TalkTalk were recently ranked as the worst broadband provider, and not for for the first time. This was no surprise to me, as I had recently had a taste of what TalkTalk regard as customer service. A client asked me for help after she had accidentally locked herself out of her TalkTalk account by changing the password then forgetting it. At first I tried going through the standard password reset procedure which sent a ‘reset e-mail’ to her registered e-mail account. However, the customer had unfortunately changed her e-mail password at the same time that she updated her TalkTalk account, and forgotten that as well. The TalkTalk website offered what was supposed to be an alternative method of resetting the account password, but that just sent another ‘reset e-mail’ to the e-mail account that we could no longer access.
As we seemed to be locked out with no easy way of getting back in, we had no alternative but to call TalkTalk customer service for help. I explained that we had been through both of the password reset procedures on the TalkTalk website, but each of them had simply sent us a ‘reset e-mail’ that we could not access. I asked if we could simply answer some of the usual security questions on the telephone so that TalkTalk could be sure that we were genuine. After we had proved who we were, TalkTalk could safely reset the account password for us. Apparently that was not possible, though they had no answer when I asked why not. They insisted that the account password could only be changed by going through the ‘reset e-mail’ process.
After a while, TalkTalk came up with a solution. If we could set up another e-mail account somewhere else, they would send a ‘reset e-mail’ to our new e-mail address and we could use that to get back into our TalkTalk account. I was very surprised at this suggestion, and told them how daft it was. Anyone could set up a new e-mail account this way, get TalkTalk to send them a ‘reset e-mail’, then use it to hijack someone else’s account. I reminded them that up to that point, they had not yet verified who we really were.
TalkTalk’s security-breaching suggestion was the final straw for my client. Only a couple of weeks earlier I had helped her to negotiate a two-year contract with TalkTalk, and they had already charged her more than agreed on the first bill. She was completely fed up, and promptly cancelled the contract, which she was entitled to do within twenty days of entering into it. Within an hour of the cancellation I had helped the client to sign up as a new customer with Plusnet, and now we are just waiting for the switchover to happen on 7th May.