TalkTalk takes a hit to the tune of £3 million for sending out wrong bills

Internet service provider TalkTalk has been rapped across the knuckles by communications watchdog Ofcom and given a fine of £3 million after sending bills to customers for services they hadn’t even used.

Ofcom first began looking into the affairs of TalkTalk, and Tiscali, which was bought by the ISP back in 2009, in July of last year following a string of complaints from customers. It found that both companies had wrongly issued bills to people, including one-time customers who had since terminated their broadband internet accounts.

The problem wasn’t limited to a handful of individuals either, with some 62,000 unique cases coming to light between January 1 and November last year. Following their findings, Ofcom issued a stern notification at the end of their review, stating that TalkTalk needed to address all of the issues with a deadline of December 2.

However, problems continued to persist with TalkTalk billing, even though the ISP took considerable measures to improve its record management systems. By March 4 of this year, a further 3,000 customers had also been wrongly billed.

As a result, Ofcom handed out the £3 million fine in order to "reflect the seriousness of their breach of the rules and to act as a deterrent to them and other telecoms companies who must comply with the rules".

In a statement, Ofcom suggested that they had been more lenient with the ISP than might have been expected, given its attempts to try and make amends for the problems to date. This included TalkTalk refunding the affected customers by December of last year, with around 2.5 million being handed out in refunds and goodwill payments to around 65,000 customers.