asking for supanet mac code problem

macman

It would be of interest to her from mccs as to what happened in their case. The legality of applying this retrospective penalty has not been tested.
In your instance I would be tempted simply to give 30 days notice and cease your service that way without a MAC. You will probably incur a £30 cease charge that way, rather better than £564...
You will get a gap in broadband service, but that's probably a price worth paying to rid yourself of Supanet.

leolion2177

Hi
I came across this today while trying to get my mac code for supanet.

Did you get any further.

Regards


Leo

kwikbreaks

I seriously doubt that they could legally make that retrospective charge. For the current month yes but not the earlier ones where the bill was presented and settled.

leolion2177

I agree but its the aggravation and prospect of no internet for a month or more while its sorted that has me over a barrel.

If I send a letter of termination then cancel my direct debit surely they will suspend / cancel my service! Does anyone know if it is it true that once the line is inactive for 30 days I wont need a MAC Code???

kwikbreaks

The MAC and disputed debt are entirely separate - the regulations do not permit them to withhold a MAC for any reason - 5 working days after request is all they can delay it for or you can report them to Ofcom.

Meanwhile it's worth talking to citizens advice maybe. I think you should leave the DD in place - if they take the oodles of money without your consent then you can have the bank pay it back. You really need to be asking about this side of things in one of the consumer boards - I can tell you what the MAC regs are but not the financial side of it other than guesswork.

tomowen5

Dear all,

Just seen the posts further to my own, and can provide an update of my situation with Supanet.

I sought legal advice from Citizens Advice Bureau, who were incredible helpful. They went through different parts of the law with me, but they insisted that I start getting everything in writing. I managed to collate a lot of correspondence, highlighting the way I was establishing my case, and also showing how dilitary and unprofessional supanet were.

Each time I phoned Supanet, they were very aggressive and rude in their manner, always reminding me of the charges that I had unknowingly accrued. Each time I argued that such charges were not in the original T&Cs I signed up to, they insisted they were, reflected only in the T&Cs that were currently available on the website. However, I found copied online of the original T&Cs I signed up to - you can search for supanet.com on the webarchive.org website, and indeed these original T&Cs proved me right, having no mention of over-use charges on an "unlimited" broadband package.

I also found e-mail correspondence from a couple of years ago regarding overuse, but the limit was stated as 30Gb, not the 15Gb limit they were using against me. I managed to e-mail and fax printouts of this correspondence to them, to which I never received an acknowledgement of the contradiction.

With building my case up, and amassing a great record of correspondence, Supanet eventually gave in. Every subsequent phone call was met with a very sharp response, that a manager would get in touch with me. Eventually a manager came back to me, and although he was short of apologising for all the hassle, he tried to tempt me with an "exclusive manager's deal" of a 100Gb monthly limit, with no new contract, and keeping my monthly payment at the £22.99 I had been paying to date.

I explained to him that although he was being courteous *now*, I had been treated with absolute disregard, and still wished to leave. As they now could see me piecing together a case against them, they dropped all the charges - in fact, he didn't even want to acknowledge the charges existed. He simply stated that the staff I had spoken to thus far were not aware of my loyalty as a customer.

This appears to be classic "carrot and stick" treatment. Get the underlings on the phone to try and cajole the customer into staying, with threats of over-use charges, and once you have established a case and backed them into a corner, they then come across all nice and customer-friendly.

I would advise therefore, to get as much info documented and recorded as possible, always ask to speak to a manager and not just the call-centre staff, and find any documentation that supports your case. The T&Cs I found on webarchive.org were incredibly useful, and was the ace up my sleeve, but I got to the point where I didn't even need to send these across to Supanet.

It is shameful that this is the extent to which they try and get their existing and loyal customer base to sign to new contracts, and it has certainly been a lesson for me, to retain all documents, records and T&Cs to prevent being effectively blackmailed again. The added fact that I was paying via pre-authorised debit card payments increased my worry as these cannot be cancelled as direct debits can - you have to rely on the good nature of the payee to not take the payment, and fortunately Supanet has not taken any further payment from my account.

This has simply been a case of calling their bluff, of sticking to your guns, knowing what you know to be correct, and being as dilligent as you possibly can.

As my case has been resolved satisfactorily, I could not take it to Ofcom (who were not very helpful in the first instance) nor could I take it to the Ombudsmen. They can't get away with doing this, and I fully intend to take my case to watchdog and will write to computer magazines to highlight the sharp practice Supanet are pursuing.

As you can prove that the original T&Cs have changed (which seems to coincide with a change of Supanet's ownership), then this shows that your contract with them has changed, without notification of a change in the T&Cs. This is sufficient to make your contract null and void, and I am sure that if all of Supanet's customers knew this, then they'd have a lot of people wishing to cancel, regardless of any contractual obligations.

I hope this advice helps, and you get sorted. Just stick to your guns with it, and don't take any !!!!!! off them!

Cheers,

Tom.

tomowen5

Dear all,

Just seen the posts further to my own, and can provide an update of my situation with Supanet.

I sought legal advice from Citizens Advice Bureau, who were incredible helpful. They went through different parts of the law with me, but they insisted that I start getting everything in writing. I managed to collate a lot of correspondence, highlighting the way I was establishing my case, and also showing how dilitary and unprofessional supanet were.

Each time I phoned Supanet, they were very aggressive and rude in their manner, always reminding me of the charges that I had unknowingly accrued. Each time I argued that such charges were not in the original T&Cs I signed up to, they insisted they were, reflected only in the T&Cs that were currently available on the website. However, I found copied online of the original T&Cs I signed up to - you can search for supanet.com on the webarchive.org website, and indeed these original T&Cs proved me right, having no mention of over-use charges on an "unlimited" broadband package.

I also found e-mail correspondence from a couple of years ago regarding overuse, but the limit was stated as 30Gb, not the 15Gb limit they were using against me. I managed to e-mail and fax printouts of this correspondence to them, to which I never received an acknowledgement of the contradiction.

With building my case up, and amassing a great record of correspondence, Supanet eventually gave in. Every subsequent phone call was met with a very sharp response, that a manager would get in touch with me. Eventually a manager came back to me, and although he was short of apologising for all the hassle, he tried to tempt me with an "exclusive manager's deal" of a 100Gb monthly limit, with no new contract, and keeping my monthly payment at the £22.99 I had been paying to date.

I explained to him that although he was being courteous *now*, I had been treated with absolute disregard, and still wished to leave. As they now could see me piecing together a case against them, they dropped all the charges - in fact, he didn't even want to acknowledge the charges existed. He simply stated that the staff I had spoken to thus far were not aware of my loyalty as a customer.

This appears to be classic "carrot and stick" treatment. Get the underlings on the phone to try and cajole the customer into staying, with threats of over-use charges, and once you have established a case and backed them into a corner, they then come across all nice and customer-friendly.

I would advise therefore, to get as much info documented and recorded as possible, always ask to speak to a manager and not just the call-centre staff, and find any documentation that supports your case. The T&Cs I found on webarchive.org were incredibly useful, and was the ace up my sleeve, but I got to the point where I didn't even need to send these across to Supanet.

It is shameful that this is the extent to which they try and get their existing and loyal customer base to sign to new contracts, and it has certainly been a lesson for me, to retain all documents, records and T&Cs to prevent being effectively blackmailed again. The added fact that I was paying via pre-authorised debit card payments increased my worry as these cannot be cancelled as direct debits can - you have to rely on the good nature of the payee to not take the payment, and fortunately Supanet has not taken any further payment from my account.

This has simply been a case of calling their bluff, of sticking to your guns, knowing what you know to be correct, and being as dilligent as you possibly can.

As my case has been resolved satisfactorily, I could not take it to Ofcom (who were not very helpful in the first instance) nor could I take it to the Ombudsmen. They can't get away with doing this, and I fully intend to take my case to watchdog and will write to computer magazines to highlight the sharp practice Supanet are pursuing.

As you can prove that the original T&Cs have changed (which seems to coincide with a change of Supanet's ownership), then this shows that your contract with them has changed, without notification of a change in the T&Cs. This is sufficient to make your contract null and void, and I am sure that if all of Supanet's customers knew this, then they'd have a lot of people wishing to cancel, regardless of any contractual obligations.

I hope this advice helps, and you get sorted. Just stick to your guns with it, and don't take any !!!!!! off them!

---

Another point to make is that I do believe that after 30 days of inactivity, you won't need a MAC code. There is also the option of getting Virgin Media - you won't need a MAC code for that anyway. However, Supanet sent me my MAC code through the post and they dropped all the charges. I had to send back my wireless router, but since I pressed them on all this, then they haven't take any more money out of my account. I had pre-authorised debit card payment set up, rather than Direct Debits, and these pre-authorised card payments could not be cancelled by me, as DDs can.

timthumb

well done tom

i gave them 30 days notice received mac fairly quickly and never heard anymore re bandwidth charges

seems really they are not value for money at the moment anyway for their meagre low end bandwidth

shame until i was leaving them never had a problem
if they were more competitive i would have stayed

anyhow with sky now for a while no problem although speed half of what they indicate as max , but works ok for me
tim

Lavender13

tomowen5 wrote: »

Dear all,

Just seen the posts further to my own, and can provide an update of my situation with Supanet.

I sought legal advice from Citizens Advice Bureau, who were incredible helpful. They went through different parts of the law with me, but they insisted that I start getting everything in writing. I managed to collate a lot of correspondence, highlighting the way I was establishing my case, and also showing how dilitary and unprofessional supanet were.

Each time I phoned Supanet, they were very aggressive and rude in their manner, always reminding me of the charges that I had unknowingly accrued. Each time I argued that such charges were not in the original T&Cs I signed up to, they insisted they were, reflected only in the T&Cs that were currently available on the website. However, I found copied online of the original T&Cs I signed up to - you can search for supanet.com on the webarchive.org website, and indeed these original T&Cs proved me right, having no mention of over-use charges on an "unlimited" broadband package.

I also found e-mail correspondence from a couple of years ago regarding overuse, but the limit was stated as 30Gb, not the 15Gb limit they were using against me. I managed to e-mail and fax printouts of this correspondence to them, to which I never received an acknowledgement of the contradiction.

With building my case up, and amassing a great record of correspondence, Supanet eventually gave in. Every subsequent phone call was met with a very sharp response, that a manager would get in touch with me. Eventually a manager came back to me, and although he was short of apologising for all the hassle, he tried to tempt me with an "exclusive manager's deal" of a 100Gb monthly limit, with no new contract, and keeping my monthly payment at the £22.99 I had been paying to date.

I explained to him that although he was being courteous *now*, I had been treated with absolute disregard, and still wished to leave. As they now could see me piecing together a case against them, they dropped all the charges - in fact, he didn't even want to acknowledge the charges existed. He simply stated that the staff I had spoken to thus far were not aware of my loyalty as a customer.

This appears to be classic "carrot and stick" treatment. Get the underlings on the phone to try and cajole the customer into staying, with threats of over-use charges, and once you have established a case and backed them into a corner, they then come across all nice and customer-friendly.

I would advise therefore, to get as much info documented and recorded as possible, always ask to speak to a manager and not just the call-centre staff, and find any documentation that supports your case. The T&Cs I found on webarchive.org were incredibly useful, and was the ace up my sleeve, but I got to the point where I didn't even need to send these across to Supanet.

It is shameful that this is the extent to which they try and get their existing and loyal customer base to sign to new contracts, and it has certainly been a lesson for me, to retain all documents, records and T&Cs to prevent being effectively blackmailed again. The added fact that I was paying via pre-authorised debit card payments increased my worry as these cannot be cancelled as direct debits can - you have to rely on the good nature of the payee to not take the payment, and fortunately Supanet has not taken any further payment from my account.

This has simply been a case of calling their bluff, of sticking to your guns, knowing what you know to be correct, and being as dilligent as you possibly can.

As my case has been resolved satisfactorily, I could not take it to Ofcom (who were not very helpful in the first instance) nor could I take it to the Ombudsmen. They can't get away with doing this, and I fully intend to take my case to watchdog and will write to computer magazines to highlight the sharp practice Supanet are pursuing.

As you can prove that the original T&Cs have changed (which seems to coincide with a change of Supanet's ownership), then this shows that your contract with them has changed, without notification of a change in the T&Cs. This is sufficient to make your contract null and void, and I am sure that if all of Supanet's customers knew this, then they'd have a lot of people wishing to cancel, regardless of any contractual obligations.

I hope this advice helps, and you get sorted. Just stick to your guns with it, and don't take any !!!!!! off them!

Cheers,

Tom.

Supanet tried to change my contract in October, but I refused until they sent me a copy of the terms and conditions. They have not done , and no longer can provide the service I agreed to,so I asked for my mac code , was told it will be posted within 5 days and that my service will terminate on 27th February. I have also been told that the Unlimited broadband (taken out 2006) which I thought I had, has a 15gb cap and I will be billed for the over use for the last 12 months I have received no warnings/reminders in any format over last 12 months re this.Luckily I have the original terms and conditions which does not mention this. 7 years as a paying customer

timthumb

they threatened me with that charge but never did carry it out ...its a shame if they were more competitive with their deals i would have stayed with them as i was happy with the service