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

[Arne-TalkTalk]

HI @DarrenJackson1  Sorry we are having issues with PM's at the moment we aren't getting any notifications, ill sort this out today.

[ferguson]

As already mentioned, unsolicited PMs are generally not replied to. You can find a Complaints link at the bottom of the page. Personally, I would wait for Arne to respond on here. 

[DarrenJackson1]

@Arne-TalkTalk time to pay up please. Why are you ignoring my PMs?

@Arne-TalkTalk your offer of compensation of £181 was accepted over a month ago. £115 has been credited. I await the remaining £66. I've been sending private messages which go unanswered. I'm tired of waiting. Please sort it. Eleven months this fiasco has been going on. Time to settle up on your offer and move on.

Regulator next. Please advise how I escalate.

[DarrenJackson1]

I have already agreed a settlement. TalkTalk now need to pay up but remain unresponsive.

[Gliwmaeden2]

No it can take time to write an essay and didn't show at the time I started.

However, sometimes a second escalation is needed anyway to include a comment to staff, so doesn't imply duplication as it's required to flag up the aspect.

Happens on many occasions without need for comment. 

[ferguson]

@Gliwmaeden2 

I had already re-escalated the thread, you may have missed that. I thought I would leave it to the support team to comment further, there seemed little point in intervening myself. 

[Gliwmaeden2]

Unsolicited PMs to staff will not usually receive a reply, @DarrenJackson1.

We all have discounts on our in contract services, so, unless you are out of contract, £115 sounds about right for 1/2 of 10 months' billing. My own in contract billing for Fast Broadband comes in at less than £23, even since Easter's increase.

You had already received £22 in compensation initially:

https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Fibre/Speed-Cap-Line-Reset/td-p/2987953/page/2#M382198

£181 sounds more like 50% of the full price for 10 months (and wouldn't be expected to cover boosts). So there may be a misunderstanding about which figure is being used as the starting point. 

However the entire agreement will have been discretionary, as it is not usual to allow compensation for "slow speeds".

I will re-escalate this thread for staff to clarify the situation. 

Expect all communication to be in the public thread unless specifically asked to PM by staff. 

[DarrenJackson1]

@Arne-TalkTalk your offer of compensation of £181 was accepted over a month ago. £115 has been credited. I await the remaining £66. I've been sending private messages which go unanswered. I'm tired of waiting. Please sort it. Eleven months this fiasco has been going on. Time to settle up on your offer and move on.

Regulator next.

[Arne-TalkTalk]

Great news, leave the other stuff you asked for with me, and ill get back to you ASAP. 

[DarrenJackson1]

Morning @Arne-TalkTalk 

Good news. The line is performing the best it has since December 2022 so I am confident / hopeful that the issue has been resolved. I just hope this is a lasting fix. The TalkTalk speed test shows a "Speed to your router" at 11 Mbps and a "Speed to your device" at 10.7 Mbps / 1 Mbps. This is over 50% better than before. There are still some line resyncs - this might be Dynamic Line Management.

I have confirmed with Debbie that technically the fix is sorted too. Thank you for asking.

Regards, Darren Jackson

[Arne-TalkTalk]

Hi @DarrenJackson1 can you confirm on this thread that the issue is now resolved?

[Arne-TalkTalk]

Im aware that there is still an issue with the line, So our process is that we need to know the issue is fixed before we discuss compensation, however as mentioned previously your request is 100% reasonable in terms of a refund for half of the cost of the service since January and I am saying this will happen.  We will need to have a discussion about future costs the next review is the 10th we will pick this up at that point. 

[DarrenJackson1]

@Arne-TalkTalk I am again demanding 50% refund on my bills this year and a 50% reduction on future bills until we agree this is resolved. I am not waiting any longer. TalkTalk and Openreach have had since December 2022 to resolve this. It's totally ridiculous. Please get this approved at whatever level of management you need and own the problem.

[Gondola]

So Voneus do provide a service although users deem it not reliable enough, just as you report the current Openreach service is not reliable enough. Sadly, there is no lower tier of tariff from any provider for a less than perfect service and the fall-back is the Ofcom established Auto-Compensation scheme for total loss of service if a service provider has signed up to that scheme. TalkTalk has signed up.

The Gigabit Voucher scheme has good intentions but does have the drawback that if an area is stated to have or is scheduled to have Ultrafast coverage by any provider then the application will not be approved. This should be kept under review.

Inevitably, some locations do have delays entering the Ultrafast roll-out process and I see costs increasing and some suppliers and contractors exiting the Full Fibre build programmes as a result. But in some areas, such as the North Yorkshire Dales, I see excellent progress in connecting up small remote villages, farms and hamlets. Ultrafast broadband via wireless broadband or mobile broadband will be the solution for some smaller communities. Or community build schemes like that established in Cumbria by B4RN that is an excellent example of what can be achieved when communities work together.

[Arne-TalkTalk]

HI @DarrenJackson1 

Please dont think im ignoring you, that's not the case, the delay is, that im trying to find out if the lengthy issue you had falls under the auto-compesation guidelines.  I believe what you are asking for in your original post is more than reasonable, I just need to clarify few things first. 

Sorry its taking time. 

[ferguson]

I hope you and your fellow villagers manage to carry on the struggle to get the broadband you need . I also hope this can be done whilst also delivering the transport infrastructure which the great northern cities of Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester and the millions who live in the surrounding areas deserve. I fear HS2 funding is suffering the same reticence in government spending as rural broadband plans. 

[DarrenJackson1]

Alternatives adopted are mobile broadband (EE and 3 mostly), Starlink, radio based internet (not Voneus - because they were too unreliable, users switched to a different provider). So... we find solutions. In the meantime faith in Voneus fails and people give up waiting on their false promises.

We have been looking at alternatives for 12 years at least. It's a shame the Government can fund HS2 - somehow - but not invest in vital internet connectivity which is now an essential service given the extent of online services (some of which are mandatory).

Openreach blocked our Gigabit Voucher application and Community Partnership because they made broken promises too... and never committed to upgrade the network. Their promises are alwasy two years away. At the end of the day we are 1.5 miles (max) from a fibre point in the next village and to connect involves digging a trench in an unpopulated road verge... it's not exactly difficult but there is no will, no incentive, no initiative. Broken.

[Gondola]

Voneus have also stalled in their investment to bring Ultrafast broadband then. Such companies do require the funding and community commitment to deliver.

I assume the community are taking alternative individual solutions like mobile broadband? This is an option for some areas alongside wireless broadband. 

Have your community applied as a group for Gigabit broadband vouchers to give to a single proposed supplier of Ultrafast broadband whether that's Openreach, Voneus or another?

[DarrenJackson1]

@Gondola Voneus do not provide a service where I live. All they have achieved in 3 years is to dig up Openreach cables and leave them damaged in order to lay a mile or two (at most) of plastic pipe... that's it. They are uncontactable, have no strategy or plan, no engagement with the community... residents are abandoning their promises and taking alternative solutions.

[DarrenJackson1]

@Arne-TalkTalk 

I await your response please - if you cannot help then kindly escalate to the CEO as a Formal Complaint. Don't just ignore me.

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