TalkTalk has accidentally over charged thousands of customers with late payment fees despite a payment holiday with the broadband corporation having been agreed due to concerns over customers’ financial status during the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Previously in April of this year, TalkTalk had offered its customers a one-month long payment holiday to ease pressure on those financially effected by the corona virus lockdown. After which time a financial plan could be arranged to settle the outstanding debts owed. Regardless of this, at least 2000 TalkTalk customers were still charged a late payment fee of £12.50 for having not paid their broadband bill on time in spite of the aforementioned arrangement.

The exact cause of this mistake is still unknown, never the less, TalkTalk has confirmed that all those affected by the wrongful charge have since been identified and fully reimbursed. Further to this, TalkTalk have apologised in a formal statement they released. "A small number of customers were charged a late payment fee in error, for which we sincerely apologise. These customers will all be reimbursed and we have put additional controls in place to ensure this does not happen again." a spokesman for TalkTalk stated. Despite this mistake TalkTalk will not be providing any compensation to the customers affected by this error. However, for those still being affected financially by Covid-19, TalkTalk is still providing extensions on bill deadlines to its customers and also wants to make clear the error will not have had any detrimental effect its customers’ credit scores.