Beyond appalling company. Huge regret ever signing up. Utterly shocking. No communication. No Help. Abysmal service. AVOID!!! 3 months gone - absolutely disastrous company. Still no TV box yet, no broadband speed, constant line drops, no customer service. Solicitor informed, Ombudsman informed. Talktalk directors informed. Re: Talktalk To whom it may concern: Complaint reference number 1-000004-952537-0 I now wish to assert my right to cancel my contract with Talk Talk with immediate effect. I believe there is an obvious Breach of contract by yourselves in this case (defined as happening where there is a legal cause of action and a type of civil wrong, in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honoured by one or more of the parties to the contract, by reason of non-performance). I believe in fact that there has been a fundamental breach of a contract i.e. a breach so fundamental that it permits the distressed party (myself) to terminate performance of the contract, in addition to entitling that party (myself) to sue for damages (should I chose to in due course). In a nutshell, my basic consumer rights when it comes to broadband are as follows. All goods and services must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose, delivered as described, and provided to a proper standard of workmanship. In other words, the phone, broadband (and consequently related TV services) should be provided as promised and should work. Both parties must comply with the terms on the contract. If I consider my provider to be in breach of the contract (e.g. if I’ve not been delivered consistent and promised service) I have the right to cancel it. The contract with my broadband provider must be fair. Subject to the above I have the right to cancel the contract at any point – and in such dire circumstances I would not expect to pay a fee to do so. So, why have things reached this stage: The salient facts are these, which can and will be supported with extensive notes on telephone calls and livechats I have made in order to complain (including times, dates, and in several cases accompanied by full transcripts of the livechats with members of your organisation): Despite almost 3 months of numerous and horrendously time consuming attempts to get ANY of the THREE parts of the service I signed up to (with accompanying expected high service levels which I could reasonably be entitled to expect to receive from a supplier such as yourselves), I still have NONE of them as promised. Furthermore, despite my most determined and relentless efforts, it has proved impossible to fathom a way through your labyrinthine complaints procedures, escalations procedures, different departments and different stories (some would say “outright lies”) which I have been given by numerous members of your organization. I have endured numerous, futile and immensely frustrating calls and “Livechats” (usually with remote personnel in the Philippines and elsewhere who clearly are often unable even to access your own systems and CRM systems nor understand the technology or customer service processes properly), I have received countless (failed) promises of such things as “escalations to managers”, “definite resolutions”, “dates for service and equipment to be supplied”, “engineer visits”, “scheduled call backs from a manager” and many, many other such failed promises, yet STILL nothing has been provided in line with ANY of the services I contracted for. In essence, 3 months ago, in early August, I signed up to a TalkTalk package which promised: Fibre broadband (minimum speed 15mb/sec), TalkTalk TV (including a set top, recordable TV box, which an engineer was to install in person), and the package included Sky Sports. The “activation” date, i.e. when my phone number was transferred from my previous supplier (Sky) was 16th August. The broadband was still not working by the following day and thus on the 17th August I made my first call to try to resolve the issue. Since that date, the rest has simply been a litany of failures by Talktalk, resulting in my having completely unreliable, snailspace broadband, no Talktalk TV, no set top box, no Skysport, and seemingly no hope ever of resolving this despite endless attempts by myself. In summary, after almost 3 months of endless, deeply frustrating and angst-ridden, tortuous attempts to get ANY parts of the service I signed up for to be available and to work, to date I have the following miserable outcome: 1. A line which typically provides barely 2mb/sec broadband speed (rather than minimum 15mb/sec promised, which it has never come even remotely close to reaching). 2. A broadband connection which CONSTANTLY disconnects (or as your Livechat people say; “drops”) – typically randomly dropping-out 15 to 30 times per day (as confirmed by your own livechat personnel – for example, by 1pm on the 10th October your livechat person “Donald” said my broadband connection had already dropped 15 times that day, and also confirmed that I was only receiving “2megs of broadband”, not the minimum 15megs I should be getting). 3. No TalkTalk TV at all – my family has been without digital TV for 3 months! 4. Unbelievably, still there has no YouView set top box ever delivered or sent to me! – thus we have had no ability to receive any of the channels nor services expected since the middle of August. 5. As consequence of the above, we have had no ability to record TV programmes, pause them, or stream them, etc. 6. We have had no Sky Sports – again as an obvious consequence of having never received/installed a TalkTalk TV set top box! 7. I also have spent endless hours trying to get resolution of these issues. I have taken days off work to be available for deliveries which failed to occur, for engineer visits which failed to occur, and day taken up simply in endlessly speaking and live-chatting with your well-meaning but utterly ineffective customer services teams (I have notes and full transcripts available for several of these utterly fruitless conversations). 8. I have constantly had a family in various states of distress and anger for nearly three months due such things as: the internet/broadband/wifi “dropping constantly” which impacts numerous important things in domestic (and even work) life, such as: work from home )become impossible), personal use of internet (utterly unreliable), use of internet by children for X-box and other such things (half way through online games they are disconnected and have numerous times ended up in tears), the lack of set top box for digital channels (and also, crucially, for recording, pause, rewind, playback etc.), and lack of SkySports for my young son (before being persuaded to move to Talktalk by your organisation’s multiple false promises we had Sky operating perfectly for 3 years, and SkySport was a key “icing on the cake” reason to move to move to Talktalk). In summary, the decision to move from Sky to Talktalk has turned out to be the single worst decision I have ever made in 30 years of dealing with suppliers of services to my home. You service is beyond abysmal, and there is no possible light at the end of the tunnel. It is therefore now far beyond the point at which I am prepared to settle for anything other than complete cancellation of my contract and a full refund of any monies paid to you. Taking things forward from here: Although it is on your internal records and CRM systems that I had already been in contact to complain from the 17th August (the day following “activation” of service, my ongoing complaints were first finally “officially” registered by you on 30th Aug 2017. Bizarrely, the consequence of you knowing this official complaint date since all those weeks ago has NOT been that in the following eight long weeks your organisation actually managed (or even realistically attempted) to resolve any of them, but instead, that whilst Talktalk itself has singularly failed to contact me to attempt to resolve any of the numerous issues and complaints above (and despite promises verbally in an livechats which I have full transcripts of), your organisation has ITSELF now sent me a letter pointing out that since YOU are aware that YOU have failed to take any successful actions to resolve any of my issues for over 8 weeks, I am now able to complain officially via the Ombudsman/CISAS – you even helpfully provide all their contact details and relevant information to me! Would you not have been better actually solving the problems during those eight week rather than sitting on your hands simply waiting to be able to write to tell me that I can now officially complain! The facts are that all broadband providers (such as yourselves) are signed up to an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) scheme, who will step in and resolve issues. As it has now been eight weeks since my original (officially registered) complaint and nothing is resolved, I should contact the Ombudsman Services about the problems I’ve been having. An alternative is CISAS. I shall indeed be following this advice. I am posting this and supporting documentation to the Ombudsman via Royal Mail today. And much more… In addition to putting all this shoddy tale in writing to the Ombudsman, I will also be forwarding this letter (and all attachments) to your Chairman, your CEO, and to all the various other executive directors and non executive directors of your Company, whose names I have, and for the avoidance of doubt whose initials are: (Sir)CD, TH, CB, KF, JG, JA, CK and JP. I will also be forwarding/posting all the above details and/or summaries of my complaints (as a warning to others who may be contemplating contracting with Talktalk) on all the following places (this list is non-exhaustive, there will be more places I’ll be adding to this list - copy and paste makes it extremely easy): Trustpilot Review site Broadband.co.uk Reviews.co.uk Google review site MoneySavingExpert and linked forums TalkTalk's Facebook page Twitter at @talktalkcare and @TalkTalkBizCare @MoneyTelegraph will be copied in to my tweets Plus, your own various relevant offices, including the CEO, at the following postcodes (which you will know what they relate to) SO30 2PW SO30 2NP M5 0NH