Number stolen by BT

Quentin

utilitybroker wrote:

If you go to the UW T&C which after 5 years you are no doubt familiar with........
Your see under Home Phone Service at Sections 3m and 6b they will accept liability in certain cases and pay compensation,whoevers fault it is.

Slightly off thread. Whilst UW line rental may appear to be cheaper at £10 to BT,s £11 they charge you for caller display, BT dont, so if you want caller display UW are in fact dearer.

Also their E&W call package is £5 where as BT is £3.95p .
So they really should do something about this misleading statement on their Front Page.
"As a residential customer you benefit from guaranteed savings on your call charges compared with BT's best prices."

The distributor should be familiar with the UW T & C if he acts as a "distributor" (distributor of what? Energy, telecoms or sales/marketing info? Or the telephone number of an innocent BT customer so we can ring them up which he is offering to do in his posts above? Ethical behaviour or an abuse?).

Anyway, lets hope he has passed on to his friend and client these conditions, as they state that UW will pay compensation in certain circs, but only if the customer reports the fault and compensation claim to them at least once EVERY 48 hours whilst their service is down. Onerous or what?

As far as their misleading statement goes it seems this is the norm for the UW - for years the ASA has adjudicated against them for wrongly advertising that they supplied the cheapest gas and electricity, but they just ignored the ASA and carried on with the misleading ads. (See the UW main discussion thread in the gas + elec forum for more on this).

bendtoy_2

I am yet another ex-customer of theirs. The distributor that signed me up amongst all the other speil ,told me not to worry we have a UK Call Centre unlike other companies.

What they failed to say was that calls to its 020 London Number are not treated as free Telecom Plus to Telecom Plus Number Calls ,so they are not included free in your call packages .So unless you have a 24/7 call package you pay,and its nothing for them to have a 15 minute delay in answering.

The other thing you need to watch with them (off thread but worth mentioning) is

Their Energy price promise where they say they compare their energy prices every month against the average cheapest d/d tariffs available from the Top 6 suppliers, like for like , and that will adjust their prices accordingly.

But what your find that it is only against the Top 6 standard Tariffs and not against their on-line tariffs.

4_Pete's_Sake

I am going to Boldly predict that UW will be taken over by npower within the next 2 years. npower already supply their energy. This will then give npower a foothold in the telecommunications and broadband market and hopefully the increased competition will be good for us the customers.

If I am right in my prediction, I wonder whether it might be worthwhile investing in some UW shares!!!

bbb_uk

Quentin wrote:

Anyway, lets hope he has passed on to his friend and client these conditions, as they state that UW will pay compensation in certain circs, but only if the customer reports the fault and compensation claim to them at least once EVERY 48 hours whilst their service is down.

I believe that is a disgrace and they are using this to avoid paying people compensation when it would be due. They know that most people aren't going to ring once every 48 hours - mainly due to the fact that they shouldn't have to.

I'm flabbergasted :shocked: (it's been a longtime since I used that word)

A_Nice_Englishman

bbb_uk wrote:

I believe that is a disgrace and they are using this to avoid paying people compensation when it would be due. They know that most people aren't going to ring once every 48 hours - mainly due to the fact that they shouldn't have to.

I'm flabbergasted :shocked: (it's been a longtime since I used that word)

Yes but they probably need the money not paid out in compensation to help pay their sales agents.

On a more general note, does anyone agree that introducing competition into the supply of utilities can only have increased prices for consumers? Not only do we have to pay for the production, distribution etc but also the salaries and commissions of the sales people?

tin

BACK ON TOPIC! has it been confirmed that the "lady down the road" has actually got the OPs friends number, or their entire line - i.e. lady-down-the-road's phone calls go on op-friend's UW bill.

Ascertaining which it is will surely provide the answer to whether they have cut op's friend off, or mistakenly patched the line into someone elses house.

Surely UW will be able to confirm if their customer made any phone calls since the outage started, and where they made them to? Also lady-down-the-road could call BT and try and log a fault under "her" new number - they'll soon deny all knowledge if it still really belongs to a UW customer.

hurrah

peterlittleton wrote:

I am going to Boldly predict that UW will be taken over by npower within the next 2 years. npower already supply their energy. This will then give npower a foothold in the telecommunications and broadband market and hopefully the increased competition will be good for us the customers.

If I am right in my prediction, I wonder whether it might be worthwhile investing in some UW shares!!!

I guess you read this:D

http://moneyextra.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200602161559075475Y.html

Mike_by_the_Sea

utilitybroker wrote:

.

"As a residential customer you benefit from guaranteed savings on your call charges compared with BT's best prices."
https://www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk/store/index.taf?exref=

A very interesting thread. I had a similar problem a couple of weeks ago with my mothers' phone line. At the end of the day, mistakes will happen and no matter who the customer pays for their line rental, it is BT who will fix it (if they are the inherent equipment owner). I agree wholeheartedly that the provider (in this case UW) has to be the company that provides compensation to the customer.

As regards guarantees, any company that puts this type of commitment in writing has to either meet the commitment or face the consequences. Obviously some people are very passionate in their beliefs, both in favour and in opposition to UW. This is only to be expected and is always healthy.

For those of you that would like to update their information, I would recommend that you revisit the UW site and see their latest offerings. Some of you will be pleasantly surprised by their commitment to provide value to the customer.

utilitybroker

Mike_by_the_Sea wrote:

some people are very passionate in their beliefs, both in favour and in opposition to UW.

The only people i have met that are passionate in favour of the UW, are their active distributors,who benefit from promoting the services.

I have gone back and looked at the site https://www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk and nothing seems to have changed,am i missing something.

Mike_by_the_Sea

Hi utilitybroker

Apologies, you are right in that the site has yet to be updated with the latest information. The new packages will be effective from 1st October. I agree that there are few passionate (apart from active distributors) supporters on this forum, but I can sincerely state that there are happy customers out there.

I am hopeful that we will convert some of the more sceptical in due course.