Ofcom fines TalkTalk £3m over incorrect billing
Summary: The regulator said the heavy fine, which follows the telco's persistent billing for services it did not actually provide, shouldact as a 'deterrent'
Ofcom has fined TalkTalk and its Tiscali UK subsidiary for persistently billing tens of thousands of customers for services they did not receive.
Ofcom has fined TalkTalk and its Tiscali UK subsidiary £3m for persistently billing tens of thousands of customers for services they did not receive. Photo credit: Jon Yeomans
The regulator first censured the companies for the incorrect charges in November, after which TalkTalk and Tiscali gave over 65,000 affected customers a total of £2.5m in refunds and goodwill payments. On Thursday, Ofcom levied an additional £3m fine, saying the telecoms firms continued to bill customers for non-existent services even after being told off for doing so.
"While TalkTalk and Tiscali UK did take some important steps to comply with the rules, such as making changes to their customer records management systems, they still incorrectly billed almost 3,000 consumers between 2 December, 2010 and 4 March, 2011," Ofcom said in a statement.
The regulator said the size of the fine was "to reflect the seriousness of their breach of the rules and to act as a deterrent to them and other telecoms companies who must comply with the rules".
However, Ofcom said the fine would have been even greater if TalkTalk and Tiscali UK had not taken steps to fix their systems and compensate customers.
Read this
TalkTalk launches network-level security protection
Residential customers will automatically be protected from online threats if they opt in to TalkTalk's HomeSafe security service
Despite being named in Ofcom's statements, Tiscali UK does not technically exist anymore. It was bought by TalkTalk's then-parent company, Carphone Warehouse, in 2009. Its operations were merged into TalkTalk, which was then itself demerged from Carphone Warehouse in 2010.
On Thursday, TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding said in a statement that the company was pleased Ofcom had recognised the steps taken to fix the problems and "acknowledged that the issues surrounding the integration of the Tiscali business in 2010 are behind us".
Complaining that TalkTalk was "disappointed at the scale of the fine and [felt] it is a disproportionate penalty", Harding noted that every affected customer had been reimbursed, and that Ofcom had received a mere 12 complaints regarding the issue over the last three months.
"Last year I recognised that we needed to invest in our systems, processes and customer services — and we are making significant progress," Harding said. "We have seen a 40-percent year-on-year reduction in customer service calls; Ofcom receives three times fewer calls about TalkTalk than they did at the height of the Tiscali integration; and our five million customers are more loyal and more satisfied than they were 12 months ago."
Get the latest technology news and analysis, blogs and reviews delivered directly to your inbox with ZDNet UK's newsletters.
Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily email newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.
Talkback
I changed over to Talk-talk for broadband, and they completely messed up my telephone and broadband. After having no telephone or broadband for a week I had to go to another supplier who sorted it within 2 days. Talk-Talk then grabbed £213 from my account for early disconnection. I would never deal or recommend that technically useless company to anyone
What a load of crap, I was with Tiscali and they changed my account to talk talk, billed me an extra £7 a month for a connection speed that was almost on the modem speed of things, maximum of 50kb/s download. The more I phoned to get the speed sorted, the less willing they were to solve the problem. At one point I was told to run a speed test and phone back the next day....
When I did, i was told by another customer rep to do the same. I did it again and phoned and managed to get the ring around to tiscali technicians who then stated it was a talk talk technician that was needed, who then told me it was a tiscali technician. When I finally got a technician to speak to, the line was so led around in rings that the person was completely inaudible on the phone.
One little switch to SKY and iḿ enjoying speedy broadband cheaper with no need to have ever called customer services.
And where is my refund???? Not forgetting the £10 in bills owed for the time spent on the phone
Worse service I have every had off any organisation.. went to o2 and that was the end of my problems.. they are absolutely brilliant.... 3 years later still with them and not one issue...
2nd. ofcom themselves recently issued a statement confirming that between, tt, sky and bt, tt are the only providers who do not cap your bb speed below its full potential ergo, offering the fastest speeds of the three on a dsl line.
3rd. BT OPEN REACH are the engineer service for ALL dsl phone and bb providors.
4th. your bb speed is determined by the distance from your home to the local exchange. this can be affected by the number of ppl online at the same time, the websites your viewing, the condition of your router, computer or even your line. you may have needed a new telephone line.
5th. its very easy to jump on the bandwagon and kick someone whos down. just remember tt have 5million customers, on the most part of whom are happy. in light of the small number of tt's customer base who have been unhappey, the numbers are minute in comparison. also come to mind that every company will have problems, especially when intergrating other companies into its operations. every company will recieve a volume of complaints, just remember the old saying "you can make some people happy all the time, everybody some of the time, but never everybody all the time...."
Ive allways been happy with my tt service, and when there has been problems, they have been resolved in a realistic timescale