RE - New Fibre Contract Fixed Pricing or Not

[Tunezy]

This is in reply to @jazzman3s post at https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Billing/New-Fibre-contract-Fixed-pricing-or-not/td-p/2974113, but replies are unhelpfully being removed from that thread, even though the customer hasnt had any public response from Talk Talk (more recent issues are getting responses), and issues like this are best resolved in the cooling off period when customers can cancel without penalty. A full working week has passed and they now only have a few working days until the end of their cooling off period. The information here might be helpful for other customers too in similar situations.

Wrong Contract Documents and Cooling Off Period

You said a Talk Talk agent on webchat confirmed you are on a fixed price contract but that is not reflected in the contract docs issued to you. They must fix this. You are entitled to accurate contract docs, so you should insist Talk Talk give you correct contract docs asap. If they refuse to, as you are still within the 14 day cooling off period (you signed up on 31 May?) you can cancel the contract.

If you do cancel, be sure to notify Talk Talk of your cancellation within the 14 day cooling off period and keep written evidence of cancelling. 

Making a Complaint

If you dont get anywhere or have issues cancelling in the cooling off period, Talk Talks complaints code might be helpful - https://community.talktalk.co.uk/eigde79682/attachments/eigde79682/articles/325/12/TalkTalk_Customer...

Make sure you are raising a formal complaint as well as posting on the forum. You can do that by phone or live chat or by emailing concerns@talktalkplc.com. Its probably best to do it by email so you keep a written record of your complaint in case Talk Talk doesnt resolve it. Make sure you have a complaint reference number. It makes sense to start a complaint early as Talk Talk has 8 weeks to resolve it before you can escalate it to CISAS.

If Talk Talk doesnt resolve your complaint, you can take it to CISAS after 8 weeks have passed, or once they issue a deadlock letter.

Letting Ofcom know about complaints

If Talk Talk dont handle a complaint effectively, you can tell Ofcom about your complaint (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/complaints/complain-about-phones-or-internet-services). Annoyingly Ofcom dont investigate individual complaints, but they do look at the overall data of complaint numbers and investigate ISPs based on that.

Gathering Evidence

You can issue a “Subject Access Request” to Talk Talk for free to gather evidence to help you with a complaint to CISAS if your issue isnt resolved. Talk Talk are required to provide this information to you, and you can ask for call recordings, notes, contracts & copies of correspondence). They need to respond to requests in 1 calendar month, and you can request the information for a specific period of time to cover your complaint.

You can make the request however you want, but it may help to use email as that will also give you a record of the time you made the request. Talk Talks email address for their data protection team is GDPRPrivacy@talktalkplc.com.

 https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Understanding-your-data-rights/bd-p/GDPR

Taking a Complaint to CISAS

If Talk Talk dont resolve the complaint in 8 weeks (or send you a deadlock sooner due to them not being able to fix the issue) you can then take your complaint to CISAS (https://www.cedr.com/consumer/cisas/). Its free to complain to CISAS and Talk Talk settled or lost 96% of cases that went to CISAS!

You can seek compensation as well as asking CISAS to instruct Talk Talk to fix the underlying problem. You might also ask for CISAS to refer the complaint matter to Ofcom and alert them to the issues you had.

[ferguson]

Hey @Gatsby welcome to the community. I see you just joined today and this is your first post?

I am locking this thread now pending review by the support team.  They will of course unlock it if they find it compliant with the community guidelines. 

[Gatsby]

Excellent post @Tunezy. Reminds customers that they are not powerless and provides a useful summary of key info. Very helpful, especially for time-pressed people. Finding information and navigating complaints processes can be extremely challenging and stressful for anyone, but in particular for those who are vulnerable and may need additional support.

@Gliwmaeden2 in a recent post - https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Full-Fibre/Complaints-flawed-no-call-backs/m-p/2970834#M15416 - you shared your own experience with TalkTalk’s complaints process –

“The last time I tried to follow the complaints route, I shut down the complaint as I kept getting promised phone calls that never happened. 

Utterly exasperating, […]”

That does indeed sound exasperating. Is your issue still unresolved?

@fr8ys you mentioned your contract email didn’t arrive, and you posted on this forum seeking assistance. Were TalkTalk not able to provide you with a copy of your contract?

When a customer is experiencing an issue, it can be very stressful for them. There is nothing more frustrating and anxiety-inducing than raising an issue and being ignored by those in a position to fix it. Customers should be treated with respect. It strikes me that many are posting on this forum because the customer support/ complaints route has failed them. Being ignored on here will only exacerbate their frustration.  

I am keen to better understand how issues/ complaints raised on this forum are handled by TalkTalk. There has been mention of a queuing system for “attention”. Can you point me to an online resource which explains this? Transparency around how it works would help those seeking assistance to evaluate whether the forum is a route that is likely to yield a solution for them and how long it will take. For example, do all posts enter the “workflow” or only those which are escalated? What are the escalation criteria? Who can escalate and when? If users’ comments are being deleted on the basis they may adversely impact someone’s position in a queue for attention, that sounds like a poorly designed system and will discourage forum user engagement depriving others of potentially helpful info.

Also, many posts are by their nature complaints. Are these automatically assigned a formal complaint reference and then transferred to the complaints route? This is important to understand given, as @Tunezy pointed out, a customer only has recourse to the free independent CISAS adjudication scheme when TalkTalk has either failed to resolve a complaint to the customer’s satisfaction within 8 weeks of raising it or TalkTalk has issued a deadlock/ final response letter to the customer at an earlier stage of the complaints process (and provided it falls within the scope of complaints handled under the CISAS scheme).

[Gliwmaeden2]

I can't see that  you are adding anything that couldn't simply be found by a customer clicking on the Ts&Cs, or the Complaints links at the foot of any page, or popping a question into the very useful forum search engine, @Tunezy.

That source of information is wide-ranging and thorough. Subject Access Request comes up with a very useful page:

https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Articles/Access-information-we-hold-on-you/ta-p/2204726

Nothing is hidden. 

Meanwhile it's a fact that staff are not necessarily on here every day of the week, let alone at weekends, and a deputy is not always found if it's not for an extended period of time. 

However a topic posted on eg a Monday would be likely to be picked up by the Wednesday for example, unless customers keep posting to update or add to the topic. It's an automated workflow and further submissions have the effect of pushing back the topic in the queue for attention.

It ends up behind newer topics that have come in since then.

This is why it was paramount that nobody post on Jazzman3's topic after I suggested that we hold off.

I mentioned this last Sunday (4th June) and re-escalated the topic then. 

After that, there were 6 further posts on that thread, NOT including 4 from you which would have pushed it up to 10. Yours have been removed. Thanks to that, the thread is currently at the re-escalation status it was last set at on 9th June at 10.56pm.

Effectively, it's as though the OP had only posted yesterday. 

So it's very important that forum rules regarding contributions on time sensitive issues are very carefully observed to help anybody in this sort of situation receive support in a timely manner. 

[fr8ys]

I have been in the position where my contract email never arrived.

I posted on here and asked staff to verify the terms for me.

I didn't need all the information you have posted, which is too much in my opinion to answer a simple initial question.

Had I needed it, I would have sought out the terms and conditions which can be found at the bottom of each web page.

I get the impression there is more to your posting than just trying being helpful. If this is not the case, my apologies, but your posts to date, as a new member of the forum, are giving that impression, especially the detail you gave gone into.

The customer is at this moment nowhere near having to refer to anyone else, either internally or externally and it may add to any anxiety customers feel when they have an issue.

We are customers like you, but in helping, giving up our free time to do so, we are also mindful that customers come here looking for help and solutions with the minimum of stress.

If we can't help we raise it through the relevant channel. 

I hope this gives you some clarity on the way this forum works.

I don't feel we can offer anything else to this discussion other than to repeat ourselves and reiterate that adding posts to customers threads can delay them getting the help they need.

[Tunezy]

That is encouraging to hear – on that basis you presumably recognise the importance of the information in this thread though, to help Talk Talk customers understand their rights around cancellations and how to make formal complaints and take them to Cisas? As a customer, what would you do?

[ferguson]

Community Stars like myself, @fr8ys and others are just customers ourselves, so I think we judge everything from a customer's perspective. 

[Tunezy]

Let's look at it from a customers perspective though.

When a customer has a limited time window to cancel, has tried online chat (without success), and had to resort to the forum in a bid to get help (without any apparent Talk Talk response for a working week), is there a better way for them to get a solution inside their cooling off period?

If you/others have seen this issue on the forum before, maybe you can share how they could get it addressed in the time available?

This really should not be difficult for an ISP to resolve – the contract docs need to match the agreement. It seems that Talk Talk does not dispute what was agreed, so could just issue new docs. If you were in this customers shoes, wouldnt you want to know what your options were, given there seems to be no guarantee Talk Talk will reply or resolve the issue in the time left?

If customers are in a “queue” for a response, maybe they could see where they are, so they know when/if theyll get their issue resolved? To an existing/prospective customer, seeing newer issues get replies before older ones is not a great look (and thats nothing to do with replies on threads - is there a specific issue with getting contract docs updated?).

[fr8ys]

I concur with @ferguson , and as said, adding posts that do not provide a solution to the OP, pushes the thread backwards and prevents staff providing the help required.

Your post, whilst it may seem helpful, does not provide a solution, hence why it remains in the flow, in the context of being helpful, for others to see.

On looking at your previous posts, have you had an issue with TalkTalk in the past that has not been resolved, or resolved in a manner that did not meet your expectations?

If still outstanding and you wish to seek help from staff here, why not post the issue and see if staff can help (providing it has not been raised to CEO level)?

[ferguson]

Hey, all community input regarding technical issues is welcome. But when it comes to billing, or contracts, there is little we can do, other than leave it to the support team. 

[Tunezy]

My post is more of a solution than anything that Talk Talk has put forward in a full working week – thats not very helpful for a customer who is in a time pressured situation.

It is strange there has been no acknowledgement from Talk Talk, yet more recent issues are being handled (suggesting the queue system doesnt work, or that this has been “overlooked”). That must feel quite disheartening for a customer.

Nothing duplicate has been posted – and this post is not in breach of the forum guidelines. Your suggestion that I am trying to circumvent forum guidelines is inaccurate and unhelpful – the guidelines do not make any reference to not replying to other peoples threads to help them.

Is the point of this forum not for users to provide support and assistance to each other?

[fr8ys]

The more you post on other people's threads the further back in the queue their thread goes as your reply can be thought of as being a solution. 

The thread has been raised for staff to look at and they only work normal office hours Monday to Friday. 

Please reacquaint yourself with the forum rules you agreed to when signing up, as multiple postings of the same topic, even this one in a separate thread trying to get around forum guidelines can be seen and is treated as spam.