Pipex double charging this month

Got my Visa statement in and Pipex have double charged

I assume connected with the email they sent a few days ago telling people
they were to be disconnected because they hadn't paid.

For anyone out there tempted to move to Pipex (I'm only with them for
dialup, and for historical reasons) be aware that:

a) when I first tried to contact them about the disconnection notice, you
were held in a phone queue for 20 mins, before being bounced off. They did
not think to actually put a recorded message explaining their mistake up for
days

b) I tried to use their MyPortal thing to check the problem - but that has
been faulty for months

c) I mailed them, and it took 6 days for them to reply

d) No-one thought to simply send out an email blast to all the people they'd
misinformed in the first place

e) and now I find I have been double charged.

I'd estimate that Pipex's 'support' rates at about 10% of the quality of
PlusNets - whatever their present problems with LLU.

Yes, Pipex are paying out for slick (?) adverts etc. - but take a look at
the company site and look at some of the execs who have joined recently -
one of them made his money selling t-shirts, moved up the greasy pole giving
handouts to political parties and actually refuses to give any details about
his early life... all sounds rather get-rich-quick to me...

Interestingly, once you get past a few cute new site pages, you find that
all the old amateur crap is behind it... and never trust a company where the
'Investors' link is more prominent and easy to find than the Support
link....

nouser wrote:

> Got my Visa statement in and Pipex have double charged
>
> I assume connected with the email they sent a few days ago telling people
> they were to be disconnected because they hadn't paid.
>
> For anyone out there tempted to move to Pipex (I'm only with them for
> dialup, and for historical reasons) be aware that:
>
> a) when I first tried to contact them about the disconnection notice, you
> were held in a phone queue for 20 mins, before being bounced off. They did
> not think to actually put a recorded message explaining their mistake up for
> days
>
> b) I tried to use their MyPortal thing to check the problem - but that has
> been faulty for months
>
> c) I mailed them, and it took 6 days for them to reply
>
> d) No-one thought to simply send out an email blast to all the people they'd
> misinformed in the first place
>
> e) and now I find I have been double charged.
>
> I'd estimate that Pipex's 'support' rates at about 10% of the quality of
> PlusNets - whatever their present problems with LLU.
>
> Yes, Pipex are paying out for slick (?) adverts etc. - but take a look at
> the company site and look at some of the execs who have joined recently -
> one of them made his money selling t-shirts, moved up the greasy pole giving
> handouts to political parties and actually refuses to give any details about
> his early life... all sounds rather get-rich-quick to me...
>
> Interestingly, once you get past a few cute new site pages, you find that
> all the old amateur crap is behind it... and never trust a company where the
> 'Investors' link is more prominent and easy to find than the Support
> link....

The only answer seems to be to move.

Graham

"Eeyore" <(E-Mail Removed) > wrote in
message news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> The only answer seems to be to move.
>
> Graham

Thats what I've done, I got my MAC with in 48 hours after asking for it...

On 12 Aug 2006 07:35:16 +0200, "Fatboy" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>"Eeyore" <(E-Mail Removed) > wrote in
>message news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>>
>> The only answer seems to be to move.
>>
>> Graham
>
>Thats what I've done, I got my MAC with in 48 hours after asking for it...
>
Yeah but you signed up for something that you didn't even know about
looking at your other questions

"nouser" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:44dd1729$0$18537$(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> Yes, Pipex are paying out for slick (?) adverts etc. - but take a look at
> the company site and look at some of the execs who have joined recently -
> one of them made his money selling t-shirts, moved up the greasy pole
> giving handouts to political parties and actually refuses to give any
> details about his early life... all sounds rather get-rich-quick to me...
>
> Interestingly, once you get past a few cute new site pages, you find that
> all the old amateur crap is behind it... and never trust a company where
> the 'Investors' link is more prominent and easy to find than the Support
> link....

Yep - that's business for you!
In my view, the worst thing to come out of academia in the past 20 years has
been the MBA degree.
It teaches people to become Businessmen - and women - (with a capital "B").
It's all about maximising profits, cutting costs to the bone and keeping the
share price high, regardless of how this affects customers and staff.
MBA graduates are being sought by firms to turn their businesses round and
improve their "bottom line".
This they invariably do this but in many cases the ethos of the company and
its public image plummets as service gets worse and costs are cut to the
bone.
All too often, customer service is forgotten in this drive for economic
efficiency. By then it's too late and the MBA Consultant has then picked up
his 6-figure bonus and gone off to ruin another company.
Rant over ;-)
George

"George Weston" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> "nouser" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:44dd1729$0$18537$(E-Mail Removed)...
>>
>> Yes, Pipex are paying out for slick (?) adverts etc. - but take a look at
>> the company site and look at some of the execs who have joined recently -
>> one of them made his money selling t-shirts, moved up the greasy pole
>> giving handouts to political parties and actually refuses to give any
>> details about his early life... all sounds rather get-rich-quick to me...
>>
>> Interestingly, once you get past a few cute new site pages, you find that
>> all the old amateur crap is behind it... and never trust a company where
>> the 'Investors' link is more prominent and easy to find than the Support
>> link....
>
> Yep - that's business for you!
> In my view, the worst thing to come out of academia in the past 20 years
> has been the MBA degree.
> It teaches people to become Businessmen - and women - (with a capital
> "B").
> It's all about maximising profits, cutting costs to the bone and keeping
> the share price high, regardless of how this affects customers and staff.
> MBA graduates are being sought by firms to turn their businesses round and
> improve their "bottom line".
> This they invariably do this but in many cases the ethos of the company
> and its public image plummets as service gets worse and costs are cut to
> the bone.
> All too often, customer service is forgotten in this drive for economic
> efficiency. By then it's too late and the MBA Consultant has then picked
> up his 6-figure bonus and gone off to ruin another company.
> Rant over ;-)
> George

Very very true! I signed up with Pipex for ADSL about 18 months ago and had
problems setting up the service. Phone calls for technical assistance
usually took ages to get through and even then they didn't seem very
knowledgeble/helpful; emails took about 10 days for a response (if at all)
and recorded delivery letter to Managing Director still awaits a response!!
Even though the problem was finally solved (BT seemed the main culprits!) -
although with no thanks to Pipex - and the connection then worked extremely
well, I very soon cancelled the account and had to pay a hefty charge for
early disconnection. Considered this worth the cost incurred, in order to be
rid of such a firm (once one of the best ISPs in the market - sadly no
longer the case).

When I'd cancelled, their reconnections department (or whatever it's called)
then began to pester me to stay!

So, they are (or at least were when I dealt with them) good at signing you
up, good at providing an efficient network, poor at providing after-sales
service/support/answering letters and good at asking you to come back when
you've cancelled because of the poor support!

Shouldn't take a genius to work out what's wrong and make them into a good
company again! Indeed, I'd be happy to advise them, for a fee!

What a pity their management (MBA's?) can't work this out!

Regards,


Paul




--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Hi George,

This is off-topic, but I have to say I totally agree.

One does wonder how all the business owners like Leverhulme etc. survived in
the last couple of hundred years without their MBA...

I suspect that a lot of the people in these firms actually have less than 1%
of the vision, imagination or basic common sense of those business owners -
hence the frantic search for advice from outside the enterprise - whether
from dubious MBA courses, android 'consultants' or softskill courses and
role plays.

It looks like Pipex is being puffed up to quickly expand and push up
apparent profits, before being sold off at an inflated price.

>>Phone calls for technical assistance
usually took ages to get through and even then they didn't seem very
knowledgeble/helpful; emails took about 10 days for a response (if at
all)<<-

Interesting, so it looks like my experience was not a one-off.

I'm only sitll with Pipex because of the hassle of losing my ages-old email
address - however everything else I do is with Plusnet and they have been
fine.
Also had some recent experience with Zen and have been impressed - they have
improved a lot.

nouser wrote:

> I'm only sitll with Pipex because of the hassle of losing my ages-old email
> address

Get your own domain nad never have to be troubled about such concerns ever
again.

Graham

New domain - yes, wish I'd done that from the start...

Latest from Pipex: "...Finance department who will endeavour to respond to
you as soon as possible. At the moment they do have a response time of 7-10
working days"

Either they haven't enough staff, their systems are crap or they are
inundated with complaints... Another warning for anyone thinking of moving
to Pipex...