Moving home chaos

[Moonbass1969]

Trying to make sense of the interaction I've just had trying to move my TalkTalk service to my new address, and wondering if anyone else has experienced the same thing.

I went to notify them that I was moving home in a few weeks so they could arrange for my service to be available at the new address.  I tried doing this using the Moving Home button on the TalkTalk website but this service was unavailable for some inexplicable reason.  I entered into an online chat with them instead, where they explained that my current full-fibre service would not be available at my new address but they offered me Fibre 65 instead, to which I agreed.  

Things then got more and more complicated, to the point where I started to think that it might be some sort of scam - I was forced to set up a new email address to link to my account, then undergo a credit-check, which went through ok except that they required me to make a £25 payment up front due to something to do with my credit score.  They couldn't process this in the chat field so I'm now waiting for someone from another department to ring me to take the payment over the phone.

I've been with TalkTalk for over 10 years and moved address twice before in that time without any of this additional headwork, but it now appears that they are actually setting me up with a brand new account, as opposed to just keeping my current account and moving the address and changing the fibre service.  They couldn't tell me whether I would therefore incur a charge for effectively ending my existing account while still within contract.
Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

[Arne-TalkTalk]

HI @Moonbass1969 

Can you add your old account number to your community profile and I can start to look into this for you.

Thank you.

[Gliwmaeden2]

I'd really hold out for staff here to take a look at it, @Moonbass1969.

I'll flag it up in the hope that they get to this today. 

[Moonbass1969]

Thanks for your helpful reply. That makes sense now, although, having gone back through the chat transcript, it was only at the very end of the conversation that it was made clear that they were actually setting up a new account. 
Just to complicate things further, I subsequently spent an hour on the phone going through the exact same process again, except this time they insisted that I could register the new account using the same email address as my existing account.  It’s now clear that this was completely wrong, as I can no longer access my existing account because the email address is being used by the new address. Once I get to the bottom of this I’m just going to bail on TalkTalk and go elsewhere.

[Gliwmaeden2]

@Moonbass1969, there's normally a £60 fee to move with Talktalk if you don't take out a new contract. 

It seems that you are having to take out a new contract regardless as it's a different package that's available. This would avoid the home mover fee and avoid early termination fees.

Normally that would mean that you would continue with your same account details, but it may be different in this case if it involves a change down from Full Fibre. 

For a while in recent years switching TO Full Fibre caused multiple headaches in My Account. We don't see it happening so much the other way around because usually people are UPgrading.

I would wait for staff to reach this thread and not go further with the transaction on the phone just yet.

Probably tomorrow before you get a reply back.