Trying to cancel deceased father's TalkTalk contract

Well done you. Nice to see the little person win occasionally!


Just remeber to keep that email/letter FFS

I dont know if the previous poster has had any satisfaction but I would like to report a victory for the little person!!! I contacted TT in January to request closure of my account and was told that I would have to pay an "early cessation fee" because my 24 month contract was not due to expire until September 2012. I had no notification that I had entered into a new contract in Septermber 2010 and have been disputing this ever since. I refused to speak to them on the phone so all communication has been done by e-mail from work! My account was meant to be closed in mid February 2011, a week later my phone was still live, when I asked why this was I was told that I had telephoned to cancel my account closure request the day after TT had sent out a letter confirming the closure. To this day I have not received a letter from them. The account was closed & phone disconnected at end of March, but still had the "contract cessation fee" to battle about! I stated that I had received a phone call in September & the agent told me about changes I could have to my account - I agreed to nothing and at no time during the call did he mention a new contract. Over the next few weeks I think I was replied to by every member of the Customer Services Team who "on checking my account" gave me umpteen different start dates for the contract, month and year!! I was then told that TT had receipt of a letter from me confirming acceptance of the new contract. Raging now, I demanded to be forwarded a copy of this letter & to hear the phone call from September in which I agreed to the contract, only to be told that I would have to send proof of my identification, a covering letter detailing what I wanted plus a cheque for £10. I refused, but kept being told that this was the only way I would obtain proof. Weeks later, I was informed by another TT Customer Services agent that the phone call would be irretreivable because they dont keep calls over six months old - this was denied later but I am so glad I kept print-offs of all e-mails right from when the farce started in January! In May this year, I received 2 e-mails from TT with another address to contact which would guarantee a speedy response - I sent 2 e-mails and am still waiting for a reply of any kind!! At the same time all communication from TT stopped and the Debt Collector letters began, with £20 extra added on to the original amount of £119.49. I e-mailed the original address with my complaints again, only to get the same blurb spouted back at me, that I was liable to pay this fee and if I sent ID, letter & £10 I could hear the phone call...... I sent instead a recorded delivery letter to Head of Complaints, CEO's Office, Talk Talk Group, PO Box 344, Unit 19, Southampton SO30 2NP on Friday 19th August, and informed the Customer Services Dept, by e-mail of what I had done, was told that my complaint would be "escalated" to a C/S Team Leader, who would reply within 72 hours! I sent another e-mail on Tuesday, he replied on Tuesday telling me that on "checking my account" that I was still liable to pay and listed the various methods of payment. Anyhoo, to cut a long tedious story short, today I received an e-mail from Ryan Sadler, CEO Complaints Executive, who advised me that following investigations into my case they have no record of the telephone call and therefore cannot prove that the Customer Services agent advised me of automatic renewal of my contract and as there were no changes to my account since 2007 that the bill has been cancelled They have also informed the Debt Collectors to close their case against me and their action will have no effect on my Credit Rating. I am extremely releived that I didnt just give in to them & pay up and hope this helps anyone else in the same or similar situation. WOOOO HOOOO!!! IM FREE OF TALK TALK!!!!

I am beside myself with worry, I closed my Talk Talk account last year but still get bills and phone calls and now am having threatening letters from debt collectors! I have rung and written several times to no avail. Please can someone help me with advise on how to stop this. These companies can drive a person to distraction. I do not know where to go from here and would appreciate any help.

OK Talk Talk their a comunications company right? Lets look at how they communicate!

I Phone the 'Customer care department' about a replacement top-box going wrong within hours of being fitted and the female answers with "Oh yea, the engineer gave you a reconditioned box" "it's down to him"! So you are saying its not Talk talk fault the box went wrong? "Yea, he gave you a dud box". So the fact the replacement box was boxed up and in a sealed box, its still his fault? "ah yea". Can I speak to your supervisor? Big sigh and slams phone down! Great customer service.

As for my orgininal issue, guess what once again the scheduled engineer has failed to turn up!
Oh and just to add to the joke that is Talk Talk, their Customer Service manager phoned me on the day the box was replaced and promiced to phone back the next night to see if things were better. Guess what? Dam you guess.. He never phoned... What a suprise.. NOT!

Talk Talk, how is it you are only the second most complained about company in Great Britain? Surely you should be first!!!

talktalk --- that says it all. what a hopeless company. wrote to them complaining about broadband speed (i cant even stream music video from you tube) about 1 month ago and have heard nothing. the 'service' was better when I had dial up!!! do they even bother to read the email sent to customer service. we are all obviously just a cash cow to be ripped off and abused. do they care about their customers rights --- emphatically no. I have another 10 monts on my contract with them but I am reaching the stage where I wil just break it as they ar manifestly NOT fulfilling their side of the bargain.

I totaly understand youre frustation with talktalk my 82y old mum wanted to take talktalk to a new home only to be told it will take 5 weeks and if she cancled it is going to cost £100 it seems talk talk called her in aprail to ask if she was happy whe she sed yes thay sined here up for a new 12m contract (enfrance on the CONtract part of this type of call) and if it helps tell them to take hime to court and see if thay can serv the papers on him! laugh or you will cry all the best Cath

OUr Talk Talk broadband has been out of action for over three weeks now despite the fact that they knew what the fault was within 24 hours of it being reported. Every time we ring we seem to be given the runaround. Different information each time, denials that there is a problem, despite the fact that one of there operators told us they new about one and what it was. This is the second time in 10 months this has happened. The first time we had no cover for over a month. Some of the staff have been extremely rude - "can't you go to a friend and use their computer if it's a problem" being one comment. Excuse me, but that's not why we're paying you! If anyone is considering going over to Talk Talk, I would say don't they don't deserve customers.

It takes far too long to get through to "customer services" on the phone and there is no simple email contact facility. When you do get through on the phone they don't have a full history of your account. Their TV package was hopeless: inefficient and horrible to use. Most recent problem:they have been sending my bill to the wrong email address and I can't get through on phone to get it right. Everytime I try to contact Talktalk about anything there is a problem getting through.

Contacting the Chief exec normally gets results:
Dido Harding - dido.harding@talktalkgroup.com

we are in the exact same position now and I really do not know what to do or who to contact! My father was murdered in june and as you can imagine me and family have been to hell and back! we phoned talk talk in june to inform them of his death and to cancel the account and we thought that would be that. At the time of his death my dad did not owe a penny on his account and we kept getting a monthly bill of just over £20 we would phone talk talk to tell them we weren't paying it and that he'd died and we wanted the account cancelled! They would simply just hang up on us!!!!! After 4 months we got a letter informing us the debt collecters would be arriving for the debt of just over £80 on the account! Once again I phoned them and after being hung up on several times and laughed at once I was informed I couldn't cancel the account because there is an outstanding balance on it!!!! I told them there would be no balance on the account if they had just cancelled it when requested! After which I was told we must honour the end of the contract, so we paid the £80 and were told there was one more month left on the contract which was november. We have today now just received a bill for december....so they must have lied to us or automatically renewed the contract! does anyone know what I should do as this is deeply distressing me and I can't seem to find anyone from talk talk that understands what I'm telling them!

I had the exact problem with talk talk at the begining of this year. we wrote to them with a copy of the death certificate after they refused to accept verbal confirmation without speaking to my deceased grandmother. they didnt respond to our letters or send any bills during the months after our contact. In may 5 months later we found out from probate services that talktalk were trying to claim line rental from after my grandmothers death even though we called them to ask them to cut the line as the property was vacant.
we provided details of all this to Probate services and they wrote off everything that talk talk were trying to claim. they advised this is a common occurance.

I have had similar problems when I rang to cancel my deceased mother's account. They too asked to speak to her after I had already told them she had died. I was then told that her account had been cancelled four years ago. But they had still been taking the money, albeit a relatively small amount for an old dial up package, from her bank account each month! I wrote, sending a copy of the Grant of Probate - nothing. I eventually complained to the ISPA complaints service http://www.ispa.org.uk/complaints/page_40.html, which at least means you get a call back within 5 days. Now having to send another copy of the Grant of Probate because they have no idea where the first one went, but at least I have a name, an email address and someone trying to sort this out for me at last. So now hopeful that I will get the money back.

Why oh why did I change to Talk Talk from Virgin ,we have had problems since changing 6 weeks ago to broadband and phones and now have no incoming calls and variable things happening to the rest of the service ,after speaking to 15 people non of who seem to have any communication with each other .All I want is an engineer to come out and fix it .After diverting my calls to my mobile number at the weekend , on the monday they said they had no record of my mobile phone number so the engineer could not ring ?!?! , Do they not update there screens with any details ? does the company actually know what there employees are saying to people or are they just passing the time of day the best they can by running through rutine speel ,not one of them knew I had been on before ?? , I am at my whits end as to know what to do next as each time I ring I am starting from scratch ,i have tried all the numbers avaiable as far as I can see.. If I can change I will be doing so as soon as possible ,dont be fooled by the fancy adverts and seemingly good deals becaused they are not worth it in the end .

My phone line went dead Thursday 22nd Sept and I informed talk talk . They diverted my incoming calls to my mobile and I paid a fortune calling them on their premium numbers also had to take a member of my family to hospital .I got so mad with having no phone so I have gone back to B.T. When I finally rang them Monday27th to cancel my package they were really standoffish and said there would be a admin fee and early cancellation fee as my contract did not end until mid November. I am giong to let my direct debit pay normally until October then cancel it as I am still without a phone so they are not staying to their part of the contract. I am really disgusted with the service and the attitude of the staff .

That happened to us as well with a family member. My mum sent them a letter informing them that unless they were going to hire a medium and drive down to the crematorium they would not be able to speak to the account holder and that she was intending to sue them for emotional distress and a week later we had the contract canceled and a full apology.

I was in a very similar situation, my father passed away and we managed to get them to transfer the contract over to my mum, I had to pretend I was my father. we then recieved a letter confirming the change of owner. tried to contact them about cancellling and even fixing the broadband and we were "giving the wrong details" we were giving my mums details, they had messed up so badly, it was still in my late fathers name with my mums D.O.B and maiden name....

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I have just cancelled my deceased father in laws telephone line in about 5 minutes. The person was sympathetic and very helpful.

I found out how to do it on http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9845/c/345,352 - this is the BT Customer Service guidance on closing the account of a deceased relative. Hope you have resolved it now.

talk talk = joke ,put my wife on as joint account for paying direct debit for talk talk one of their staff said that the bank canceled the dd ,i went down to the bank = they did not account was still active and they gave me a copy of account status to prove it phoned tt ,they said we dont take money from barclays ! why I asked ,we just dont /i asked for a supervisor ,yes I will put you though , yes sraight into the dial up system again all in all 13 phone calls cut off 3 times
diferent excuses ranging from the last one to to the compputer did not recognise the account and generated a £3.45p charge for none payment ,appareantly the if there is a computer fault no one checks it ,it just closes the account and generates a £3.45 bill by way of default ,great way generate money bad way for the customer ,in the end I got tired of their staff telling me you wont get your money back ,they did not seem to understand it was not the money it was the total lack of customer service to get the problem turned round ,in the end I phoned disconections they offered a refund ,i said I wanted a supervisor to listen to the recordings of the calls and get something done with employer training .
then I got a call from a manager who said email me if you get any problems,so for now we will stay with talk talk ,anymore rubbish customer service and we will be gone :

Im going thru a similar saga....talk talk are too big for themselves and they dont know or care about the end consumer. Im trying to end the contract right now and its frustrating and time consuming dealing with them.....being passed around , and been left hanging on the line .I would never recommend talk talk to anyone .

I was a Tiscali customer for over 10 years and had no complaints. My contract with them for Broadband services still has a few months to run. When Talk Talk took over they wrote to me to assure me that they would honour my contract but today I have received a letter telling me they are increasing my bill by a massive 90% as of next month. I rang up for an explanation but was told it was to 'bring everyone into line'. This is not only disgusting but a breach of contract, bad faith and catastrophic customer services. So it's bye bye Talk Talk.