Talk Talk taken to task by Ofcom for misleading customers

Ofcom has given Talk Talk a month to tighten up its procedures for selling fixed-line phone contracts after accusing the company of engaging in "dishonest, misleading or deceptive conduct".

The communications regulator said it began investigating the company on 19 November last year following consumer complaints. The Ofcom investigation which closed on 19 May this year concluded that the Talk Talk Group had provided customers with misleading information likely to affect a purchasing decision.

Ofcom also said the company was engaging in slamming; switching someone's phone service to Talktalk without their consent. These practices are a breach of General Condition 24 (GC24) under section 94 of the Communications Act 2003.

"The types of complaint about Talk Talk we got were employees were making it hard for people to cancel their contract, confusing them about what the 14-day cooling-off period actually meant, or cancelling their contract and then reinstating it," an Ofcom representative told us.

Talk Talk must now takes steps to comply with the requirements of GC24 including retraining staff so they only give customers factual and accurate information and make it clear if a customer is about to enter into a contract.

Ofcom will continue to monitor the company, which may, prior to the 20 June 2011 deadline make propose other remedies.

In a statement Talk Talk said: "We're working with Ofcom to provide the information they require before their deadline. We take our responsibilities in this area extremely seriously... and we're committed to providing information that is clear and can be easily understood.

"We have processes in place to help our employees be accurate in every case and we invest heavily in the training and monitoring of our sales and retention teams.

"Improvements in the language used and the materials provided are constantly being made and we will be providing Ofcom with detailed information about our ongoing programme to maintain the highest standards in all of our transactions with our five million customers."