Thousands fled TalkTalk after gigantic hack, confirm researchers

Re: Out of the frying pan into the fire

Talk-Talk offered me a choice of two free upgrades

1) a free sim

2) a broadband health-check, where someone would come to the house and check how healthy my broadband was.

I needed neither. Was rather underwhelmed because this had been billed as a substantial upgrade as compensation for my worries and a reward for staying with them.

Re: Wow

Presumably there is a strong correlation between new talk talk joiners and people who DONT watch/read the news.

Re: Wow

I suspect that they simply looked at the headline price. TalkTalk is cheap, at least on the face of it.

Re: People Joined?!

I can't believe people actually joined though, what were they thinking?!

Most likely that, at the proverbial end of the day, they are all as bad as each other. I would expect the, generally true, positive outlook that "misfortune mostly happens to other people", plays its part.

Re: Dead customers

The problem here, is that the person you are *talking* to, rightly or wrongly, will have no authority or ability to amend customer details. This is self-evident the first contact you get after complaining.

At that point, it's pointless to continue trying to make changes by repeating the process - you'll end up with the same problem.

Re: They are rubbish

Yup, they wrote me a letter saying they were hiking prices and I was entitled to leave 'without penalty' (as per Ofcom guidelines). When I was so bold as to follow through with this they billed me ~£180 for terminating my contract (which was three times more than the remaining value of my contract anyway). Took numerous calls to India to have the balance sorted. The same thing happened the year before with my SIM contract.

It would seem the customer service drones aren't informed what the bean counters are doing. Or, more likely, they deliberately bill people and see who complains and make life so difficult you wish you hadn't left. I'm out now and I ain't going back any time soon.

Re: They are rubbish

My mother in law died 14 months ago and we cancelled her talk-talk phone then. We are still getting bills

Take your complaint to the Communications Ombudsman. They aren't usually quick, but they usually deliver. Not only will they force TwatTwat to sort it out, and probably pay you some desultory compensation, but simply by Ombusdman Services taking the case on, TwatTwat will be charged a circa £400 case fee.

Re: They are rubbish

As others have noted, the person you speak to has no authority to make changes to billing.

A small claims filing works wonders at focussing their attention though. TT are well-known for settling as soon as the paperwork lands on their doorstep or if they hold out, on the courtroom steps.

Re: Response

Has AppleApple anything to say?

Thought not.

Re: Expiring contracts

Let's see what happens over the next year if they lose 7% of their customer base every quarter. People couldn't leave without penalty before; I wonder how many have put marks on their calendar for an exit date....."

Sadly cynical companies rely on people who have short memories and no calendars. I doubt this report will get much exposure in the national media to remind them. The hacks have moved on. The decline will tail off until the next TalkTalk disaster - and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Re: Expiring contracts

What they do as a matter of standard practice is to offer a "free something" to anyone who is coming up to the end of a contract. They won't mention any details - just phone up and offer a freebie. 2 years ago with my now SWMBO it was a "free" new router so she's ready when faster fibre broadband is available. Late last year it was a "free" TV box.

As they phone up, and don't mention any downsides, most idiopunters simply accept. If they decide to leave a month later - they find they can't as the sly beggars signed you up to a new 18 or 24 month contract.

I was "somewhat miffed" to find DWMBO had accepted this deal as I'd been waiting to switch. Of course, when I called to exercise our legal cooling off rights, we got the hard sell - but I think the guy got the idea from the tone of my responses that he needn't try too long.

Didn't stop them trying to bill us an extra £280 in cancellation charges though. Took several hours with their online chat people to sort that out.

Re: You have to hand it to TT

VM regularly send me what I can only describe as A4 brochures in the post. If you call them they say they cannot take you off their mailing list (BT, to their credit, are happy to oblige and actually do it). I have zero intention of ever getting VM and every bit of marketing they send me makes me despise them even more.

The statistics are fairly good for this

A 15k survey is a pretty good sample size.

If they have a similar error to the polls before the last election (considered "shockingly inaccurate") then Talk Talk saw a drop of between 5% and 10% of their customer base.

Given how tight their margins must be, that's pretty disastrous. If that scale of loss recurs then Dido will have to strap on her parachute quickly, before there isn't a company to leave.