In reply to:

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I doubt whether TT use that definition in their sales pitch

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They don't, that is my stance. I have emailed trading standards to start the ball rolling.

Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 would appear to apply - business practices which will disadvantage the average customer by leading them to make a choice they would otherwise not have made. The OP's father would not have chosen T-T if he had known the full story.

T-T's deceit is more complex and subtle than the cases BT has been pursuing, and only affects ~30% of the population.

Thank you all for your comments. I agree with yarwell. I think as a general rule I think we are in agreement that TT is not particularly clear on what speed they will provide. Their terms and conditions of BB say

"We will try to give you the �download� Transmission Speed that you have signed up for. This may be 8 mbps but we cannot guarantee that you will always be able to get this Transmission Speed. If we cannot provide you with the Transmission Speed you have signed up for, we will give you the next available lower Transmission Speed. The Transmission Speed may also change if you move house because they are dependent on your proximity to your local telephone exchange. You accept that �upload� speeds will always be slower than �download� speeds. We will provide you with further details of these upon request."

From this against the words above, I am not sure they are really being fair. They say "if we cannot provide you with the Transmission Speed you have signed up for", but what they mean is "If we decide we don't want to give you the transmission speed you thought you were signing up for because it cost us extra cash to BT". But at the end of the day, it looks from an earlier post that he may well have been told at the point of purchase that he would be on 2 Mb.

With all that said, with no mention of the 2 Mb thing in the T&Cs of the contract it is very easy to miss that and assume you would be given an ADSL Max line automatically if you are connected to an ADSL Max enabled exchange. This is my mind is VERY POOR SALES PRACTICE at least and TT should have a duty of care and moral obligation to their customers to make this VERY CLEAR on the contract by differentiating between LLU and non-LLU customers.

Whether there is a case to answer at the Trading Standards I am not sure, but they really shouldn't be able to get away with it. Computer equipment and services is a market where the vast majority of customers are very unaware of what they are actually buying, and there should be far better regulation (from government or industry self regulation) to ensure that customers are protected better. Otherwise people will continue to be miss sold products and pay through the nose for substandard products.

Does my father in-law need faster than 2Mb?... Probably not! But he is paying a lot of money in good faith for what he thought was an up to 8Mb package realistically thinking that he would get something like 4-6Mb connection speed and getting far less. That in my view is very wrong!

I would still advise your father in law to join the www.talktalkmembers.com forum and ask for a free ADSL Max upgrade.

Thanks,

I will advise him to do it.

Thanks all

Robbo1