Want to take ISP to ofcom complain, will accept some compensation

seatbeltnoob

Cancelled on a rolling contract because of steep increases on May 2024.

Ended up on retentions and they gave me an offer I couldnt refuse. But they didn't explain the term. The monthly was super low, but it was for 24 months. I am privately renting so I cannot be on a 24 month contract. Had they explained the terms I would have rejected. I onlyu ever took out 12 month contracts, and I only knew it was 24 month when I logged into my account to verify the deal.

I had a lot of backward and forward with them just to sort this out. Ages on hold to be sent to a South African support who dont seem to have powers to do anything. Every call basically I have to re-describe everything from start and all they do is "note it down" and send it to a UK team for callback. UK team never call back. I decided to just cancel with them alttogether and phoned them up to cancel within the cooling off period of the new contract. I could not trust them to sort it out and give me a good 12 month deal so I just decided to cancel and get a new customer deal for 12 months through wifes name.

Got cancelled. Got my wife to join as a new customer with very reasonable monhtly rates and 3 months free on a 12 month contract. Which they simply would not offer to me. Theyd only offer 24 months deals with higher monthly rate

So my wife is now connected. My contract is cancelled.

They are still producing phantom invoices to me in my account (we live together, same address of connection), wife has her own account. The invoices dont download, but there are random figures on the balance owed. They have yet to give me a final invoice confirming account closure and the overdue balance is £0.00. They just email me saying it's cancelled. Practically every service I ever had would produce a final statement on termination clarifying the position. CF do not do this. 

First tthey gave me £350 credit invoice - because they cancelled and credited the outstanding amount as an over credit.. odd. But I did raise the issue they assured me it's fine. I explained to them they have produced an invoice where they own me £350. The invoice should be £0.00

Then some time later the £350 credit turned into a £650 debt. Again I dont see the documents or calcuations all I see are final amount, and these phantom invoices being generated that do not download. 

Except today, they acted on this balance. I woke up this mporning with a message from my bank saying I'm overdrawn and need to pay money before 3:30pm to make sure this direct debit is paid.

CF are completely incompentant here and I need a settlement so they dont randomly generated an invoice in future and then pass it on to debt collectors.

I want them to produce me a final bill of £0.00 and to say the account is terminated. I would like to get compensated for all this trouble.

How is the best way to play this?

Ayr_Rage

Sounds like you played the system and have come unstuck.

You'll have to make a formal complaint and if you reach deadlock then take it to the appropriate resolution service, if your ISP is linked to one.

Ofcom do not take on individual complaints.

seatbeltnoob

I didn't come unstick. the direct debit is immediately reversed and CF staff could not explain why this charge was collected.

CF were the furst ever ISP I was with with there wasn't a user admin area where you could see your bills, user information and ability to ament direct debit account. Everything was done over email. They emailed you a bill and if you lost the email there is not admin portal to seek it out.

They only recently introduced the user adsmin in April 2024.

The whole back end seems to be extremely disoaganised and a lot of the staff there just get so confused with what's going on. cannot trace issues and simply say "ah ha, I see whats gone wrong". Everything gets resolved very very slowly where staff say they need to find out and call me back with a resolution and it goes on for weeks.

I have book keeping experience, I know you should not close an account with a credit balance to the customer of £350. It needs to be £0. Then it gets flipped ino their fabour of £650. Then they actially collect it. What sort of crazy broken system do they have where they can't just close out a customer account properly?

macman

You need to go through the supplier's own complaints procedure and then wait either 6 weeks without resolution or for a deadlock letter, then you can go to the Ombudsman. Nothing to do with Ofcom.

seatbeltnoob

are ofcom not the ombudsman? WHo is the ombudsman for CF?

Ayr_Rage

seatbeltnoob said:

are ofcom not the ombudsman? WHo is the ombudsman for CF?

Is your search function broken?

It's all in here

https://communityfibre.co.uk/legal-stuff

seatbeltnoob

Thanks I've emailed the CEO and raised a final issue. with them. I will take it to the ombudsmen.

I just assumed that ombudsmen was just a catchall term for the relevant authority in that sector be it ofgem/ofcom/ofwat etc. I didnt realise ombudsmen are literally called ombudsmen. Silly of me.

Ayr_Rage

seatbeltnoob said:

Thanks I've emailed the CEO and raised a final issue. with them. I will take it to the ombudsmen.

I just assumed that ombudsmen was just a catchall term for the relevant authority in that sector be it ofgem/ofcom/ofwat etc. I didnt realise ombudsmen are literally called ombudsmen. Silly of me.

Some ISPs use alternative disputes resolution services, such as https://www.cedr.com/consumer/cisas/make-a-complaint/

Once you get a deadlock letter from a dispute, that letter should have information as to where you can go next.

seatbeltnoob

they keep saying "the problem is now sorted, you wont be billed". I have repeated to them. They need to stop generating phantom invoices, the account needs to stop saying I have a service with them on 24 month contract. It seems that they are not able to do this on their side because they are use some beta software which hasn't considered what the system should do when a customer cancels with them.

This is the issue when I original cancelled. They did not give me a final statement saying services are now terminated. So it was left in the open - they just send me a stupid email saying the service is cancelled - like a human written one, not an email generated by their billing system.

I have reiterated to them now that their words in an email saying "everything is fixed now", is not good enough due to them saying this already before and then billing me £650. I need a formal termination of services letter in company letterheaded document. and the account login should say there are no services attached to the account. Instead of citiing a service with 24 month contract with the £ amount blank.

If they cannot do these two things they need to send me a deadlocked letter saying they cannot help me any further so I can escalate to the ombudsmen. I also require compensation for spending hours on the phone and 8 support tickets I had to raised over 4 months to fix this one issue with them.