Pipex?

Samba_Pa_Ti

the service is fine, but their new homecall bit is evil, homecall phoned me claiming to be normal pipex offering me "new" phone and 8mb broadband for 27 a month (was paying 25 anyway so 3 quid for phone and 8mb!!) but i never got the broadband and the phone was not 3 pounds as they quoted (more like 12) i cancelled the crap and went to see if i could get on with normal pipex (8mb) no can do they messed me around,
decided to move to eclipse internet, then hasslehoff started advertising the rubbish, glad i got away from that they were sending me pictures of him in leather pants!!!

Ian_W

alikat wrote:

I've never used but looking at online reviews they seem to be very good. Every single ISP will receive some gripes, some rightfully & some wrongfully, but over all Pipex seem to do better than average.

Wouldn't disagee that all ISPs have some gripes but look at:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/censura.php?cmd=details&itemid=243
Or how about:
https://www.dslzoneuk.net/isp_ratings.php

Distinctly BELOW average, IMO. As a customer for 3yrs there was no problems for the first 2 but they've started go downhill last year and I don't think they've bottomed out yet. Still some people are very happy with Talk Talk, Tiscali etc - but the OP did ask.

leon103

Hi

In August I decided to go with Pipex because they were best priced for what I wanted and seemed to be reliable.

Connection and speed side of things they have been great bust customer service has been very poor.

I have pasted the letter I am putting together now to complain to them.

Any ideas of things I can quote ie laws etc.

Any tips welcome



My username is - xxxxxx
My Tel number is - xxxxxx

I am writing to you because I am having great trouble to get a straight answer on the telephone. I have spent over an hour (at my own cost) trying to solve this matter and its just getting worse and my confidence in you has a ISP is falling.

I will start from the beginning.

I signed up in August and received everything and got set up without no problem. I set up my direct debit to make payment easier. Later in August I received an invoice for £51.86. I rang up and got told this was a mistake and the total amount should be £22.49 because I wrongly go charged connection fees and charged for Anti Virus software I didn't ask for. I got told that you were experiencing problems with direct debit payments and that in September I will be charged £22.49 + £14.99 (for September), via Direct Debit.

You failed to take the money and I rang up again and got told you will try the Direct Debit again. Nothing was taken. I waited until Tuesday 24th Oct (the day my October bill should be debitted from my account. Again nothing was taken.

I rang up and spoke to someone called Jonathan, he said that he didn't know why the direct debit wasn't taken and said that I owed a total of £52.47. Which is August, Septembers, and Octobers bills. I agreed to pay this over the phone. He mentioned that he will make sure that the direct debit will be taken each month from now on.

I checked today and your company has deducted £52.47 and £29.98 from my account. So yet again I rang up to see what was happening. Spoke to a male, who I can't remember the name of. He said he wasn't sure why this extra money had been taken out of my account and that my account was in credit by £29.98 and that I wouldn'r be charged for November and December because of the credit. He also mentioned that the direct debit was all set up correctly.

I want to know:

1 - Why haven't you been taking the payments via direct debit like agreed.

2 - Why an extra £29.98 was taken from my account and who gave permission for this. This has now put my overdrawn and I face a £30 charge from my bank.

3 - Will I not face a bill in November and December?

I expect a prompt reply and if you need to speak to me on this matter contact me on the landline that is used for this account, after 7pm tonight.

If you fail to reply I will take this matter further.

Thanks

Leon Lewis

leon103

dagger_meerkat wrote:

Use p2p programs that encrypt their data packets like uTorrent.

Have had great speeds using uTorrent and Pipex

DjSatansfury

Torrents are throttled to 30KB/S i can confirm that, because mines going like bloody treacle at the minute.

roger56

Pipex Internet worked well, but I found their customer service very very poor
(long long waits).

HOWEVER!! Homecall has been bought out by Pipex and is now called Pipex Homecall (as opposed to Pipex Internet which is the original Pipex company).
http://www.homecalltelephone.co.uk/

They offered a package for £29.99pm for up to 8Meg broadband, line rental, and all 01/02 calls paid for anytime. International calls are also ony 5p per minute anytime to most european destinations plus NZ, Canada, Australia and US
http://www.homecalltelephone.co.uk/products/anytime_rates.aspx

Just transferred to them and pleasantly surprised by the efficiency of the call centres - no painful waits.
Phone transfer was seamless.
Broadband was initially painful because Pipex Internet only give you a MAC code via phone (long long long zzzzz... waits). I also tried post but no response at all. Once I had the MAC code, Pipex Homecall were efficient.
I would note however that if transferring (as opposed to just starting with broadband) you will get some downtime. This is because Pipex Homecall setup the ADSL at the exchange first, then send out your modem and instructions. They do this to avoid clogging up help lines with people trying to setup their before the exchange connection is ready (fair enough). Modem arrived the day after loosing my connection however note this:

If you already have a modem or router and have lost BB connection, keep an eye on the ADSL indicator, you will find it very quickly returns to ADSL available but you don't have the username and password details. I phoned the tech help (ok 10p a min). He confirmed my ADSL was ready, and talked me through the setup with my existing modem. Took 5minutes, very efficient
and I only had broadband down for a few hours.

In summary,
Pipex Internet customer service is very very very poor.
Pipex Homecall service was very good and transfer of phone was seamless, and BB was a bit fraught but worked out fine in the end.
The nice bit is I've only 1 bill for phone and BB and it's largely pegged at £29.99 per month so I'm pleased.

(talktalk is cheaper but only available if your local exchange is unbundled)
(Tiscali - watch the international call prices - they are nearly as bad a BT)

cmylod

roger56 wrote:

Homecall ... offered a package for £29.99pm for up to 8Meg broadband, line rental, and all 01/02 calls paid for anytime. International calls are also ony 5p per minute anytime to most european destinations plus NZ, Canada, Australia and US
http://www.homecalltelephone.co.uk/products/anytime_rates.aspx

Homecall's 25p/min surcharge for int'l mobiles is off whack and would lose me straight away. Domestic is not too bad.

1882

Arkad wrote:

I'm with plusnet at the moment for calls and broadband. Cracking company with fantastic online tools ut I've got a few shares in the company so I would say that

I've been Plusnet for over 3 years and when I joined they were about the best in the industry but now are absolutely pathetic. CS takes an hour to answer and aren't interested. Their email regularly fails - they lost 300GB of customers mail recently and at the moment mail can take between a few mins or 10 days to arrive via their crap servers. :mad:

I'm looking to leave and wondered if Pipex was the answer - no is the resounding message I get here!

Ian_W

I don't think Pipex are as bad as Plusnet but they're not great. I went to IDNet who are excellent, Zen always get loads of praise, New Net and Names Co are alsp highly rated on ADSLguide.org and ISPreview.co.uk.

Don't think there is a one size fits all. Depends on your budget, usage, whether you want a phone package as well, etc, etc.

jsb_3

Just have to add that I have come the other way - was with Homecall before Pipex got involved. Since then moved house and had nothing but problems.

Biggest of which is that I pay for the Anytime call package but still get charged for these local and national calls. So every month I have to ring their 0870 number to ask them to refund the money which I should have been charged in the first place. Currently in month five of this cycle and they are a month in arrears to me now.

CS is a separate entity to billing so all they can do is "put a request for the bill to be recalculated". I have asked for call backs from a manager neither time has this happened.

Spoke to them today and apparently they are accepting that customers that have moved are getting this problem - but they don't know why.

When my broadband contract with them expires, I will be leaving them.

BTW they moved me to the new contract without me requesting it, so they will only hold me to it for the remainder of my old contract period. This new contract is cheaper with "faster" broadband - but still something in me says that this isn't right. Any advice welcomed.