Abusive Utility Companies... Where to go to avoid them?

backfoot

chris1973 wrote: »

I'm also intrigued as to how Pipex admitted they were ripping you off and how?. Did the phone ring a little voice the other end say "Hi, Ms Willowgirl, this is Pipex and I need to come clean and tell you that we are ripping you off"

or was there more to it

Anytime, glad to have been of service.

Thank you for the invitation, however I don't feel that one person, and their own personal opinions or beliefs are above or over-ride the whole forum in general do you?, I will choose to agree / disagree with your opinons and points and anybody else whom I choose as appropriate, and I don't have to justify having a different opinion to you on a post-by-post basis.

Oh a sweet irony post :rotfl:

You want Willowgirl to give you chapter and verse on her post and then say you don't have justify anything to anyone else on a post by post basis.

Willowgirl explained her post several times and it doesn't seem to be sinking in.

I would love to give her some good news regarding a good utility company. However,from personal experience it is not possible. I chose to widen it to those companies who are currently providing very poor service or operate non customer friendly policies.

Mrs_Arcanum

So far (nearly one year on) very pleased with E-on.

What is needed is a company that communicates the way you like and which helps you. What may work for one person may be totally useless for others.

chris1973

Willowgirl explained her post several times and it doesn't seem to be sinking in.

As far as I read it, Willowgirl has come on here making sweeping comments like Pipex is ripping me off, but giving diddly as to how, and still avoids doing so at every given opportunity.

I believe that there are two sides to every story, and regardless of the thread intent (and the highly confusing title of the thread), I think its only fair that if somebody comes onto any thread making such negative statements regarding a named company to a level where it can be read by 1000's if not 10,000's of people and may mean the difference between somebody actively choosing or refusing to give that company their business and inevitably the future of that business that they give at least a basic explanation as to how it occured. Its simply called playing fair.

willowgirl

chris1973 wrote: »

As far as I read it, Willowgirl has come on here making sweeping comments like Pipex is ripping me off, but giving diddly as to how, and still avoids doing so at every given opportunity.

I believe that there are two sides to every story, I think its only fair that if somebody comes on making such statements that they give details as to how. Its called playing fair.

Well there may be two sides to every story but if I give mine, the other side isn't here to give theirs so it's going to be a bit one sided isn't it!

I would point out too that I definitely didn't say that pipex is ripping me off as the whole point of that bit was that I am no longer with pipex but instead with the wonderful plus.net who are great at communicating, are honest about the stuff they do (both bad and good), and have a great web interface for managing your account which seems to be well written (a rarity in software everywhere these days!)

As I've already said I was rather quoting the sales guy about "ripping me off". So that is actually his side of the story.

I suspect that in reality you just have an eye for a good story when you see one and you just want to hear it. I'm not getting very far in terms of stories of great electric companies and positive experiences, so I might as well try and tell it as I'm spending as much time at this point not telling it! lol!

...and this thread has filled up with stuff that isn't about what I was asking!
So I will try and remember the Pipex story as much as I can (it was a few years ago now) but I want you to know that I have just set fire to my rice while typing all this nonsense!

jalexa

backfoot wrote: »

I would love to give her some good news regarding a good utility company

Edf are dealing with totally routine enquiries much quicker and are polite and personable:D

willowgirl

I signed up with Pipex many years ago when I first moved into my house, and at first they were great, the internet always worked and my experiences were very positive. I paid quite a lot for my internet back then but it was fast, reliable and unlimited and I felt it was worth it!

All good things come to an end however, and the company was bought out by someone else, I don't remember who now, but that is when things started to go wrong! The connection went down at one point and was offline for days. Really frustrating. I started getting problems of being thrown off and having to re-connect and sometimes getting a zombie connection that just didn't function and having to try again to get a different one. I noticed my download speeds started to slump also.

I became upset about it and complained but the support number was now suddenly an expensive charge number! I continued to be dissatisfied but I stuck with Pipex as I remembered how good they used to be and it was still okay when you got a good connection, although things were generally very slow.

A while later I started getting the sales calls. Lots of them. A deep booming voice would come down the phone line and say, "You are paying an awful lot for your internet connection and we now have much cheaper deals, why don't you switch to a new contract and you can really reduce your bills. The options I was offered were all metered internet services where you would get say 1GB of credit or whatever a month and limited upload/download speeds. I would point out that my current service was unlimited, and the fellow at the other side would say "Ah Yes I know you are paying for an unlimited account but we have been ripping you off for quite some time now and your account is being limited in speed and bandwidth, so you might as well switch to a cheaper service and save yourself some money.

He was very friendly about it all but I didn't want to get into a new contract because I really wanted to leave at that point but kept putting it off because it would be such a hastle.

I ended up sticking with Pipex for a long time. Finally it was bought out by Tiscali and one day, completely out of the blue, I got a letter through the door that was a red final demand type letter threatening to disconnect me in about a week and that my phone calls would be set to emergency only. To say I was open mouthed is an understatement. There was no advance warning of any kind and this was a final demand type letter.

I rang them up and told them I had received the letter and she took my details and said ah yes we definitely havn't received your direct debit payment. To which I of course replied, "Of course not, I've never been paying by direct debit?", "Well now we will only take payment by direct debit she said, "I can set you one up now?", I explained that I didn't have my bank details with me. She pointed out that I only had a few days to pay up or I would be cut off and it would then be hard for me to contact her as my phone would then by set to emergency calls only too. I pointed out that I didn't have my phone service with pipex at all, so that seemed unlikely. It was at this point that she asked me what account I had with pipex and I suddenly realised they had none of my account details there whatsoever. I was shocked, I think I just said "you don't know???"

There was something really ironic about the whole thing. For years I had stayed in this abusive relationship but hadn't left, and now they were getting rid of ME! It seemed totally the wrong way round!

It was at this point that I went and looked into other providers. I couldn't find quite what I was after but plus.net were very cheap and people seemed to like them so I rang them up. They were really, really helpful and keen to get my custom. Are you presently with pipex they asked? I was a bit taken aback "yes how did you know?", and they explained they had had a lot of pipex customers lately.

I had to get a MAC code so I rang up PIPEX. To get the MAC code I had to ring their sales department who were suddenly really interested in me. What had gone wrong, they wanted to know? They offered me all kinds of deals to stay with them and that everything would be okay if I just signed up for an 18 month contract, but I was sensible enough to go for the MAC code. They read me a long legal statement about how everything would totally be okay, it would be a smooth transition from pipex, and they definitely wouldn't under any circumstances cut me off in the transition period, on and on they went for about 5 minutes, and then they finally gave me the MAC code.

2 days later they cut me off!!!

willowgirl

Mrs_Arcanum wrote: »

So far (nearly one year on) very pleased with E-on.

What is needed is a company that communicates the way you like and which helps you. What may work for one person may be totally useless for others.

I'd LOVE to find a company like that! I remember what a shock it was when I signed up with plus.net and discovered that they kept in touch with me by email!
This was sooo radical, an internet company that could communicate by email, it was totally new!

However I'd just settle for a utility company that can bill me correctly and not mess up my payments and just do the basic stuff you know. Even that seems difficult tho.

I think you are very right tho, communication should be key!

willowgirl

Someone on another thread mentioned Ebico. I think they look interesting from their website so I'm going to investigate them more!

backfoot

jalexa wrote: »

Edf are dealing with totally routine enquiries much quicker and are polite and personable:D

Hallelujah

I'm convinced :rotfl:

willowgirl

meggsy wrote: »

My bad stuff was Pipex as well and npower !

My good stuff is Zen Internet and hopefully Co-operative Energy
Prefer to try them rather than any of the Big 6!

Good luck with cooperative energy! I think I will look into them too, they seem interesting.