Talktalk and Tiscali are fined £3m for overcharging customers

UK INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS (ISPs) Talktalk and Tiscali have been fined £3m by telecoms watchdog Ofcom for charging thousands of customers for services that they were not getting.

Ofcom has been investigating the complaints since it got 1,000 of them from consumers in July last year. Following this year-long poke around it has levied a £3m fine on the firms and told them off for persisting in charging people, some of them people who did not even have an account with them, for services that they were not receiving.

According to Ofcom the ISPs overcharged in 62,000 cases between January and November of last year.

In November Ofcom told the ISPs what it had found and told them to please stop overcharging and incorrectly billing people. Both failed and a further 3,000 people were overbilled between December 2010 and March of this year.

Fittingly Ofcom has dished out a large fine, which it said reflected the seriousness of the breach of its rules. It added that it should also serve as a deterrent to any other ISPs with errant billing departments.

It's not the highest fine that the watchdog can hand out however, which is as much as 10 per cent of turnover. The fine is payable within thirty days, and if it is not paid then Ofcom can take further steps.

The two firms have already refunded £2.5m to 62,000 overcharged customers. µ