Reduced Service, Reduced Bill

[DarrenJackson1]

Good Morning - I have been directed here to discuss my bill since December 2022 when my service degraded from the regular 12Mbps to nearer 6Mbps - roughly half. My post below explains and I feel it is fair to only pay for the service I recieve not the service I *should* receive. I feel like I am being robbed at the moment and there is no incentive for TalkTalk or OpenReach to conclude this situation which has been ongoing for 9 months. My post below continues from the Techical forum and explains the latest:

Thank you for the update; disappointingly slow progress from OpenReach yet again because they refuse to actually replace old, worn, damaged and dug up (by Voneous) infrastructure which is well past is date.

Ironically an hour or two after your last message my latest TalkTalk bill arrived. I'm not very happy paying the full amount of my bills for the past nine months given that I have had continual interruptions, slowdowns (could be running at 50% more capacity), poor latency  at times (probably due to errors) and, you can correct me if I am wrong, but in the order of about 5 engineers - two of which came to the house. Not to mention the hours on online chats, forums, disruption to work. It took a lot of grief to even get £22 back and that was only initially refunded as £11 and I had to fight to get the remainder paid. My formal complaint resulted in net zero nothing... my next step is the regulator.

My proposal is I will pay 50% of my bills from January onwards on the basis that's the level of service I have received. If you would therefore arrange a refund/credit accordingly. Once you have my agreement my service is restored to 12Mbps then I will resume the full contractual amount. Please would you arrange that. Thank you.

Regards

Darren Jackson

[Gondola]

Seems to me that you have a very good opportunity to switch your contract to Voneus Broadband that are providing broadband to rural areas that other providers like Openreach may find too costly to upgrade.

[DarrenJackson1]

Hi @Arne-TalkTalk 

I am a TalkTalk customer - my contract is with TalkTalk. Openreach is a wholesale supplier to TalkTalk, I am not in contract with Openreach and I have no recourse against Openreach for this reason. TalkTalk takes the gains when the service works and they should take the penalty when it doesn't. It doesn't matter to me where the issue lies, whether it be with TalkTalk, Openreach or something else "external"... I don't care, I just happen to know due to local knowledge. My contract is with TalkTalk and I hold you fully, and legally, responsible for this ridiculous nine months of disruption because an organisation of the magnitude of TalkTalk should detect these faults and apply significant commercial and legal pressure onto Openreach to eliminate these faults and improve service levels for what is now arguably as vital as electricity and water. Instead... we have in the order of 50 Openreach engineer visits this year to the village which has 25 phone lines. Again, Openreach are in the village today. They are on first name terms with many.

This is not about compensation as you put it, a term which I do not refer to in my post - compensation is dodged at every stage by Internet Service Providers because of the poor regulatory controls which fail to recognise the true impact of an unreliable service. This matter is about incentivising TalkTalk, and indirectly Openreach, to provide a fit-for-purpose service free of defects - just like any consumer may reasonably expect of any supplier of goods & services.

This is to financially penalise TalkTalk, as there is no alternative, until the service level meets my expectations and potential - which has been demonstrated at ~12Mbps over an extended period of several years prior - still an arguably appalling service for 2023 really isn't it. Maybe less advertising and sponsorship combined with more investment in infrastructure would help.

If TalkTalk is providing half the potential capacity / speed / reliability - however you measure it... then I pay half the bill. Starting from December 2022 when the service broke. Seems reasonable to me.

If you would kindly refund 50% of my payments this year and reduce my future bills by 50% until such time that we agree the service is restored to its potential please. Thank you.

Regards

Darren Jackson

[Arne-TalkTalk]

Hi DarrenJackson1.

We dont usually compensate for matter beyond our control such as external work. 

I will look into this.

[martswain]

@DarrenJackson1 forum staff have no powers to arrange what you are proposing.

Suggest you open another complaint with the CEO Office and see what they are able to do for you.

If you reach deadlock (after 8 weeks I believe) then you can take your issue to the resolution service that TT use, CISAS/CEDR