Dear Talk Talk

Dear TalkTalk,

To describe your service as ‘irredeemably rubbish’ is, I feel, a bit of an insult to rubbish.  At least some bags are now biodegradable; at least vegetable matter may yet mulch down to fertilise the ground as maggots and worms writhe through the decaying goo.  You have no such merit.  In the three years in which you have been providing me with internet, phone and TV, I have watched prices rise and services decline.  Your modems reset more often than the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.  Your telephone calls are over-priced and your definition of ‘free weekend and evening calls’ applies only once you pay the compulsory extra money to have free evening and weekend calls, which you must pay even if you don’t in fact, want this.  Your TV service is the most glitchy thing I’ve seen since cross-wiring a 12V driver to a 24V LED.  If it works for five minutes, it will not work for ten.  If it works for ten, it will not work for the hour, and over the years while I have grown used to the notion that everything must be turned off and turned back on again throughout the day, I have not yet found it in my heart to forgive the same.

Your customer services.

Ah your customer services.

It is not merely that it took seven people, two phone calls and an hour and a half for me to be put through to the technical support department, nor that five of those seven people attempted to sell me services I didn’t want for money I didn’t have throughout this rather frustrating process.  It’s not merely that the immortal words, ‘Miss Webb, I understand your anger and will call you back with a solution’ are inevitably, just inevitably the prelude to silence, incompetence and lost file notes.  It’s not simply that the engineer who was finally booked in to come and fix my three-year-glitchy TV box couldn’t come for over a month, and when the day finally came, decided not to show up because ‘your equipment is obsolete and we cannot fix it’ after I’d waited in all day for this individual to fix my equipment as had been pledged.  It’s not merely that no matter what I say, your service staff read the same futile information back at me from a screen without any comprehension of the words I’ve spoken.

No.

TalkTalk, what incenses me more than almost any of this, is the fact that you are the living embodiment of the death of free and independent thought.  For lo, on my third call I finally crack and demand to be put through to the manager of the department which is currently stalling me, and what am I told?

“Your service is being phased out.  We will be upgrading your contract.”

Indeed?  First I’ve heard of this – and will this upgrade fix my TV?

“Absolutely, you will get a new TV box, one of the best in the business.”

How delightful, except…

“Your new box will only receive freeview channels (fewer than I have now) and will cost you more.”

Beg pardon?

“You’re going to pay more, and get less.”

And this is your solution to my broken TV?

“Yes.”

And, dare I say it, this was in fact your ONLY solution to my broken TV, yes?  Because having made me wait a month for an engineer to turn up, you’re now telling me that the engineer was never capable of fixing my TV.  Because having made me sit on hold listening to tinny pop as my life runs through my fingers, you’re finally informing me that not only has my time and money been wasted, but your only offered solution is that I waste more of my time and money and…

… and here it is….

“If you wish to leave us we will charge a contract cancellation fee.”

“And that’s it, is it?  That’s all you have to say to me?”

“Yes.  That’s it.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.  That’s the situation.”

Ah Talktalk.

You senseless gits.  You provide a bad service – a service so bad I would argue it is in breech of your contract to me, to provide.  You fail at every turn.  Your employees, while some of them are charming, never-the-less seem laced through with a strong vein of people incapable of thinking, listening, of having any sort of independent thought whatsoever but rather your entire institution is stuck on repeat, churning out the phrases that appear on your screens without any thought or room for actual independent judgment.  Not one department talks to another, not one employee has the full knowledge to judge, nor the liberty to say anything of any use whatsoever.  You hold your customers hostage, providing bad services and offering, as the only solution, that the customer pays more for what they receive.  You demonstrate no interest or empathy for your customers, no self-awareness or sense of responsibility, but rather the machine turns and turns again and we, who are fool enough to pay for it, are ground down by the endless walls you throw up until finally we throw our hands up, and submit.

Dear TalkTalk.

I think I’d like to write to Ofcom about you.

yours sincerely,

Catherine Webb