TalkTalk Fined 3m By Regulator

TalkTalk and its Tiscali UK auxiliary have been fined 3m for wrongly billing more than 65,000 customers for services they had not received.

The largest excellent regulator Ofcom has since to a telecoms firm, it follows an scrutiny in to the two businesses that proposed in July 2010 as a outcome of more than 1,000 complaints.

Ofcom mentioned the excellent reflected "the seriousness" of their actions.

TalkTalk mentioned it was "disappointed at the scale of the fine".

The company, that paid for Tiscali UK in 2009, blamed the billing errors on the combination of the Tiscali UK business.

It has since paid more than 2.5m in refunds and organization to help the poor payments to affected customers.

As a outcome of this action, and other measures by TalkTalk to redress the problems, Ofcom mentioned the excellent was reduction than instead might have been the case.

In its ruling, Ofcom mentioned TalkTalk and Tiscali UK wrongly released bills to 62,000 customers, in specific those who had closed accounts, between 1 January and 1 November 2010.

Ofcom mentioned it contacted both businesses in November 2010, surroundings them a deadline of 2 December 2010 to "take stairs to arrange out their billing problems".

However, whilst it mentioned TalkTalk and Tiscali UK "did take a few critical stairs to accede with the rules", roughly 3,000 more of their customers were still wrongly billed between 2 December 2010 and 4 Mar 2011.

TalkTalk arch senior manager Dido Harding said: "Last year we recognized that we indispensable to deposit in our systems, processes and patron services and we are creation poignant progress.

"Ofcom receives 3 times fewer calls about TalkTalk than they did at the tallness of the Tiscali integration, and our 5 million customers are more constant and more contented than they were 12 months ago."

In April this year, Ofcom mentioned that TalkTalk was the many complained about telecoms definite for landline and broadband services.

TalkTalk phased out the Tiscali UK brand in 2010, switching users to services offering beneath its own name.