I'm tearing my hair out. I have a shop with broadband that was set up a few years ago. When I signed up for it, somehow it was done as a personal account. I didn't know of a business account and neither did I know that TalkTalk has 2 operations, ie Personal Account and Business Account. Each of them apparently are forbidden to speak with the other, have no access to each others records etc so operate as a single entity.
When I started to get involved in web design for our shop I found that the speed, both download and upload, I was getting was too slow.
I was looking to move to another provider and ran out of contract for a while at a higher cost, as is the case with out of contract service provision. Due to the high cost of this, I contracted for another 2 years as the price was way below what I was paying for out of contract. That was last August (2022). The speed remained the same though.
Then I opened an email from TalkTalk offering superfast deals.
Naturally it was of interest and I contacted them to see if I could opt in. No problem they said. At least that was what was conveyed to me from what I found out was the Business team. As the discussion progressed, I asked them about my existing contract and if they would roll that over onto the new one but with the faster fibre package. They told me it would be a new contract for 18 months but that a cancellation of my existing contract wouldn't be a problem but I would need to arrange that with the Personal Account team as they couldn't speak with them. CRAZY?????
So I contacted the Personal Account Team and explained the circumstances. They told me, and I have recordings of the discussions, that they would roll over the contract to the faster fibre package on my existing contract and move it over to the Business section. I asked about cancellation charges during the conversation and was told basically that as everything was still with TalkTalk I wouldn't be charged. They told me to cancel the package I had just signed up for on the Business operation and they'd do everything from the Persona Account side of things. They too told me they couldn't speak with the Business team or look at any data held by them, but assured me that there would be no cancellation fee for upgrading and moving me from personal to business.
Things progressed. I was sent a new router and was given a date when I MUST be at the shop between 8am to 1pm to give an engineer access to do certain things and that failure of being at the location when the engineer needed access would result in a £50 charge. So I went to the shop and lo and behold, nobody turned up. That's a day off my life that I'll never see again and at 77 years old I'll really miss. So given that this should be a 2 way thing, how do I charge TalkTalk £50 for my own wasted time? I do have other things ongoing that had to be put back for that period.
In the meantime I had been getting all sorts of emails about keeping my contract, presumably the one taken out in August last year, the likely charges for cancellation etc. Then I was getting emails also from TalkTalk which were presumably from the business team. By this time I was so damn confused. I called another twice, also recorded, and was told specifically to not worry "there won't be a cancellation fee", and if there was it would be sorted.
I've now received an invoice for cancellation of over £180, even though I was told I wouldn't be charged.
If they had told me that I would be charged I'd have left things as they were so they are at fault themselves in that respect.
I find it absolutely stupid that 2 teams of the same company have no cross referencing of these sort of things and the confusion it created was so devastating.
Now, to top it off I have done daily speed checks since the changeover and these show consistently low, as in below the minimum guaranteed, download speeds. I have done the tests with TalkTalk's own online speed checker with nothing else using the laptop, no other service using the broadband and the computer not being used for anything else at the same time.
This is intolerable. All I want now is for TalkTalk to wipe the slate clean and I'll move my custom to another supplier.
