Dad 96, very frail, very poor health. Mum 80. Exhausted carer. I live an hour away and work fulltime.
They rely on their landline for essential things like making hospital appointments, social services issues and to contact people to fix things, as well of course to keep in touch with family and friends.
Three weeks ago, Mum reported interference on the line, and what seemed to be a crossed line. They were promised an engineer would call on the phone at a certain time. No-one called - no surprise.
Problems worsen. Line is intermittently unavailable, or incoming calls go straight to voicemail. Mum says she can't access voicemail though I am not 100% clear this is the case.
They now have no dial tone at all, and nothing has happened with Talk Talk. I have reported the problem and was told they wouldn't speak to me as I am not the account holder ( after keeping me waiting 20 minutes)
Meanwhile a series of mini disasters happens. Their loo breaks. There is a minor insurance issue with the car. This happens when they had intermittent service and incoming calls were somehow lost - the upshot being they had been flushing the loo with pails of water for several days until I intervened and got it sorted. Mum can just about receive and make calls but not retrieve messages - on her ancient pay as you go mobile after some tuition so they are now back in touch with the world -but in a haphazard way.
They have one of those emergency bleeper phone line alarm things and this equipment was checked by the provider on Monday and the engineer was sure this wasn't causing the problem.
Now I need to get this sorted with Talk Talk. I recall a thread on here where a Talk Talk community champion or some other interesting title came on and offered help and a link to some kind of complaints forum. I've been on the website and see there is a 'memembers area' (sic) - which I assume will need account info to register with, which I haven't got tonight. Well they are certainly tools, and can't even spell, let alone run a decent service.
Can anyone link me to that and/or provide any assistance?
How dare they treat my parents like this!
MNHQ have commented on this thread
AIBU?
To be livid with Talk Talk on behalf of my very elderly parents! (advice welcome)
4c4good · 18/10/2011 20:34
Mark - I feel really annoyed by the tone of your post. Yes we all know that impersonating someone else is not ideal. But to describe it as fraud in these circumstances is deeply unfair.
Talktalk need to sort out their own affairs before criticising anyone here. How is it acceptable that the OPs elderly parents have been left without a phone for so long? ?? Why is customer service so poor?
My experience of TalkTalk's attitude to elderly and disabled people was shocking. My mother is disabled, lives alone and is dependent on carers. Yet TT thought it ok to leave her without a phone and did nothing to prioritse her. On one occasion the call handler told her that her case would be closed because she couldn't reach the socket ( I'd already done all the required tests the day before and she told them she was paraplegic). 
she made repeated calls costing a fortune from her pay as you go mobile. The overseas call centre just kept fobbing her off with promises that weren't kept. Only when I took it up with the online forum did it get sorted. My mother couldn't do that because her TT Internet was down.
Mark, I think you are out of order here. TT need to spend time to develop a customer service policy rather than criticising the families of vulnerable people for trying to do the best for their loved ones.
Talk Talk are rubbish, we tried them when they first came out years ago, The customer service is appalling.
@ dogbeastfriend, have broken my specs read that email as [email protected] was 
Hope it gets sorted for your parents OP.
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