I received a letter in the post this morning, saying that my service on Tele2, will now be taken over by Talk Talk.  It also explained that my free weekend calls will continue and there would still be no line rental charge.

I was not aware of Tele2 being taken over.  I thought Talk Talk had purchased One.Tel but not Tele2 as well.

Having had poor service from NTL dialup on the BT line, I am switching over to V2 for my internet needs, however in order to benefit from paying only £7.99 per month instead of £9.99 per month, I have to register my phone line with their CPS company.  Since they also give free weekend calls, then it makes sense to change, as I'm getting the same service as I had with Tele2.

Let's hope that Talk Talk don't make any requests to change my phone service after V2 start supplying me with a service.

I am on Onetel and I have yet to receive a letter from Talk Talk.  I still have Onetel CPS and as far I am aware, all my enquiries are still to be directed to Onetel.  Like you, I hope that Talk Talk do not upset the status quo with all my telephone plans with Onetel, because as far I am concerned Talk Talk plans do not come up to Onetel's packages.

I will await the letter from Talk Talk.

James Bond

I just made it across to Just Dial Saver before the shutters came down on free evening and weekend calls.  But I wonder how long before TalkTalk merge it with Talk1? >:(

If any of the members gets a letter from TalkTalk regarding the take over of Onetel and or Tele2, would it be possible to email this letter minus your personal information.

This would be greatly appreciated.

Sincere thanks.

James Bond

www.just-dial.com still says they are a subsidiary of Telco Global who are part of the Centrica group.  There is no mention of anything having changed and no mention of any disappearance of free evening and weekend calls on Just-Dial Saver.  And nothing that says that the deal for new customers and old customers is different.  But then Just Dial don't list any of their chargeable uk call prices. :o >:(


If they have in fact become part of TalkTalk and changed the call prices in the evenings and at the weekend this would surely be an open and shut case for a successful complaint with Otelo.

Does anyone know if this includes Alpha Telecom, or will that remain with Tele2?

andy9 wrote on Feb 5^th, 2006 at 4:31pm:

Does anyone know if this includes Alpha Telecom, or will that remain with Tele2?

There seems to be a general theme of CPW/TalkTalk failing to notify customers of most important things.

For instance they failed to notify me of my CPS transfer to Just Dial.  This will make the second time that TalkTalk have failed to send a CPS transfer letter as it happened before a year ago when a Tiscali customer service person initiated a CPS transfer to Tiscali from TalkTalk without my permission (when I was actually trying to cancel the Indirect service).  I did get the welcome letter from Tiscali which let me cancel the non requested transfer.

My CPS transferred to Just Dial on 31st Jan and I am finding 1899 calls are now displaying normal CLI if I call my Vodafone.  So a nasty thought occurs as to whether I have been put on a TalkTalk Wholesale Line Rental deal and so any 1899 calls will now be charged at TalkTalk and/or Just Dial's rates. :o >:(  Of course this shouldn't have happened but when TalkTalk allow months old information to remain on the Just Dial website and I can't phone them to ask (only send an email as I have done that may never be answered) anything is possible.

As for Alpha Telecom it seem fairly clear on their website they were part of Tele2 so they may or may not have sold Alpha off to TalkTalk when they flogged Tele2 to them.   On the other hand with such a small operator like Alpha the number of customers may not be worth anything to TalkTalk and the brand name might be worth a lot more to another smaller operator like Callax who run Abroadtel and various other dial through brands.  Speaking of which given all the television advertising they did you would think that TalkTalk ough to rebrand everything as Tele2 - although I'm sure that corporate ego will prevent this.  And in any case Tele2 continue to operate as the original company in other countries.

Looks like it could be time for that Sipura SPA-3000 unit and Post Office line rental with the £50 cash back.

I understand from Alpha Telecom that they are NOT part of Tele2, and therefore they will not be swallowed up by TalkTalk.  God help TalkTalk if they change the line rental from BT, firstly the line rental is NOT in my name, it is in another person of the family, mind you TalkTalk would get a rocket from me as I as do have access only to the BT account - I am not allowed to do anything ( ie. it is in joint names ).  We will just have to wait and see.

By the way, I emailed both TalkTalk and Onetel Customers Services with regards to this particular matter, and I have not even had an acknowledgement.

James Bond

jamesbond wrote on Feb 6^th, 2006 at 9:42pm:

I understand from Alpha Telecom that they are NOT part of Tele2, and therefore they will not be swallowed up by TalkTalk

At www.alphatelecom.com/uk/aboutalpha.aspx it says very prominently that they are part of the Tele2 group.  Of course it could be that Tele2 didn't sell Alpha to TalkTalk/CPW.  TalkTalk/CPW is all about massive size and numbers so they clearly want to take on the main customer bases of OneTel and Talk2 but I would have thought that with JustDial and AlphaTelecom the brand name might be worth more to the owning company than what a rival would pay for the small customer base they have.   It depends if Tele2 wanted to hang on to Alpha to keep a low cost toehold in the uk marketplace.  Clearly they found their big spend tv advertising wasn't working, whereas TalkTalk's strategy of hard selling in the shops to their existing mobile customers seems to have been very successful.

Below is JustDial's email in response to my question as to whether there were part of TalkTalk and what that meant for the future but as you can see what they have said is gobbledygook! ::)

-----Original Message-----
From: JustDial, Customer Care [mailto:customercare@just-dial.com]
Sent: 06 February 2006 12:51
Subject: RE: Enquiry

Thank you for your recent email.

I have checked your account and can see that you are on Just-Dial Saver Lite
plan at no monthly charge that entitles you to get free calls to local and
national landline numbers in the evening (6pm to 8am) and during weekends
from Friday midnight till Sunday midnight.

I would appreciate if you could logon to our website mentioned below and
checked the rates for local calls online. The rates for calling 0845, 0870
and UK mobiles are mentioned in the table below -:

     Peak      Off-Peak      Wkend      
UK 0845 (LO-CAL)      3.5p      0.9p      0.9p      
UK 0870 (NATIONAL)      7.4p      3.64p      1.4p      
UK MOBILE O2      11.6p                  
UK MOBILE T-MOBILE      13.5p                  
UK MOBILE ORANGE      12.6p                  
UK MOBILE VODAFONE      14.0p                  
UK MOBILE THREE      18.0p                  

Calls to UK mobiles are capped at a maximum of 20p for upto 20 minutes in
the evenings and 15p for upto 20 minutes during weekends.

We have no current plans to move any customers. Just-Dial plans are
equivalent to Talk Talk plans neither do we have any plans for any
upgradation.

If you have any further queries about your Just-Dial service, you can logon
to our website on www.just-dial.com.

Thank you for choosing Just-Dial.

Yours sincerely,

Aaditi Khanna
Customer Services

-----Original Message-----
Sent: 04 February 2006 11:51
To: care@justdialsaver.com
Subject: Enquiry
Importance: High

Please confirm if the tariff I have now just switched to with Just Dial is
Just Dial Saver or Just Dial Free and what the call cost differences are
between the two?

I signed up for Just Dial Saver but now my online account says I am with
Just Dial Free but does not specify the call charges on that type of
account.  There is no mention of Just Dial Free anywhere on your website.

Please can you confirm if I am still entitled to free evening and weekend
calls on Just Dial Free and explain why this tariff if not listed on your
website and why your customer tariffs are not shown in your customer
accounts website area?

Please also explain the long term implications of recent events involving
TalkTalk and Centrica and whether your parent company Telco Global was
sold to TalkTalk/CPW by Centrica as part of this deal?  Or is Telco Global
still owned by Centrica?  If ownership has now switched to CPW what are
their long term plans with the Just Dial calling brand?

jamesbond wrote on Feb 6^th, 2006 at 9:42pm:

God help TalkTalk if they change the line rental from BT, firstly the line rental is NOT in my name, it is in another person of the family, mind you TalkTalk would get a rocket from me as I as do have access only to the BT account - I am not allowed to do anything ( ie. it is in joint names ).  We will just have to wait and see.

Following an earlier complaint by BT to Ofcom against TalkTalk's then terms and conditions it was clearly established that TalkTalk's contract saying they could migrate a CPS customer to Wholesale Line Rental without their permission was an Unfair Contract Term and not valid.  Mind you even with that ruling I wouldn't trust the incompetent, infefficient and faceless TalkTalk not to do it anyway.  But if it happens at least you know you can go straight to Otelo.

I have had a reply from Onetel:

Dear **********

Thanks for your e-mail,

The Line rental would only be move to Talk Talk if you have Onetel Line
rental.  This will not affect your BT line.  If you require any further
information then please call us in on 08458 18 8179.

I hope this information is of use to you.

Regards,
Angus
Onetel Technical Support

I spoke to Talk Talk today, and was basically told the same thing, however the member of staff was not 100% certain - that's great and blooming helpful.

I will let you know of my reply from Talk Talk.

Absolutely disgusted.

James Bond

jamesbond wrote on Feb 7^th, 2006 at 6:36pm:

I will let you know of my reply from Talk Talk. Absolutely disgusted. James Bond

You could always move to Primus Planet Talk and their tariff that offers free evening and weekend calls for no subscription.  This would at least show TalkTalk that you are disgusted at them taking over Onetel and that they had wasted their money in your case.  Of course you would have to move your line rental back to BT to go with Primus if you were a Ontel line rental customer?  Or perhaps you just used Onetel for calls?

See www.planet-talk.co.uk/SaverProducts.aspx?source=saver for details of the Primus evening and weekend calls offer.

wrote on Feb 7^th, 2006 at 10:58pm:

You could always move to Primus Planet Talk and their tariff that offers free evening and weekend calls for no subscription.   ... See www.planet-talk.co.uk/SaverProducts.aspx?source=saver for details of the Primus evening and weekend calls offer.

NGM, I've just had a look at the Primus Saver site, specifically at the Rates page.
It says evening and weekend calls are 1p for 90 min, with a minimum call charge of 4p - so actually 4p for up to 90min x 4 = 6h.  But that's still actually 4p per call and 33.33% more expensive than 1899!
Am I misunderstanding something?  :-/

trevord wrote on Feb 8^th, 2006 at 12:03am:

NGM, I've just had a look at the Primus Saver site, specifically at the Rates page. It says evening and weekend calls are 1p for 90 min, with a minimum call charge of 4p - so actually 4p for up to 90min x 4 = 6h.  But that's still actually 4p per call and 33.33% more expensive than 1899! Am I misunderstanding something?  :-/

I suggest this thread at the MoneySavingExpert forum Home Phone forum answers your queries:-

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=147378&highlight=primus+saver

Basically Primus is definitely free for all evening and weekend calls but they have a useless web developer so their website is inconsistent and very badly presented in terms of their various different tariffs and charges.

Its strange they should offer such a good deal when their website makes such a bad job or marketing the fact that it exists.  But obviously as with any of these companies they could decide to withdraw this offer at any time.

They explain things  better on their site here:  http://www.planet-talk.co.uk/SaverFAQs.aspx?source=saver#2

But strangely they dont list their rates for Landline to Mobile Calls.

bigjohn wrote on Feb 8^th, 2006 at 9:38am:

They explain things  better on their site here:  http://www.planet-talk.co.uk/SaverFAQs.aspx?source=saver#2 But strangely they dont list their rates for Landline to Mobile Calls.

It would be a miracle if anyone could navigate to that page or the other relevant pages from the Primus Planet Talk home page.

It is one of the most useless websites I have come across, although the www.just-dial.com website is almost as bad.

wrote on Feb 8^th, 2006 at 10:06am:

bigjohn wrote on Feb 8th, 2006 at 9:38am: They explain things  better on their site here:  http://www.planet-talk.co.uk/SaverFAQs.aspx?source=saver#2 It would be a miracle if anyone could navigate to that page or the other relevant pages from the Primus Planet Talk home page.

I had actually navigated to and read that page before bigjohn mentioned it!  : ;D
But it did nothing to dispell the impressions from this page
http://www.planet-talk.co.uk/SaverRates.aspx?source=saver that:

• there is actually a charge of 1p for 90 min (see dropdown)
  
• with a minimum charge of 4p per call (see footnote)
  

but thanks to NGM for assuring me that this is not in fact the case!   :o
As you say, their website is awful - but I had assumed that the figures would be correct.  :'(
I had wondered why you couldn't sign up online - but if they can't even get the costs right on the website, I'm sure they couldn't enable on-line sign-up!

Thanks for the help and advice, NGM & bigjohn.   :)

trevord wrote on Feb 8^th, 2006 at 10:27am:

I had wondered why you couldn't sign up online - but if they can't even get the costs right on the website, I'm sure they couldn't enable on-line sign-up! Thanks for the help and advice, NGM & bigjohn.   :)

At least you can telephone Primus and speak to a person.  I don't think they can mainly sell through the website judging by how useless it is.  I think they must expect most customers to telephone them to sign up.

www.just-dial.com with its now totally factually misleading website is more inexcusable when there is no one to telephone and yet a big company owns the product and should have the resources to get the website updated.   Just Dial are however responding more readily and more helpfully  to emails than I was expecting and no mention of the £1 charge for asking questions that they consider have already been covered on their website.  Anyhow in my case my questions weren't covered by the website and instead related to missing information or wrong information on the website.

With Primus Saver Option 2, does the on-line call accounting system list the free calls as well as the chargeable ones please?

RatAtAt wrote on Feb 13^th, 2006 at 4:19pm:

With Primus Saver Option 2, does the on-line call accounting system list the free calls as well as the chargeable ones please?

I'm not sure about Primus but www.just-dial.com also list my free calls and the number dialled but then show the cost as 0.00 in the evening and at the weekend.

Normally speaking it seems to be only 0800 and free operator calls for which there is no record at all provided on a customer's bill

I have finally had a reply from TalkTalk with a copy sent to Onetel:

Dear **********

Thank you for your email. I apologise for delay in response.( I sent the original on February 15th 2006 )

I can confirm that OneTel is staying OneTel, upto now we are not migrating customers from OneTel to TalkTalk, if the situation changes you will recieve confirmation about this.

If you have any further queries, please contact us on 0870 444 1820 or via email to customerservices@talktalk.co.uk.

Regards

TalkTalk Correspondence Department

Email address: customerservices@TalkTalk.co.uk
Also sent to: support@onetel.com
Date of email: 17 February 2006

I hope that this clears up any problems / queries about the merger / takeover by TalkTalk

James Bond

I received a letter from Talk Talk in the week.

It stated that my calls will be transferred over to Talk Talk 1 on 17 March.

As it's the same service as Tele2, and still with free weekend calls, then thats no problem.

As I make so few calls, and have lots of mobile inclusive minutes anyway, I decided to sign up to Postoffice Homephone, purely to get the £50 line rental credit.

This will obviously make Talk Talk redundant.

However what worried me in their letter was this quote

"TalkTalk plus will soon include line rental from TalkTalk.  We will let you know in advance when you can expect to be transferred to this service.  BT or another access operator will be responsible for your line rental.  Please see our TalkTalk terms and conditions on www.talktalk.co.uk or contact us on 0870 087 9000"

Now my agreement with Tele2 was purely for CPS.  I've decided to move over to HomePhone and have asked HomePhone to provide a service.

I have made no contact with Talk Talk whatsoever, and although I accept that they will provide the exact service I asked Tele2 to provide, I strongly object to TalkTalk then hinting that they will move me over to line rental as well, without any sort of authority from me!!

I'm sure an e-mail to them asking not to be transferred to line rental will do the trick, or indeed asking not to be transferred to CPS should be enough, considering I'm due to be starting HomePhone soon, however if they then e-mail me to state that I must call their 0870 number to sort out the problem, then I won't be too happy about it.

Seeing as HomePhone isn't due to be started for a few weeks yet, I thought a couple of weeks of free calls on TalkTalk wouldn't be too bad.

There was a ruling made by Ofcom that it was illegal for TalkTalk to forcibly migrate CPS customers on to its wholesale line rental product without their permission.  This came about as a result of a complaint made by BT against TalkTalk.

If TalkTalk do move you to their line rental illegally then bring this to the attention of Ofcom Director of Investigations - david.stewart@ofcom.org.uk


Quote:

Home > Competition Bulletins > Competition Bulletins > Closed cases > All Closed Cases > BT against Talk Talk Complaint from BT against Talk Talk about an unfair contract term Complainant: British Telecommunications plc ("BT") Complaint against: TalkTalk Telecom Limited ("Talk Talk") Case opened: 17 February 2005 Case closed: 16 June 2005 Issue: The use of a negative opt-out term in consumer contracts to migrate customers from Carrier Pre Selection ("CPS") services to Wholesale Line Rental ("WLR") services. Relevant instrument: Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 (the "Regulations") Ofcom received a complaint from BT about a term in Talk Talk's consumer contracts, which purported to allow Talk Talk to migrate CPS customers to WLR without their express consent. The clause in its original form stated: "2.7 In the event that future changes to the way in which we purchase telecommunications services from BT and other network access operators permit us to take over responsibility for your telephone connection, including the billing of your line rental charge, we will write to you notifying you of such a change. You will have an opportunity to register your objection to such a change with us prior to our takeover of such responsibility. If we do not receive written notification that you do not want us to take over responsibility for your telephone connection in this way we will notify you of the date on which such takeover will take effect." Ofcom considered that the above clause may be potentially unfair under the Regulations and opened an investigation. During the course of the investigation, Carphone Warehouse, which is the parent company of Talk Talk, provided Ofcom with an undertaking to amend its consumer contract. The proposed revisions to TalkTalk's consumer contracts have met Ofcom's concerns, and on this basis, Ofcom has concluded its investigation. It should be noted that Ofcom does not have the power to "clear" terms under the Regulations. Only a court has the power to determine whether a term is unfair under the Regulations. Ofcom is therefore able to consider any further complaints regarding this or any other contractual terms and conditions. Case Leader: Marvin Luttrell (020 7783 4516 e-mail: marvin.luttrell@ofcom.org.uk) Case Reference: CW/00816/02/05 Text published when the case was opened Complaint from BT against Talk Talk about an unfair contract term Complainant: British Telecommunications plc ("BT") Complaint against: TalkTalk Telecom Limited ("Talk Talk") Case opened: 17 February 2005 Issue: The use of a negative opt-out term in consumer contracts to migrate customers from Carrier Pre Selection ("CPS") services to Wholesale Line Rental ("WLR") services. Relevant instrument: Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. Ofcom has received a complaint from BT alleging that Talk Talk have included a negative opt-out term in their consumer contracts, which allow that company to migrate customers from CPS to WLR without the express consent of the consumer. BT's allegation is that such a term is unfair for the purposes of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999. Ofcom has opened an investigation to determine whether the term in question in Talk Talk's contracts may be unfair. Case Leader: Marvin Luttrell (020 7783 4516 e-mail: marvin.luttrell@ofcom.org.uk) Case Reference: CW/00816/02/05 Back to top Data Protection Act 1998 | Freedom of Information Act