Friday, November 22, 2013

Talk Talk assigns someone else's number to us

Well I knew this would bite me in the ass when I decided to return to Talk Talk when we moved to our new home. Talk Talk promised to send a BT Openreach engineer to our house on 21 November 2013 to get the phone line activated. I have received several confirmation text and phone calls from TalkTalk confirming this very fact. I was made clear by TalkTalk that if I wasn't home to receive the engineer, I would be charged for the call out. Fair enough, I thought.

On the day, I received a letter from TalkTalk confirming my new phone number and that the phone and broadband package will go live. But after waiting an entire day for the engineer, no such engineer came. The phone and broadband service that was supposed to go live did not.

I went to twitter to ask their customer service representative, but they were unhelpful, using typical scripted lines. I also used the live agent chat facility on their website, but the agent was unhelpful, insisting each time that my line is okay, which I find utterly insulting. How can an agent, possibly living half way across the world, can ascertain that my phone line is working, when I, despite living here, can't.

The 'live agent' at Talk Talk also insists we call their customer service. Well how can I call when I have no phone line to call? Bloody genius.

Finally I decided to call the number that TalkTalk assigned to this household and found that it belonged to someone else! Someone else who isn't living in this household. So not only is TalkTalk denying me service, I am possibly paying for someone else's phone rental! I am also pretty sure they are breaching some kind of data protection act by assigning me someone else's number, so I hope they get a big fine from Ofcom. But knowing how in bed Ofcom is with ISPs, I doubt so.

So well done TalkTalk, you have convinced me that you are utterly hopeless and can never be redeemed. I am sure you will prevent me from leaving Talk Talk despite breaching your part of the contract by denying me the service you promised, but once the 12 month contract is up, I will be sure to take my money else where.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I had the same issues with you. Talk Talk assigned me a phone number that belonged to another Talk Talk user, who has that number for a year. It took months to resolve the issue. I have since left Talk Talk.