Saturday 17 December 2016

Talk-Talk is a fraud

It seems that I just can't pick a good mobile company. Or maybe, they are just all the same and use obfuscation to confuse and rip people off.

After probably 15 years I decided to give up on O2. Their contracts are extremely expensive compared to anyone else an their shop outlets have turned in to useless money wasting phone selling depots. You can't go to a shop to get help with your device or your account. I couldn't even buy a screen protector for my phone that I bought from them at the shop.

So, since I get my broadband from Talk-Talk, and since they had some good deals for existing customers I switched my phone accounts to them - three of them. AND ALL THEY SOLD ME WERE A LOAD OF LIES.

Now if you have a teenager, you might know that having a cap on your account is of utmost importance, so before I switched mobile provider I went online and used their chat facility (and I think I might have called them too) to make sure that when you run out of data or call time you would not be able to make any further calls or use data until you have gone online and purchased some more if you wanted to do so.

Today, however, I found out that this is not the case. After, my daughter overspent £18 on the account they decided to freeze my whole account. That is, not just the one phone ... no, they freeze ALL four accounts (the fourth one is the free one you get with your broadband/phone contract).

So as one does I resolved myself to having to waste the next couple of hours on the phone with a Talk-Talk representative.

The first thing they tell me is that Talk-Talk apparently have a usage limit and a capping limit. But actually they don't have a capping limit because, unlike I was led to understand in the first place, they don't place a cap on the traffic to your phone. So you can happily overspend without knowing it. The usage limit is the limit after which they will suspend your contract. So if you overspend because they are incapable of capping they will suspend your account. However, since they only get usage report every 24 hours, you can happily overspend in 24 hours and then they'll suspend your account when they receive the info. This reminds me of this story http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8248056.stm.  So Talk-Talk admits to being slower than a carrier pigeon. We can put a rover on Mars, I can buy things in China and get it delivered within 3 days, I can transfer money to someone anywhere in the world in seconds, but Talk-Talk can't get an up to date usage report in less than 24 hours.

So basically there were three issues I wanted resolved. Firstly I wanted my usage limit to be the same as my capping limit. But since Talk-Talk can't get an up to date usage report they are incapable of implementing that and I had to sit and listen to a 15 minute advisory session of how to switch your data usage off when you are not using your data. Trying to get the message across that I was not in need of the tutorial on how and when and why to switch data off just led to contention. So I sat here chewing on my desk in an attempt to not burst into tears out of frustration.

The second issue was that I wanted the already accumulated charges of £18 waived based on the fact that I was miss sold a product. It wasn't so easy but after some time the Talk-Talk rep agreed to this and he agreed to unsuspend my accounts.

The third issue was that I wanted to be given the opportunity to cancel my contracts with Talk-Talk without any early cancellation charges because I was miss sold a product. To this the rep wouldn't agree. I pointed out that, since he has already agreed to refund £18 he has admitted to the product being miss sold and therefore I should be given the opportunity to get out of the contract without being penalised. He also insisted in telling me what the cancellation charges for all four phones were going to be, despite the fact that I kept telling him that I am not interested in hearing the cancellation charges because I do not wish to pay them. What I said to him was that if he cannot resolve this issue he should give me the name and/or address of the person to contact about this and I'll sort it out with them.

At this point the rep decided that he was no longer going to waive the £18 and that he wasn't going to unsuspend my accounts either.  I pointed out to him that he has, if he maintains this position, just made himself guilty of lying and dishonesty. The fact that he is now going back on something he has agreed upon, in my books, makes him and the company he represents dishonest and liars. Obviously he wouldn't agree to this statement but interestingly enough, now that I think about it, he never disagreed with the statements either and thus I can take this as acknowledgement of the fact that both him and the company he works for are guilty of being dishonest to clients. He also didn't disagree with my statement that he was now merely going back on his word because he was on a power trip.

I now have to wait until Tuesday when he has talked to his Chief Technical Officer to decide what is going to be done. So his power trip continues.

So let me take the opportunity to warn you against Talk-Talk's questionable practises. This is not the first time I have been lied to blatantly by Talk-Talk. Some years ago I demanded and early termination of a contract because I was distinctly told that I would get a static ip for my broadband provision, just to be told after installation that Talk-Talk did not do static ip addresses.

When something like this happens once, you can probably put it down to ignorance on the rep's part but when it happens a second time you start questioning the company's integrity.

TALK-TALK, I'M QUESTIONING YOUR INTEGRITY.