Dear Mr Dunstone,

I am writing to you on behalf of my father Giorgio Brigatti, who had a Tiscali (now part of TalkTalk) Telephone and Broadband service until very recently.

As part of his consumer rights, he opted to transfer to another Service Provider (PlusNet), and raised the appropriate requests to Tiscali, who confirmed that this transfer would happen on 16th March 2010. This was aligned with PlusNet and my father. Tiscali triggered in the telephone and broadband services early, so on the 11th March 2010 both services were terminated abruptly and without notification to PlusNet or my father.

My father contacted Tiscali to complaint about this, and Tiscali failed to respect that they were liable for this early termination but did admit that they did indeed trigger it early, in error. Through numerous telephone and support ticket discussions with your servicing teams, we continue to fail to obtain a copy of the final bill or close the account with you, even after persistent requests to do so. This matter became far more serious when Tiscali actually passed this matter to a Debt Collections Agency – for a final bill settlement that we never actually received. This is a total disregard of the basic principles of Customer Service, it caused significant distress and still (to this day), we have not yet received the final bill for the services until the early termination date of 10th March 2010. We are not willing to pay for a service charge that we did not utilise, why should we?

This is extremely poor customer service that I am receiving from your Tiscali division. Surely, this is not the way to perform as a Communication company?

We am hopeful that with your intervention this matter can be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. I am looking for an agreed level of compensation, at this time we have notified Tiscali that £25 would be added to our original £100 compensation claim for every business day exceeding past 12th April 2010. As of COB Friday, 18th June this amounted to £1,400 claimed and this figure continues to rise. Although this is significant, this amount has been notified to Tiscali and I feel is justified for the lack of support, breach of contract and the continued distrust we have with your servicing teams to honour their servicing agreements with my father, including anguish and distress experienced after the Debt Collection letter was received by him, and most importantly the fact that over 3 months this matter has yet to be resolved.

This is extremely poor service, the matter of breach of contract has been raised, I have advised Tiscali/TalkTalk of a liability of this fact, raise a requested for compensation and now raised this matter to the Ombudsman. All of which for something that your customer support teams should have resolved effectively.

I trust that with your intervention, this can be resolved. I very much look forward for your response accordingly.

Many thanks for your time.

Your sincerely,

Aaron Brigatti
(sent on my behalf of Giorgio Brigatti)