Broadband ISP TalkTalk and sibling Tiscali UK (TalkTalk Group) have both been given a legal warning by the communications regulator ( Ofcom ) to stop breaching telecoms rules (General Condition 11.1) after they were found to have issued bills for services that had not been provided (e.g. continuing to charge ex-users for cancelled products). In some cases debt collection agencies were even sent out to bully those who refused to pay up, often in error, and frequently damaged credit ratings as a result.

Ofcom's General Condition 11.1 (GC11.1) States:
The Communications Provider shall not render any Bill to an End-User in respect of the provision of any Public Electronic Communications Services unless every amount stated in that Bill represents and does not exceed the true extent of any such service actually provided to the End-User in question.

Regular readers will recall that this had become an almost common problem with Tiscali, which far too frequently billed customers for services that had long been cancelled. It's likely that TalkTalk inherited some of their bad admin and billing practices with its acquisition in 2009; not that TalkTalk didn't have its own problems to deal with as well.

Ofcom's Legally-Binding Notification Requires Tiscali and TalkTalk to..

* Provide refunds to all consumers who were billed for cancelled services since 1st January 2010;

* Stop debt collection action, and withdrawing from any legal proceedings (if started), against consumers and paying their reasonable legal costs; and

* Taking any necessary steps to repair credit ratings of affected consumers, such as notifying credit reference agencies where relevant.

Both ISPs have now been given a deadline of 2nd December 2010 to make all necessary changes and comply with Ofcom's rules or they could face further enforcement action, such as a maximum fine worth up to 10% of the companies turnover.


It's understood that Ofcom received over 1,000 complaints this year alone about the problem and, much as we said in our introduction to this news item, has examples of billing and debt collection errors that span 5 years or possibly more. What's shocking to us is that it took Ofcom this long to act, Tiscali's billing errors are legendary.

In addition the regulator has also suggested several steps that the TalkTalk Group must take in order to prevent future reoccurrences of similar billing mishaps. These include improved staff training, a new monitoring scheme designed to detect errors and the establishment of a new team to handle related complaints.


As usual, if you have a problem with your ISP and need to complain then we always recommend reading through our 'ISP Complaints and Advice' section. This explains everything you need to know about tackling such problems and related organisations, such as the ISPA and Ofcom approved ADR complaints handlers.

Ofcom's Investigation into TalkTalk Group’s Bad Billing
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/enforcement/competition-bulletins/cases-in-compliance/cw_01051/

UPDATE 9:27am

Added a statement from TalkTalk above.

UPDATE 10:54am

Consumer Focus comment.