ASK TONY: TalkTalk moved my home phone to an upstairs bedroom and then the TV stopped working
I moved home last August and kept my TalkTalk account. An engineer came to set it up, but he put the main socket in my spare bedroom along with the broadband router.
I'm supposed to keep it there, which means I have to run upstairs every time the phone rings. I am nearly 70.
I am also paying an extra £5 a month for Sky channels that I can't access on my YouView box.
The engineer said it was nothing to do with him, and that there was a Virgin Media line installed by a previous tenant, but that is not my problem.
J. H., Shelford, Cambs.
One very unsatisfied TalkTalk customer has been left with both phone and TV problems
I must admit your letter initially left me well and truly confused because you mentioned three different telecoms companies. But all is now clear.
The crux of the problem lies in the order given by TalkTalk to the Openreach engineer (Openreach — a BT company — installs broadband for TalkTalk).
According to an Openreach spokesman, the engineer was told by TalkTalk to make a connection to the existing socket in the house, and this was in the upstairs room.
To have moved the socket to another location would have involved extra expense and time, and he was not authorised to do this.
Your router was installed beside the socket and the upshot was that you could not receive Sky Sports News and Sky Arts, for which you were paying extra.
Why? Well, your YouView TV box needs a direct, wired internet connection to your router. There is a workaround, but this would require you to be comfortable playing with technology.
Before you moved into the property, there is no way you would have known the master socket was in such an inconvenient place.
At this stage, you called TalkTalk. Now, let's get one thing clear: though the connection was made by Openreach, your contract is with TalkTalk, so it was this firm's responsibility to resolve the issue.
Despite none of this being your fault, you were told there would be a charge for moving the socket. You refused — quite rightly in my opinion — and wrote to me.
With the spectre of the Daily Mail looming, TalkTalk arranged for an engineer to relocate the socket and resolve the problem.
As a goodwill gesture, you will not have to pay the £128.40 relocation charge. A TalkTalk spokesman says: 'We have apologised to your reader for the inconvenience and can confirm an engineer has visited the property to relocate the master socket.'
One other thing. You mentioned having to go upstairs to answer the phone. With modern phones it really doesn't matter where your master socket is located.
'You can buy a set of three or four phones and — as long as one is plugged into the master socket — they can be used anywhere around the house.
As for the Virgin socket, well, that's a red herring. It has nothing to do with you or your installation.
Last year, Southern Water said my bill would rise from £29 to £61 per month. I live on my own.
When I protested, the firm suggested I have a stop-tap test to check for a leak. I didn't know what it was, so asked a plumber to do it.
Southern Water then tested for a leak. Two men dug a hole, but said the leak was on my property boundary, so I would have to pay.
Another workman came to fill in the hole and said the problem was fixed, though I am doubtful.
I had a high bill the previous year, too. If Southern Water had warned me then I might have avoided expensive bills. I am 78 and suffer from bad health.
J. K., Kent.
Southern Water says there were, in fact, two leaks at your property. It was responsible for one, which was outside of your boundary, and it fixed this.
The other was inside your property and you were responsible for this. You told me your insurance covered it, though you did have to pay a £100 excess.
Southern Water says it will be monitoring your water usage so it can apply a water and waste water leak allowance and reimburse you for any overpayment.
It agrees that it would have been beneficial to investigate when you made contact in October 2015. However, your water usage decreased over the following six months, indicating there wasn't a problem at that time.
When you called in October 2015 to discuss your water usage, you suggested that one reason for the spike might be that you used more in your garden in the summer.
Southern Water has since visited your property and confirms all of the issues are resolved.
My son's mobile phone came to the end of its contract in October 2015 and we had agreed he would start paying for his own phone.
When I called Vodafone to cancel his contract, it offered him an upgrade deal, which he accepted.
He provided his bank account details and Vodafone confirmed the separation of accounts.
But since then it has charged me for both accounts and every month I have had to go through a protracted process to get a refund, each time being assured the issue would be rectified.
At the end of last year, I became so exasperated I cancelled my direct debit and advised Vodafone I would be settling only my account on a monthly direct basis.
I am now receiving calls from Vodafone telling me I am in arrears on my account. When I made contact, I was told there was a technical problem that was being referred to as 'superusers'.
The staff member refused to escalate the importance of my issue. I received more chases for money over the weekend.
F. B., Essex.
You might have thought upgrading to a new account would be simple. But Vodafone managed to bungle it consistently every month for more than a year.
When you finally cancelled your direct debit, the firm should have escalated the problem. Instead, it refused to allow you to speak to a higher authority and continued to chase you for payments.
As so often happens when I phone a press office, an insoluble problem suddenly becomes straightforward.
The error has been rectified and Vodafone has apologised, refunded £120 and promised to monitor your account to make sure everything works.
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