Ok friends, the great SMB's expertise and help is genuinely needed over here.
I'll keep this as brief as I can in the circumstances.
I have a cousin who is in her early sixties and has a learning disability. She has always lived independently and manages pretty well, she has never been in a penny of debt. She has used a mobile for years (which I sort out) but hasn't had a landline in her house for years. Unfortunately back in February this year someone persuaded her that she should have a landline in her house and somehow she ended up phoning up TalkTalk and signing up.
Oh...my...God. At this point I became aware of what had happened (me and particularly my mam have basically looked after her for years).
As she hadn't had a landline in her house for years connecting her up wasn't straightforward. Again I'm keeping it brief here but cue endless hour-long calls to TalkTalk's international call centres, a visit to her house by an engineer, until I end up in yet another call to their international call centre, at the end of which their engineer tells me there is nothing further they can do to connect her.
Fair enough, game over, thanks for trying.
Except they still keep billing her every month. I keep trying to contact them by phone but again keep getting passed from pillar to post by their international call centres. The letters keep coming, I reply to the letters, nothing changes, I keep asking for them to give me a phone number for someone to speak to, they send letters back saying they'll speak to me if I can provide the 3rd and 6th letters of her password, I keep replying that she has no idea what they're talking about when they ask for a password because she's got a f***ing learning disability, they send another letter asking for the 2nd and 6th letters of her password.
Then last week she gets a letter from a debt collection agency and we find that TalkTalk have passed the details to her credit reference service.
Over the past couple of days I've had conversations with the debt collection agency's (UK) contact centre, who I have to say have been more or less spot on. They've called off the dogs, but not unreasonably they've said that they can't actually cancel the process as they depend on TalkTalk's information. Despite the fact that by this stage I'd given up on talking to TalkTalk call centres, they persuaded me that I should give them another call. Fair enough?
I then tonight spent another hour and a half 0n the phone to India. I spoke to four people, explaining the situation to each the background. Eventually I get a "senior manager" and the deal he offers is they pay half of the debt and we pay half of the debt, as long as I give them another 28 days to connect her. Just to recap - this is an elderly lady with a learning disability, they have never provided her with the contractual service, they have told me that they are unable to provide the service, and after hours and hours of phone calls and letters their offer is that we should pay half of the cost of their inability to provide that service and let them have another go.
I declined.
So where do we go? I can complain to the telecoms regulator, but that's not going to do anything in the short term as I understand it. There were vague threats by me on the call today about legal action and seeking publicity, but I don't really know how to do that or what it would achieve.
Come on folks, I have literally no idea what to do next. I could just pay her "debt" to call the dogs off - it's a lot to her but not so much to me. But that can't be right can it?
Anyway, you get the picture, thanks for reading if you did, take the piss if you must, whatever, all good as long as someone sticks in some sensible advice.
What a world we're living in.
