They Charged Me Three Times
**They Charged Me Three Times, Ignored Me, Then Suspended My Account**
After many years as a Talkroute customer, I discovered exactly how little that loyalty meant when something went wrong.
Talkroute charged my account three times in a single month. I contacted the company about it and received no response. With Talkroute taking money from my account repeatedly and its support team ignoring my messages, I disputed the charges through my bank.
Talkroute’s response was astonishing: it immediately suspended my account and interrupted my service.
The suspension notice said that to reactivate my account, I would have to repay the full amount of every disputed charge, plus a $30 fee for each chargeback. It also threatened that multiple chargebacks could result in permanent suspension. In other words, Talkroute charged me multiple times, ignored my attempts to resolve the problem, and then demanded even more money while cutting off the service I had relied on for years.
Only afterward did Talkroute’s Head of Customer Success admit in writing that the company’s payment processor had experienced an outage on August 27. When the outage was resolved, automatic billing restarted and caused duplicate charges. He also confirmed that Talkroute knew about the problem and that refunds had supposedly been issued automatically.
Despite acknowledging that the duplicate charges resulted from a failure involving Talkroute’s own payment system, he did not immediately restore my account. Instead, he said he would have to “check with billing” about how to reinstate it. He then reminded me that I could have called their 800 number—as though Talkroute’s duplicate billing, its failure to answer my written messages, and the resulting disruption of my service were somehow my responsibility.
The final insult was receiving a cheerful email titled, “Before you go … (We miss you already!),” asking me to explain what had gone wrong. Talkroute already knew exactly what had gone wrong: its billing system charged me repeatedly, its support team failed to respond, and its policies punished me for taking reasonable steps to protect my own account.
Technical failures happen. Payment processors have outages. Had Talkroute responded promptly, apologized, corrected the charges, and protected my service, this could have been resolved easily. Instead, it chose silence, immediate suspension, punitive fees, threats of permanent suspension, blame-shifting, and bureaucratic excuses.
This is not customer service. It is a company using an essential business service as leverage against a customer over duplicate charges the company itself admitted were caused by its payment system. The sheer arrogance of demanding additional fees and repayment before restoring service is extraordinary.
If your business depends on reliable phone service, think very carefully before trusting Talkroute. A responsible provider protects customers when its billing system malfunctions. It does not cut off their service and force them to fight their way back in.
After many years of loyalty, I learned that when Talkroute makes the mistake, the customer pays the price. Absolutely disgraceful.
Besvarelse fra Talkroute
We take billing issues seriously, but this review does not accurately reflect the sequence of events or the actions taken on this account.
On August 27, our payment processor experienced an incident that resulted in duplicate charges for a limited number of customers. Once the issue was identified, affected customers were notified by email, informed that the duplicate charges were being refunded automatically, and advised that no action was required on their part.
Our support system maintains records of customer contacts and tickets. Despite the claim that attempts to contact us regarding the duplicate charges went unanswered, we have no record of this customer contacting our support team about the issue before initiating chargebacks.
Importantly, the chargebacks referenced in this review were initiated after refunds for the duplicate charges had already been issued. Under our Terms and Conditions, chargebacks normally result in account suspension while the disputed payments are addressed.
Once this customer contacted us following the chargebacks, however, we restored their service despite the disputes still being active, waived the applicable chargeback fees, and simply asked that the already-refunded disputes be closed with their bank. The customer continues to use Talkroute today.
We certainly understand the frustration caused by the original payment-processing incident, and we regret that it occurred. However, it is not accurate to suggest that Talkroute kept duplicate payments, ignored requests for assistance, or required this customer to repay the disputed charges and additional fees before restoring service. None of those things occurred.
We also believe communications between customers and our team should remain professional and respectful. Unfortunately, some of the communications we received following the suspension fell well outside that standard. We have chosen not to reproduce those communications publicly at this time, but they provide important context that is absent from this review.
Technical issues can happen, and in this instance we worked to correct the underlying billing issue, refunded the duplicate charges, restored the customer's service while chargebacks remained outstanding, and waived the associated fees. We believe those facts provide a more complete and accurate account of what occurred.