Being Charged for a Free Call Boost Package

[Choke]

Help please.

Been with TT many, many years. Current contract Fibre 65 @ £29.95 (18 month contract) expires 20th March (tomorrow) so looked at deals/offers available to me last week. An offer of £26 p/m that was emailed to me had gone. Went for £29 (18 month contract) including free unlimited uk call boost which is what I was getting anyway with my current package.

Today I receive my upcoming bill due on 24th March and it's £43.30!!!! Looks like you're charging me £14.42 for the (supposed) free unlimited uk call boost package. What is going on? I've only renewed with you as directed via your offers and deals.

Need this sorting. Not happy.

[Gliwmaeden2]

@Kwarrender123, you have posted on another customer's year old thread.

For help with sorting out your billing, start your own topic. 

Return to the message board and click on start a topic.

[Kwarrender123]

Exact same thing has been happened to me since September. I've cancelled calls boost 3 times atleast and tried to take out two new contracts. Still being charged £48 per month as these failed while being processed???. Last one was just on tuesday. The cancellation of call boosts were never taken off my account. So £128 on call boosts and I don't even have a phone connected. About £30+ in charges over the stated contract renewal prices  Been a customer for 10years. Cancelled contract 16th March so we will see what happens now. But call boosts are still on what should be my final bill despite cancelling them again on the 16th March. 

[Arne-TalkTalk]

Happy to help. 

[Choke]

Great. Thanks again for sorting this out for me. Much appreciated.

[Arne-TalkTalk]

Correct.

[Choke]

Ah, so the lower amount?

[Arne-TalkTalk]

The bill wont update, the amount to be taken is the amount showing in the bar at the top of the my bill page.

[Choke]

Thanks Arne for sorting this. I can see where you directed me to  the amended balance amount, but as the next direct debit amount of £42.91 is still showing, do you know if the bigger amount will be taken this month on 26th April?

Regards

[Arne-TalkTalk]

Hi @Choke

The bill is high due to an incorrect package change fee, this has since been cleared. 

The correct amount is now showing in My Account under the account balance tab on the bill summary tab. 

Regards

[Choke]

Oh dear, back here again regretfully.

So after all the confusion a month ago during contract renewal where I was suddenly charged £43.30 last month. After cancelling that renewal and agreeing a reduced package at £27 and a rebate for the overcharge, I was told I had to pay the £43.30 last month but it would be adjusted this month and a rebate made so that I'd effectively be paying roughly £10 this month and then £27 thereafter.

So today I get the billing email sent to me for April and it's £42.91. (!!).

Can someone please sort this out and 1) credit me back what I'm owed based on what I've already overpaid last month and 2) ensure my bill going forward reflects what I agreed to last month.

At this rate, if I keep overpaying, I'm going to be owed a couple of months free of charge (plus my line was down too last month for a period of time).

[Gliwmaeden2]

It's probably not so much a billing issue as needing to check speeds etc, @Choke.

Staff in that section come on here quite early in the morning, so it's probably worth posting a request to check for what's affecting the speeds in the Fibre or Broadband section of the forum. 

Go to either message board and click on Start a Topic. 

[Choke]

Hi........back again!! Well, where do I start? Basically agreed a lower price and no April increases less the boost and (hopefully) getting reimbursed next month for what I was overcharged this month.

However. Speaking to a nice woman in South Africa two weeks ago it was suggested that in order to get the agreed new contract implemented quicker than 30 days, what TT would do was downgrade me to Fibre 35 for 24 hours to then put me back to Fibre 65 the next day under the new terms. I voiced my reservations in terms of performance issues if it wasn't implemented properly but was assured all would be fine and it would mean I wouldn't have to ring back and speak to some other different person to then try and explain what I wanted doing.

So...for that one night my speedtest showed the downgrade had happened and my 50mbps download was on about 30mbps (as expected) and then the following day it went back to 50mbps as it should have, after TT rang me back to confirm I'd been put back to Fibre 65.

Now...last night and today I've noticed this has dropped to a constant 20mbps and speaking to Tech via chat I've had the usual 'that's normal' but I'm not convinced it is. Has someone at the TT end switched me back down to Fibre 35 in all the confusion with how they decided to implement my new deal change? Need guidance please. Thanks again one and all. Any help muchly appreciated. xx

[Arne-TalkTalk]

I'm sorry this has led you to make that decision. I've checked all our promotions around the time you renewed and the free boost was not included. 

I found when we removed this offer:  From the 3rd September 2022 all Free promotions for the UK Unlimited Calls and International Max Boosts will no longer be available to customers when they sign up, recontract or simply want to add the boost for the first time. Customers who already have a free promotion will be able to keep it, but once it ends they won’t be able to add a new one. 

Sorry again.

[Divsec]

Hi @Choke I hope you are feeling better today, and sorry for the bombardment of well meant advice and suggestions from my colleagues.

I do think the best advice comes from @Arne-TalkTalk who has a full grip of the weird and seldom wonderful ways of Talktalk.

Try the pho ne number suggested by him and follow the I wish to cancel options. Good luck.

Please let me know how you get on. 

D

[Choke]

Thank you Gliwmaeden2 for your kind words. I'm a happy bloke normally but when you feel you've been done over on something I made a point of checking specifically before I eventually jumped, it is really upsetting when all you seem to get is a blanket 'Oh that can't possibly be the case' from many quarters. I didn't even get an email confirmation. That's not right for a start. If they had of done and it was as I saw it, then I have my proof. But even if I had got it wrong and it told me I was due to pay £45 I would have immediately told them to forget it and by the way, don't also charge me this £14.30 extra for the next bill.

As nophead has mentioned, £29 is certainly not the cheapest out there for the equivalent Fibre 65 deal for broadband alone so why would I sign up for only that at that price? It stated the UK Call Boost was included - end of. That seemed an okay deal and that's why I thought I'd stay on with that. Otherwise, it's cheaper elsewhere. It's not been a flawless 17 years either I might add. Took them several years to finally correct a fault on my line that knocked out the broadband every time the phone rang. Cabling outside eventually sorted it after me pleading for an engineer for months and being told there was no fault on the line and every call I made to TT was telling me that it must be my setup in the house (which I knew it wasn't). Seems loyalty just gets you a myriad of problems when your current deal runs out.

This whole day has now made me quite stressed and ill and all because of this. Not really looking forward either to calling a random agent tomorrow if I'm honest because, believe it or not, I'm not normally one to complain. Sounds like a lottery and knowing my luck I'll end up getting someone who just sticks with the 'You got it all wrong' scenario and 'Tough luck mate'.

[Gliwmaeden2]

Anything less than the full price advertised in the pricing list is deemed a great offer, @nophead, by Talktalk. 

Sometimes you can ring back the same day, and with a different agent get a better offer. It seems to be quite random.

And @Choke, I do agree that Talktalk's wording is very poor in many areas. For example they appear to offer new routers with renewal. These don't materialise unless your current one is faulty. So why mention them?

Similarly, even this site suggests full time support from Talktalk. 

No, Talktalk runs the website but the full time hours are only customers supporting each other. Staff are daytime Monday to Friday. 

Another sleight of hand.

Your response to the disappointment in your billing is completely understandable. 

[nophead]

£29 seems expensive for fibre 65 only anyway.  I have been paying £26 and that includes £1 to keep the price fixed for 18 months instead of the RPI increase. When I decided to leave they offered fibre 65 for £22 a month and a £40 Amazon gift card.

Does the price depend on where you are in the country?

[Choke]

Thanks for both you're inputs.

Looks like leaving it is then after 17 odd years. I know what I saw and read on the personalised deal they offered me a week ago through 'My Offers & Upgrades' section on 'My Account'. I didn't just plump for the next deal in my coffee break. I spent a lot of time checking all the deals out there together with the offer deals TalkTalk were intermittently emailing me beforehand. So I went for it. TalkTalk not the cheapest but hey, if they offer me the same deal at the same(ish) price then, yeah, okay. After all their emails with offers, it's a pity that they then couldn't actually email me the really important one that I should have received from them once I'd actually agreed to take a deal. Maybe that would then be my proof as to what I was offered, as opposed to me making it all up or having a senior moment. I say again, I checked My Account after the deal under future pricing/contract and it showed as £29 total price including UK Call Boost.

Whether anyone believes me or not, the semantics of what is, was or wasn't offered is at best 'confusing' and at worst just plain incorrect and misleading. Do TalkTalk really think customers are more than happy to just sign up again for exactly the same package that they've had for years but with a 50% increase in cost each and every month? Really? SMH

[Gliwmaeden2]

I was so disgruntled when I couldn't get a good enough deal for the Anytime Calls, @Choke, I just don't ring out on the landline any more, except for free calls.

If you have a good smartphone deal, you may have limitless calls on a mobile anyway. Other people can call you back on the landline if you need the better sound quality, and they might have a cheaper/free calls package themselves. 

It's just one possible work around, if you don't want to spend yet more time renegotiating your contract etc.

Your next challenge might be then to try to remove the boost if you don't want it at any price!

[ferguson]

It will be because your Calls Boost was still running at the time. They are categorically not included in any renewal because they are available on a month by month basis. Confusing I know, but strictly accurate if you read the detail.