TALK is certainly not cheap for a Holmfirth man and his family.

Building contractor Jonathan Gould was shocked to receive a bill for £1,900 for telephone calls he had never made.

And now he may need to battle it out with telephone giant TalkTalk and the industry regulator Oftel over payment for the calls.

Jonathan, of Deanbridge Lane, Hepworth and his wife, Alexis, moved their telephone and internet account to the company at the end of July after previously being with them for calls only and line rental from BT.

Just a week later a fault developed on the line, which led to their phone line sounding constantly engaged and, after registering the fault with TalkTalk the family including children Rebecca, 17 and Matthew, 15, went on holiday.

They were advised to unplug all phones and computers while they were away to avoid incurring further charges but, on returning home, discovered a bill of almost £2,000 for two numbers that had been ringing through the line, twice a minute, 24 hours a day.

Mr Gould said: “TalkTalk claims we are responsible for the calls even though we were on holiday. We have spent more than two hours a night trying to sort this out and have had to take our children here, there and everywhere to do their homework on the internet as they are in their GCSE and A level years.

“I think it is disgusting. How can they treat people like this? They have passed the blame to us, but we are not going to pay this outstanding bill. We have now had to pay BT to come and install a new line which cost us more money again.”

Patrick Mkelemi, from TalkTalk’s chief executive’s office, said he had made a lengthy investigation into this very complex case.

He said it would appear that the phone line had been linked to a security system which was now unused by the Gould household.

Mr Mkelemi said in cases such as this the security company would be liable for the call charges but, as the company was no longer in existence, that could not be the case.

He said TalkTalk would now be sending Mr Gould a “deadlock” letter advising him to ask for arbitration from the telephone regulator Oftel.

TalkTalk would meanwhile be making a goodwill gesture to Mr Gould for the inconvenience which he had suffered.