TalkTalk sold me an internet phone but it doesn’t work

I am beside myself with frustration at TalkTalk. I’ve had my phone and internet from the company for years and in early 2022 they called to sell me an upgrade.

It offered me a deal with phone and faster full fiber broadband, as well as a free Eero router – a device that should make the Wi-Fi connection faster and stronger. The seller said the first six months would be free and after that I would pay $29.99 per month. It was only £2 more than I paid so I accepted.

But after the six months ended, my monthly bill was £45. It turned out that the new package was for an internet-connected phone, not a traditional landline – which I wasn’t told – and because I still had my old landline line, costs were also charged for this.

After that my landline started cracking when calling and eventually stopped working. I’ve been without a phone since July.

When a BT technician was sent they said the problem was the phone line was still running through the copper wire and not the internet connection as intended and I needed a special part to make it work.

TalkTalk initially claimed that it did indeed run over the internet, but after two months and many requests, I finally got the part I needed. After that, TalkTalk took weeks to send someone to fit it – and when he showed up, he said the adapter wouldn’t solve this problem after all.

I’m still paying £45 a month for a phone that doesn’t work, and had to pay a £50 call-out fee for a technician who couldn’t fix the problem. TalkTalk gave me a £30 credit, which I think is totally inadequate. SS, by email.

Helen Crane of This is Money replies: It may not surprise you that TalkTalk’s motives for offering you a tempting new deal were not entirely altruistic.

With fewer people using landlines, the copper cables they run on have become expensive for telecom companies to maintain – so they’re trying to convince their customers to switch to internet connections.

But there’s a big problem, in that internet-powered phone connections just aren’t that good. They will not work if the wifi goes down or if there is a power outage.

This has led to some dangerous situations, as our sister title Money Mail has reported – such as one where a retiree’s country house burned down because the internet was down and he couldn’t call help.

You have a cell phone, so you are still able to stay connected during these persistent phone problems. But that’s not the point: you got a product you didn’t want, and you paid TalkTalk for a landline that didn’t work.

Since you weren’t told this was an internet phone in the beginning, you didn’t quite understand how it worked. This was compounded by the fact that the customer service staff you spoke to didn’t seem to understand how it worked either.

When you tried to get help, the company’s approach was all TalkTalk and no action.

You were pushed from pillar to post on the phone, plagued by canceled and rescheduled technician visits, and faced a struggle to get a piece of technology that would supposedly solve the problem – just for the technician who showed up ( at a cost of £50) to tell you not to worry.

It was then that you called for my help. After I got in touch, TalkTalk sent a technician within a few days to fix the problem, connect the phone line to the Internet, and allow you to make calls.

You also got a total of £661 in compensation – a huge improvement over the paltry £30 you were previously offered.

You still have an internet phone that you didn’t ask for, but it works now.

Of course, you’re free to switch at the end of the contract if there are more issues – or if you decide to vote with your feet due to TalkTalk’s shoddy service.

Hit and miss: this week’s naughty and fun list

Every week I look at the companies that have fallen short when it comes to customer service, and the companies that have done their best.

Touch: Now that the government has rolled back its two-year energy bill cap and won’t guarantee financial aid for everyone until April, many people are more concerned than ever about their bills.

In late September, there was a rush for households to submit their gas and electricity readings to their supplier in an effort to demonstrate that usage was at a lower price, ahead of the higher price cap introduced on October 1.

Some even got stuck in the Glastonbury ticket queues on their suppliers’ websites because so many people signed up to submit meter readings online.

But my colleague said she managed to dodge the situation completely, as Bulb appeared to be checking her account and adjusting payments on her behalf.

She got an email from Lamp before the start of the month with the happy news that, based on her previous meter reading and account balance, her monthly charges would drop – even before she had a chance to submit a new reading.

Perhaps it takes inspiration from Octopus Energy, which is in talks to acquire it and which regularly receives positive reviews from its customers.

I won’t call this a hit, but it’s nice to see a small win for customers in the middle of a big mess.

To miss: Ofcom has published its quarterly naming-and-shaming list of internet and phone companies that rank customers the worst.

Shell Energy continues to generate the most broadband and landline complaints, with the regulator saying the number received was three times the industry average.

The most common reason for this was the way it handled customer complaints.

Meanwhile, Sky received the fewest complaints about broadband and fixed lines.

When it came to paying monthly cell phones, BT Mobile and Virgin Mobile were the most complained, while Virgin also topped the tables for paid TV packages.

It is striking that the number of complaints about broadband and home telephones decreased slightly this quarter.

I hope this is because companies are increasingly listening to their customers, but I suspect that consumers are now paying phone and internet bills compared to other expenses such as utility bills and mortgages. just direct their complaining energies elsewhere.

I’d love to hear about readers’ experiences with phone, internet, and cellular carriers – good or bad. You can reach me at helen.crane@thisimoney.co.uk.