How hard is it to cancel a service via modern company phone systems? I recently signed up for a contract with TalkTalk after discussion with a sales rep as to how it would cut my phone bill. After studying my phone bills in more detail and finding a £3.95 monthly charge that would appear after 3 months of use (no-one mentioned that) I decided to cancel. I rang TalkTalk several times during the 10 day cancellation period, each time choosing the options that would take me to the appropriate cancellation department. Each time I failed to get through to a real person because: 1) “sorry all our operators are busy right now, call again later” disconnected… 2) I was just randomly disconnected with or without being on hold, 3) “sorry but that international number is not recognised” disconnected (after connecting to the TalkTalk phone system). When I did actually get through to a real, live human being it was because I had not chosen the cancellation options, but picked sales. That’s rather dodgy, isn’t it? Of course that real live human person then had to transfer my call to the “cancellation department”. The first time I actually got through to them (the third person I spoke to) there was no record of my contract yet, so they couldn’t cancel it. The second time I was transferred to the Carphone Warehouse, and after holding for 8 minutes was told that they (of course) could not cancel a TalkTalk contract. I was given a direct number to the cancellation department. Could I get through? Not a hope. Days went by repeating these processes, and the 10-day window cam and went. I gave up trying, as I’m sure was the intention.
So now I am a TalkTalk customer. Oh, how happy am I?
I just rang Orange to cancel my contract. Well, actually I don’t want to leave Orange entirely, just drop the contract and swap to pay-as-you-go because I use my phone much less now that I’m not commuting. So I carefully followed their phone system’s options to take me to the cancellation department. Can you guess what happened? “At Orange we value your call and the quality of our customer service, and your call may be monitored and recorded for training purposes”… disconnected. Aaaaargh!
