How can I get Talktalk to close my account?

I thought I left TalkTalk in October last year. They sent me two refund cheques when i left.

I have been paying BT for my phone and broadband since then, but I have recently discovered that my Talktalk e-mail addresses are still active, I can log in to "My Account" and I find a series of £0.0 bills for each month since October.

The OCE on the Talktalk forums says zero bills are normal for a disconnected line.

Seems a bit strange to me. Surely my account with TalkTalk should be closed, not just shown as disconnected?

Anyone else have experience of what happens when you leave them?

How long can I go on using the e-mail addr4esses for nothing, for example?

How can I get them to actually close my account?

Hi

your quote of Emma s post is not quite whole. I have taken the liberty of quoting her entire post and indeed her last post in which she provides further information.

Hi Axolotl,

A bill for £0.00 when your service is disconnected is not incorrect. Billing should be supressed once the first zero bill is produced. I will ask the billing team to ensure supression is applied to your account.

Cheers
Em x

She has since updatted the thread with this

Hi Axolotl,

TalkTalk are required by law to retain your information for several years. E-mail addresses are removed periodically when the networks team complete clean ups.

The billing team have advised your billing will be supressed as soon as possible. I will provide further updates once they are made avialable to me.

Cheers

Let us know if you need further assistance.

Cheers

Ady

This is typical of TalkTalk's responses. "The customer is always wrong". Whereas before I was slightly bemused, now I am angry.

I might as well be talking to the wall. This is part of the reason I left TT in the first place.

The fact is that whatever your process is for closing down an account that should have suppressed bills after the first zero one, IT DIDN'T WORK.

You are still creating zero bills each month for an account that I believed to have been closed since October last year. An account that is still accessible and still producing bills, even zero ones, is not closed, and has nothing to do with what information TalkTalk is required to keep by law, so don't try to hide behind that nonsense.

It may well be true that now I have noticed and brought it to your attention, the zero bills will be "suppressed", but they shouldn't have been produced in the first place, and it shouldn't be down to me to get you to stop them.

It leaves me as an ex-customer, wondering what else you have got wrong about closing down my account? When am I suddenly going to get a non-zero bill for something else that you should have "suppressed" but forgot about? (Active e-mail addresses being a case in point).

Finally, I was not aware of Emma's second reply until you brought it to my attention here, because, unlike the Thinkbroadband forums, TalkTalk members forum doesn't continue to alert me to subsequent replies on my thread once I have viewed the first one. Another TalkTalk feature that doesn't quite work properly.

I thought I left TalkTalk in October last year. They sent me two refund cheques when i left.

Ye gods! You get ANY cash from them and you complain???? It takes an angry customer and Otelo months to extract anything from TT. And then we celebrate!

TT's response seems quite reasonable.

They admitted the repeated zero bills were an error and they are taking steps to correct it. My daughter left AOL about the same time and her a/c is still accessible and has 1 final zero bill.

With regard to keeping your a/c info, they need to do this to protect their own interests. Say, in 6 months time, you came back and queried a past bill, how would they answer your query if they had no record of your historic a/c?

Two points:-

One, they omitted the magic word "sorry" from any of their responses. It was just "befehl ist befehl". I can see them shrug their shoulders from here.

Secondly, They are welcome to keep records, that does not mean they have to keep my account open and create zero bills. Can't you see the diference?

I must admit I was surprised to get a refund, but it did take me two goes to get the refund correct...

Hi Axolotl,

my apologies if my post offended that was not my intention. I simply wanted to clarify what Emma had advised and provide you with the latest update.

The surpression of those bills is simply the way our system should work. In effect this would mean to all intents and purposes the bill had never been raised.

I hope that helps.

Ady