Boycott Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk

The Carphone Warehouse has over 800 stores across the UK and is in fact the largest independent mobile phone retailer in the world with 2400 stores operating across 10 countries.

In Europe and America they are known as The Phone House. In 2003 they launched the TalkTalk brand providing telephony and broadband services. Initially a subsiduary of The Carphone Warehouse, TalkTalk became its own company in March 2010.


Charles Dunstone is the Chairman and co-founder of both The Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk. He reputedly started selling phones out of a flat in Marylebone. It is fair to say that he spotted the mobile phone market earlier than anyone else and was one of the business success stories of the 80's and 90's. As well as the positions he holds in Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk Charles is also a non-executive director of HBOS and The Daily Mail General Trust. In the Sunday Times Rich List 2006 he was listed in 64th place, with an estimated fortune of $1.66 billion.

To his credit he actively supports the re-habilitation of offenders, employing an ex-con by the name of Ernest Saunders as a business consultant for Carphone Warehouse prior to flotation.

On 18th October Charles Dunstone signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Charles is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk.

Rather than provide a list of alternative mobile phone shops or mobile phone and broadband network providers I'd like to ask that alternatives are suggested in the comments to this post. This is not a one-way street, please provide your ideas and input.

Update 7th march 2011

TalkTalk have just got away with a slap on the wrist from Ofcom for stealing at least £2.5 million from customers threatening them with bailiffs and bad credit ratings if they didn't pay up...money they didn't owe! If Talk Talk get away with it,the others will follow...
http://www.moneywell.co.uk/blog/phones/big-companies-need-not-worry-about-the-law