Clear Business Telephone, Wifi and Credit Card Lack of Service - Don't know where to go!

mich309

My sister has a small barber's shop that just makes her enough.  In July she had a salesman from Clear Business convince her to sign up to have her business telephone, wifi and credit card payments with them.  She regretfully signed up for 36 months!  

At the beginning the service didn't work for a month and Clear Business threatened her, said they'd charge lots of money for someone to come and have a look.  She asked if she could cancel and they said no without paying a termination charge which amounts to £100 per month left to run.  They eventually sent someone out and they sorted it out.  In September there was over a week where the telephone and wifi didn't work.  And again this week it isn't working again.  Every time this happens she loses customers.  She has gone on to report the fault but online it says that she doesn't have any telephone services - unsure why now.  

She has also been sent a message to say unless she takes £3,600 through the card terminal they will increase her charges.  She doesn't take anything like that amount a month nor does her contract state this.  

She just wants to get out of the contract and start with someone else as not only as the service completely unreliable they are incredibly unhelpful and rude when trying to get things resolved.  It also takes hours to get through to anyone.  

We have no idea where to start, what to do or what rights she has.  Can anyone help please?

eskbanker

This board is focused on consumer rights, rather than those applicable to businesses, so it would probably be better for her to post on one of the other boards, such as:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/phones-tv
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/small-biz-charities-moneysaving

Grumpy_chap

mich309 said:

My sister has a small barber's shop that just makes her enough.  In July she had a salesman from Clear Business convince her to sign up to have her business telephone, wifi and credit card payments with them.  She regretfully signed up for 36 months!  

At the beginning the service didn't work for a month and Clear Business threatened her, said they'd charge lots of money for someone to come and have a look.  She asked if she could cancel and they said no without paying a termination charge which amounts to £100 per month left to run.  They eventually sent someone out and they sorted it out.  In September there was over a week where the telephone and wifi didn't work.  And again this week it isn't working again.  Every time this happens she loses customers.  She has gone on to report the fault but online it says that she doesn't have any telephone services - unsure why now.  

She has also been sent a message to say unless she takes £3,600 through the card terminal they will increase her charges.  She doesn't take anything like that amount a month nor does her contract state this.  

She just wants to get out of the contract and start with someone else as not only as the service completely unreliable they are incredibly unhelpful and rude when trying to get things resolved.  It also takes hours to get through to anyone.  

We have no idea where to start, what to do or what rights she has.  Can anyone help please?

I don't mean to pry, but how much is she taking per month?  If she has to meet the cost of business premises rent, energy bills, insurances, hair products, and pay herself a wage, taking less than £3.6k per month seems to make the whole venture challenging.
If she is taking more, but some is cash, cheque or whatever means of payment, can she divert a greater proportion of spend to the card service?  That would reduce the risk of handling cash.

Is the reference to taking £3,600 through the card terminal on a monthly basis, or over the term?  It is just a 36-month contract and termination charge of £100 per month would also equate to £3,600.  Is the cost of the service £100 per month and this met by a retention of the first £100 per month of card terminal payments, so making £3,600?  £100 per month for provision of the phone, broadband, wifi, card service might be reasonable?


Is this the same hair salon that had an issue with the energy provider?
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6634402/energy-broker-disputes#latest

Ectophile

She has the rights that are stated in the contract.  The Sale of Goods Act may also apply.  But a business has no consumer rights.

When running a business, it's essential that you read and understand every contract you sign. If it says that you have to take £3600 in sales every month* or there's a penalty, then that's the way it is.  If you don't like that, don't sign the contract.

What matters now is what the contract says will happen if there's a loss of service.  Is it just tough, or does she have the option of suing them for her losses?

*But if she's not taking in £3600 a month, how is she earning a living?  There's rent and business rates, energy bills, taxes and so on.

mich309

Thanks for the replies.  The £3600 is card only and a lot of people pay in cash. The shop is a 1 person shop so doesn’t have a lot of overheads. 

Anyway, on Clear Business - it doesn’t say anything in the contract about a minimum value going through the card machine. 

The contact does not say anything about service either.  Just that they attempt to fix problems in 48 hours. Not that they have to. 

The contract itself isn’t a problem more that she has a lack of service. If she isn’t covered by consumer rights then what is she covered by?  Since July she has not had a phone line in total (and counting) for 4+weeks 

born_again

Telecom fault

https://www.clearbusiness.co.uk/help-and-support/telecoms-help/

If you are unfortunate enough to experience a telecoms fault, you can report the fault online by logging in to Customer Zone or by calling our customer service team. We will carry out live line tests and advise you on any simple equipment checks you can carry out yourself. Alternatively, to see if there are any major issues in your area that might be affecting services, use the below online checker by simply typing your postcode in to the box. If a major problem has been identified in your area you’ll see what’s caused it, when it was reported and an indication of when it should be fixed. 

https://www.bt.com/help/check-service-status

If following these checks the fault is still present then, following time related charge confirmations, we will liaise with Openreach engineers on your authority to rectify the fault as soon as possible, keeping you fully updated every step of the way. On certain occasions it may be possible to offer you a temporary call diversion facility. 

eskbanker

mich309 said:

The contact does not say anything about service either.  Just that they attempt to fix problems in 48 hours. Not that they have to.

Telecoms providers are quite restricted in what service levels they can offer, given the interdependencies between the end supplier and the other actual infrastructure providers such as Openreach, which restrict what fix times can be promised, but if she wanted a higher service level than that, she'd probably have needed to have signed up to something better than an entry-level product, which may have entailed either paying this company for a more premium service, or going elsewhere.

mich309 said:

The contract itself isn’t a problem more that she has a lack of service. If she isn’t covered by consumer rights then what is she covered by?  Since July she has not had a phone line in total (and counting) for 4+weeks 

It's a regulated sector so she may be able to refer to the regulator Ofcom, if she's able to demonstrate that the company is falling short of their contractual obligations.

sonearandyetsofa

If it isn't written into the contract, they can't enforce it. If they have the right to change or amend the contract she should also retain the right to cancel as a result of the amendments. 

Given the scale of the business is so small I'm guessing she doesn't have a solicitor she can talk to about this, but if she does perhaps have access to one (maybe a family solicitor?) it would absolutely be worthwhile asking them for a little advice. This should be the kind of thing that could be sorted out with a sternly worded letter.

Put bluntly, they are not providing the service she signed up for, therefore she should be able to cancel free of charge. In her shoes I personally would inform the company in writing via a registered letter that I regard the repeated service outages, failure to provide reliable services and threat to raise the fees as a fundamental breach of contract and am requesting early termination without penalty due to this. But I would also get someone to write that for me, a letter is a cheap thing whereas having your phonelines and payment services inoperable could be very expensive!

She absolutely will need to have thoroughly read their terms to check and make sure of what it was they had her sign originally.

Given their poor reviews as well, I might even be inclined to just send the letter saying the contract is terminated due to fundamental breach on their part, give them a date by which it's terminated (say 2 weeks time) and cancel the direct debits and payments to them. Return their equipment via a tracker service (make sure she has the correct return address for this first). Get a cheap mobile phone service for the phone side of things, sign up for a PayPal mobile terminal, and when they start with the legal threats inform them that if they try to take her to court she'll counter-claim for lost business during the periods when customers couldn't reach her over the phone or pay.

In future, never deal with any company that cold calls and be very wary of anyone who claims to specialise in working with small businesses.