Wednesday 10 January 2007

OTELO

Well, it's official. When a company behaves in an outrageously shabby way there is no-one you can ask for help. You have to swallow the shit (pardon the language but I have finally been pushed over the edge) or you have pay bills that are blatant robbery just to end the nightmare that is Pipex.
I made a detailed complaint, first to OFCOM, who directed me to OTELO. I took OTELO's advice and followed Pipex's complaint procedure as far as was possible. No joy, so I went back to OTELO. I listed my problems and the actions I had taken. Today I received their response. Not only did they not read my complaint properly - I had the address and had written - they are not going to do anything. Why was I surprised? Here is their letter:


10th January 2007
Dear Mrs Stephens
COMPLAINT ABOUT PIPEX HOMECALL LIMITED
Thank you for your on-line complaint received on 3 January 2007.
I have tried to contact you by telephone this morning but, unfortunately you were unavailable.
I understand that you had difficulty obtaining the address for the Customer Relations Team. At
this stage, I would advise you to write one last time, providing copies of your previous complaint
correspondence to the following address:
Customer Relations
Pipex Homecall
Christie Fields
Derwent Avenue
Manchester
M21 7QS
Please keep a copy of this letter and allow 10 working days to receive a response. If you are not
satisfied with the way that Pipex Homecall sort the problem out please contact Otelo
If you need any further information please contact us on 0845 050 1614 or e-mail
enquiries@otelo.org.uk quoting the above reference number.
Yours sincerely
Carol Wishart
Enquiry Officer

I mailed them back telling them what I thought of their organisation. Very politely of course.
I am just so sick of all the cowboys and crooks, and feeling so powerless.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dearest Blogger,

I stumbled across your blog by typing Pipex Homecall Complaint into Google today. I was looking for Mark Carberry's direct address again to send my Register Letter to him.

I don't know how to tell you this, but I have the same problems. I now am an owner of a foot high packet of papers, letters, Otelo letters, Ofcom letters and my very own solicitors correspondence for over 9 months.

I have been going through this since July 2005, yes over 2 years. I have had them investigated for 6 months by Otelo whom’s provisional conclusion ended with a recommendation that Pipex review their policies as they had broken them and to send me a letter of apology.

Like you say the very regulators of the telecommunication industry A. are not interested and have their hands tied and B. Can not do anything anyway.

So without having the 72 hour long rant and soap box session that I would normally have had last year I suggest to you this.

If you really want this to end and have justice, we need to contact all the customers that have desperately posted blogs, complaints on review sites and ask them all to sign a petition to have our complaints listened to. I have written to BBC Watchdog several times and I would assume that a magnitude of very organised complaints would draw greater attention to this and in hope have Mr Mark Carberry himself sitting on the Beeb’s Watchdog couch having a grilling and being publicly humiliated.

This would give us all a small amount of justice and pleasure, but of course would not change a thing.

I next propose you write a very clam and short letter to your local MP and to the Government as have I. I have been contacted by my local MP and we are discussing the situation now.

For all that are reading this. You are very much welcome to contact me at sarahstoxy@hotmail.com if you are interested in getting signed up and proactive in a positive and useful way to ACTUALLY attempt to bring this story to the news and the government to have something done.

I'm sure we are all tired of big companies getting away with this. But unless you are prepared to come together and stand outside Derwent Avenue in Manchester with picket signs and petition letters for people to sign, no one will listen.

I hope this helps you and I hope that you can see the necessity in banding together to stop this abuse and harassment from Pipex Homecall once and for all.

P.S. I have never been so fired up to try something like this, so any expertise is welcome.


Kindest regards

Sarah Stocks

Anonymous said...

Oh dear, it looks like we are all in for a long haul! I was eventually given the mysterious Customer Relations Dept details the other day and wrote the following to them (read it and weep). will it make a blind bit of difference? Probably not... - all we want to do is leave!

Dear Sir

Acc No: xxxxxxxxx

I am writing to ask for a reasonable resolution to our situation. Following the most appalling standards of service over the last few months, your company now seems hell bent on making our move to another supplier equally unbearable.

Our problems have been as follows:

- We are long term Pipex Homecall customers and arranged in September to move with Pipex to our new house taking our telephone number, telephone services and broadband services with us.
- A few days after moving in our telephone number, which had been successfully transferred, was lost and another number was attached to our line. I spent literally hours on the phone and eventually resolved the issue after more than two weeks of ineptitude and confusion.
- With regard to transferring our broadband services we were sent the attached letter but not the ‘modem pack’ it refers to. When I queried this we were told that as existing customers we should use the modem we already have. We received NO information relating to any kind of new customer minimum contract period and would not have agreed to it if we had. We are now told that switching to another provider will cost us £270 for prematurely ending a twelve month contract you apparently believe you agreed with us last October. I reiterate, we received no other information and do not accept that a new twelve month contract was therefore established. To add insult to injury, we spent a month getting connected after the connection date given of 24th October during which time your technical department were repeatedly unable to solve the problem. We spent more than £100 on independent telephone and computer engineers who were also unable to help. Finally, a Pipex employee realised that our password, taken from the old address should have had the number ‘1’ added to it in order to work in the new location. What a criminal shame it took so long and cost us so much. For this you would like to charge us an additional £270. What for? A bonus for your superb service?
- For the last two months our statements have included our usual ‘Anytime’ payment AND charges for all of our calls. I have challenged this on both occasions and have been reassured on both occasions that our direct debit would not be taken until we are sent a correct statement. Three days ago a large and incorrect sum was debited from our account despite our expressly forbidding it.
- Last week we became unable to make outgoing calls. On reporting it I was first told that I was ‘not allowed to report a fault on the line’ as I was not the account holder despite being able to provide all details including the password. Next, I was told to carry out tests myself which I did. Then I was given a series of test calls to make and report back on which I did. The following day my husband was told to carry out identical test calls which he did. Only then, days later, was the fault passed to the faults department. After a further delay it transpires that the problem relates, not to a fault, but to a mistake made by your company which will take ten days to put right. During this time we can only make outgoing calls by using a 1280 prefix. We have been informed that we will be billed at the higher BT tariff for these calls despite also continuing to pay you our Anytime tariff. Unbelievable.

To sum up, we believe our move to another supplier is entirely reasonable. Charges for anything other than the service we have agreed to and have been provided with are not. Therefore I require you to provide us with a written assurance that our move to another supplier will be expedited by a named person to whom we should be given a direct line and email address and that your final bill will include a) no penalties b) no incorrect charges and c) a substantial compensation for the appalling ineptitude your company has subjected us to. If you are unwilling to do this we will address the issue in the small claims court where our plan would be to cause Pipex Homecall the greatest difficulty possible as just a tiny taste of the inconvenience and frustration we have been so casually subjected to.


A bit long I know - but I reckon the above will end up being our case in the small claims court so it's worth getting the detail in.

Anonymous said...

Just wondering what happened to you... Facing similar problems with them at the moment. Am I stuck with them forever or do they actually close the account after a year's fight?

Daniel Hume said...

Hi I've now started a blog about Pipex's shoddy practices too.

It's here http://pipexcustomerservice.blogspot.com/

Please feel free to link if you fancy.

Dan.