Pipex Problems

fatboy88

I cancelled my broadband with them in march 06 and they are still chasing me for £16 they say i owe them. I have told them they owe me £5 but i wasnt that bothered chasing them up as it'll cost me more than that in call charges. Anyway 6 months later they re-activate my DD without my consent and i got charged by the bank for this as its an unused account.
The customer service is a joke as they will not pass you to a supervisor or manager if you threaten legal action they will not take this via email only written form.

Bit of joke company nowadays

Daveboulton

I despair of the service Pipex supply, below is a letter I am sending them.

I would like to inform you of the ridiculous state of affairs you are in between yourselves, Pipex Homecall and Pipex Internet. I’m sure this is not the first letter you have had about this nor will it be the last.

Last September I was called by Pipex Homecall offering me a high speed broadband service, line rental and phone call package, I told them I was not interested as I did not want to change my e-mail address. I was assured this would not happen as it was all within Pipex, so I agreed to sign up.

A month later I had my phone package but noted an email from Pipex Internet to my Pipex email address informing me that my internet connection had been reduced to a Midi service. About the same time I saw that I was paying two bills, one to Pipex Homecall and one to Pipex Internet, the combined price of this bill far exceeded the original, agreed contract with Pipex Homecall of less than £30.

I called Pipex Homecall and asked them what was going on. I was informed that Pipex Homecall and Pipex Internet had agreed between themselves that Pipex Internet would continue to provide me with broadband access and reduce the cost accordingly. I pointed out that I was paying £3 more than agreed for a reduced service. At this point Pipex Homecall was not providing the service they were contracted to do. I was told that I would have to ring Pipex Internet and get a MAC number so my connection could be ‘seamlessly’ transferred to Pipex Homecall. I would, of course not be able to keep my email address and would have a new login and password, another promise broken.

I rang Pipex Internet and spoke to a very unhelpful person who told me I could not leave Pipex Internet because I had just signed a new contract with them; this was my contract with Pipex Homecall! I pointed this out, he left me for a moment then came back and said that on this occasion Pipex Internet would waive my contract and cease my service forthwith! Knowing that it would take up to 30 days to put a new service in place and I was leaving the country for a month and needed the connection to communicate with my family I called them back and asked for a MAC number and to not cease the connection, a more helpful person agreed to do this.

I came back to the UK a month later, no MAC number and a few days later my connection ceased. I rang Pipex International and explained that I was waiting for a MAC number, they agreed to reconnect me and get a MAC number to me. I left the country again for another month.

On my return last week my connection was ceased again, I rang Pipex Internet and asked them where my MAC number was, they informed me that it had been sent to my email address, I told him I did not have it, he informed me it had gone to my old (not been used for over 5 years) Virgin email address, even though I have had regular emails from Pipex Internet to my Pipex email address, this was just shear bloodymindedness.

I contacted Pipex Homecall with my MAC number and was informed that it would take 10 -14 days to connect me.

I now am out of touch with email, all sorts of personal and business stuff is going to that email address that I have no access to. I can’t contact anybody with a new email address as I will not have one for another 10 days. As I am going to have to use a new email address it will cause unforeseen problems for months to come and all because of some stupid internal dispute between yourselves, Pipex Homecall and Pipex Internet. What do you have to say for yourselves?

Curious_George_2

I hate Pipex, I had them as my broadband supplier until i got fed up of their lies (saying that if i registered with homecall aswell that they would increase my speed etc)
so we called for a mac code which they were reluctant to give but did, our service was transferred in november and that was it,
until recently when they started sending threatening emails and letters saying we owe them payment from last july / august onwards.
we set up a direct debit with them in april !!!!!!!

would a company that you supposedly owe money too just give you a mac code and let you leave?

MrsBartolozzi

Hi,
newbie here so please don't bite if this is posted somewhere else. I got my new Pipex bill this morning and noticed that the numbers were unfamiliar - used to be £0.042 for short calls but this had gone up to £0.052. I had a read of the back of the bill and it says that "from Jan 07 Pipex Homecall will be introducing a 3p connection fee". !!!!!!??????
it was in small print and on the back...
What I would like to ask is - did anyone here get some kind of official notification that I didn't bother reading?? Did anyone know of this increase beforehand?

Mrs B

could it be that it is time for me to leave - I was happy with Homecall, but there are some horror stories here re Pipex.

Gazpablo

Well I moved away from Pipex this week. It was surprisingly easy - phoned them up, asked for the MAC, they didn't attempt to persuade me to stay and I was asked which email address to send the MAC to. They ignored the email address I gave them over the phone and they sent the MAC to an email address which I had stopped using over three years ago but luckily it had recently been reactivated. It took just 10 days to migrate. The new ISP is giving me a speed of around 6 to 7mb for £12.95 a month (including VAT) compared with the £23.44 I was paying Pipex for 1mb speed (well actually somewhat less than this). Don't suffer with Pipex, just get up and migrate away (assuming you are not trapped in a 12 months contract and still time remaining).

honey61

We have been customers of Pipex for 10 years & until August last year, were very happy. Now we are extremely unhappy & all because we signed up for Pipexmax.
In a nutshell, when it came to the crunch Pipex couldn't deliver the fixed IP address they advertised on their website, so we cancelled the contract in under 14 days.
7 months on, we are still awaiting a valid migration code. We have heard every excuse known to man & each time we call the customer services department (on average once a week), we obtain another.
We have written, e-mailed & even sent a letter direct to the Director of Operations & Services, by recorded delivery. To date we have not received any replies.
Attempting to speak to anyone in authority is futile. Head office reception are unable to transfer incoming calls to anyone within the building & even if you know the persons name you wish to speak to...... you get transfered customer services. It is impossible to speak to the same person twice & line managers have flatly refused to take my call!!

I have registered my complaint with Trading Standards, who are unable to take any action by way of an investigation, until they recieve sufficient complaints from other members of the public about Pipex.
They did however put me in touch with CISAS (communication & internet services adjudication scheme). I am eagerly awaiting results from my application. You can register your complaint on line at http://www.arbitrators.org/cisas/index.asp or download the pdf application form.

I would urge anyone who has any problems with Pipex, to first register their grievance with Trading Standards & then apply to CISAS. The more official complaints there are about Pipex, the more hope we have & who knows, perhaps one day Pipex cold return to the reliable, efficient & friendly company it once was!
I live in hope.

honey61

http://www.ispa.org.uk/cgi-bin/complaints.cgi

The above link is for ISPA, which in hindsight I should have included in my previous message.

If I am correct, this link should be used to submit your complaint before contacting CISAS (I believe it carries more weight with CISAS at a later stage).

The ISPA site has an online complaints form & is easy to use.

My apologies for the confusion, but this is the first time I have used a forum!!

joe1965

I moved from BT Broadband 2 Mbt service to Pipex up to 8 Mbt service in January with promises of excellent speed, service, etc.
Since then I have had nothing but problems.
It keeps disconnecting me and I can upload to my server four times quicker than I can download which would be okay apart from the fact I have to download the files to make changes and to get the mods etc which the client wants.
The Pipex service support is next to useless and try to bluff their way out of questions that you ask and blame everybody from your PC to BT but won't take no responsibility themselves, also they informed me that my max download speed is 3.5 Mbt, though BT (who I do plenty of work for during my day job), have stated that the max on my line is 5.6 Mbt.
I am still under the contract period but
desperately want to move as I can't carry on like I am. The loss I am incuring on my business of setting up game servers will mean I'm out of business at about the same time the 12 month's of the contract are up!
On doing connection test's I found that I am in fact connected to a Tiscali server rather than a Pipex one. Had this been disclosed to me at the time of changing I would never had gone with Pipex.
Would this be enough to get me out of the contract as they failed to disclose this to me when I decided to change to them? Or would anyone have a better way to opt out without incurring the charge for the remainder of the 12 month period?

mrJ_5

It would appear that you are using Pipex's LLU service - as I would imagine they have a wholesale agreemen with tiscali to use this. I very much doubt they yoy could use this though to wiggle out of your contract.

Just because BT estimates 5.6Mb, doesn't mean you'll get it - afterall there may be varibles on your line that BT doesn't know about - such as using line extensions, the quality of your line, even your modem, etc etc

It also will not matter to Pipex if you are running a business on a home based connection, as business connections can have guarentees in the Quality of Service, whereas home users would get any - hense why business broadband is usually more expensive than home

joe1965

I should have pointed out that the max speed on my line is 6.8Mbt but 5.6Mbt is the stable speed which I should be recieving.
They may have an agreement with Tiscali but they should have informed me of the fact that Tiscali would be providing the service.
Tiscali has one of the worst reputations for providing Broadband and I would have run a mile before agreeing to using them.