coughed up the money to protect myself.

The entire experience cost me nearly £200 with the cost of phone calls.

All for a simple enquiry that apparently had no strings, & did not confirm a purchase of either services or products!

Can anyone think of a single word to describe talktalk services? Heres a few to get you started:- "disgraceful"; "incompetent"; "liars" This is the letter talktalk should have sent to me when I agreed to move my existing account with them:

Dear Mr Duck

Thank you for using our home mover service to transfer your Talk International Anytime account to your new home.

We normally need about 2 weeks to set up your new phone line and it takes about 4 weeks to connect your broadband, but as a long established and valued customer we have arranged a special service just for you.

This is what we propose.

1 We will take over 5 weeks to establish a phone connection. We realize that this will leave you without a phone at a time when you need it most but never mind, you can always use a mobile (if you have one)

2 We won’t actually give you a broadband connection at all, although we will make a series of promises that we have no intention of keeping, just to string you along.

3 We wont be providing you with a talk international anytime account either. Instead we will itemise each call individual call at the maximum rate. Your phone bill will be enormous!!!!!

4 We appreciate that we haven’t actually provided you with broadband but if we ever do get round to it that will cost you an additional £180 a year.

To summarise then Mr. Duck we will provide our “services” late or not at all and they will nothing like you have been used to (or are expecting). The cost will be exorbitant.

Please confirm that you are willing to accept these terms.

Naturally this is a spoof letter. We would not dream of posting it on to you as only a complete idiot would agree to it. But it is important for you to realize that we are not completely useless. Should you not pay immediately for the “services” that we have failed to provide we will be very quick to invoke the services of a debt collection agency and threaten you with legal action. These people are similar to our own customer services i.e. a complete disgrace – for example you will tell them at least four times to put their demands in writing and not to telephone you but they will ignore you on every occasion.

We trust that you find this acceptable and look forward to doing business with you in the near future.

Yours faithfully

Total disgrace from Talktalk.

PS

Please ignore all our claims over the last three months that any failure to provide your services are the fault of BT as we know for a fact that Sky will have you up and running in just 9 days.