Sorry TalkTalk, but Mr Chief Accountant truly does NOT exist
P.O. writes: I work in my own little business, and in 2012 I switched my two telephone lines to TalkTalk. The account was in the name of my company, but in 2013 I received a letter from TalkTalk addressed to ‘Mr Chief Accountant’. Since then, all correspondence has been to Mr C. Accountant, sometimes starting ‘ Dear Chief ’. My wife found this amusing, but TalkTalk told her this was its policy. However, we now find ourselves power l ess to cl ose t he account because TalkTalk insists that Mr Accountant is the real customer.
IT IS one thing to be told ‘Computer says no.’ It is something else to have the computer refuse to engage with you because it has given you a new name and insists you have to adopt it as well.
When you tried to cancel the two phone lines, TalkTalk replied that Mr Chief Accountant would have to nominate you to act on his behalf. Fine, you said, you would simply cancel the direct debit that paid the bills. Back came a reply from TalkTalk, apologising for what it said must have been ‘a frustrating experience’ – but it still insisted you had to be nominated to act on behalf of its real customer, Mr Accountant.
Politely and gently, you explained that Mr Chief Accountant did not exist so could not have signed a contract with TalkTalk. So he could not be expected to cancel that contract. TalkTalk’s response was sympathetic. One of its staff wrote: ‘I fully understand that you have requested to cancel the account. I will gladly advise you on this.’ But first you had to get Mr Accountant to grant you power of attorney to act for him.
Staff at TalkTalk clearly put in some really hard thinking, trying to work out how you could cancel its service. One suggestion was for Mr Chief Accountant to change his name to yours by deed poll. You would then both have the same name, and you could cancel the phone lines. But my favourite solution was that you could marry Mr Chief Accountant and he could adopt your name as his.
Somehow, neither of these ideas appealed to you, and because you cancelled the direct debit, TalkTalk wrote: ‘Dear Mr Accountant, we’ve unfortunately had to suspend your
TalkTalk service due to an unpaid balance on your account.’ And when Mr Accountant ignored this, TalkTalk called in debt collectors, who wrote: ‘Dear Mr Accountant, please pay the full amount of £316 immediately.’
At this point you contacted me, and I contacted TalkTalk with a request for a copy of anything signed by ‘Mr Chief Accountant’. Its response was extraordinary. TalkTalk asked you to prove that the account was yours.
TalkTalk clearly preferred to have the Invisible Man as a customer, so I decided this was fine. I would back off, and when TalkTalk sued Mr Accountant, it would make an even better story. Finally, TalkTalk got the message. I was told it would disconnect both l i nes and cancel t he charges. It confirmed this to you in writing, though absurdly it even managed to do this by writing to you ‘C/O Chief Accountant’.
TalkTalk told me a few days ago: ‘We apologise profusely for Mr O’s recent experience and the inconvenience caused. This was clearly an unfortunate error on our part and we have put measures in place to help avoid a similar situation in future.’
Backing up the apology, TalkTalk is popping £100 into your business’s bank account.