Hi,

My name is Adam and I work for Direct Save Telecom. I was browsing through the forums and I was really disappointed to hear the problems you have experienced. Over the last 12 months Direct Save has taken steps to improve all areas of our Customer Services and support and we feel we have made great progress.

Even though we have one of the UK’s most competitive tariffs we have committed to UK based support for our customers including 24/7 line and broadband fault support.

Clearly it appears that we have let you down and I would really like to help. Could you contact us asking for Adam C in Customer Services, if only to understand where we went wrong.

Thanks for your time.

Adam – Direct Save Telecom

I read your post with interest as I am also considering making a complain to Ofcom. I have had numerous problems with their customer services since telling them I am leaving, have been overcharged and have still not received the money they overcharged me. The people that I have spoken in customer services have been indifferent at best and have repeatedly said that they would phone me back and failed to do so. I have been genuinely left shocked by the total unprofessionalism of their customer services.

Just an update. I have managed to transfer my broadband away from DST. They did try to charge me £50 disconnection fee even though I was outside the 12 month period, but readily agreed it was a mistake. I must admit the customer services people have been very good during the transfer process, no problem with the MAC code or the transfer. The download speeds with my new ISP, Newnet are fantastic and reliable. I would recomend anybody to consider them.

I wish I had seen this site before I chose BB. Stay away from DST. They have no customer service

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I agree with the previous posts -- stay away from DST. Moved here from abroad early 2008. We were renting and went with DST because the previous tenants had it so we thought it would be quick to setup and cheap if we moved. It took over 7 weeks for them to get broadband here even though it was just a change of customer name and it was right when we needed it most. Also I did not realize there was a disconnection fee, or that there was no voicemail or caller id included.

I advise all of you to stay away from DST. You gain nothing at all.

Woahh!! Save you hard earned cash. Northern Rock got nothing on these guys.

They appear to be a bunch who are operating out of an office with no facilities other than desks and phones.

If you leave BT phone service and use their service, not totally reliable, to get it fixed requires reference back to BT at a cost of £Loads of lolly down to you.

Broadband sucks, speeds can go down for extended periods to near land line dial up speeds. I have copy of tests on line if required.

Their system which is hired time on Eclipse is alway being upgraded (take that to mean off line)

Complaints are ignored, no feed back and £50 to bale out, £50 if you move house even after 12 months and then another start up fee.

Modum poor and even their staff recommend you purchase a Router.

Mail me if you need more bad news

I have been with them since Janary 2007

I have had no problem with the phone service, but when you add the charge for caller display in they are no cheaper than BT.

The Broadband speeds are very variable, sometimes very fast, often slow, particularly at peak times, and sometimes non existant, the connection simply drops.

I have been asking for an e-mail address since I joined and was eventually advised to go for a web based address such as hotmail or googlemail, how do they get away with advertising e-mail addresses they can not provide ?

Customer support does not exist. They simply ignore e-mails. The only good thing is you can contact them on a landline number and get a real person answering.

If you want cheap unreliable broadband, these are the guys, but you may as well go for Tiscali or Talk Talk who, arguably, have an even worse service but are cheaper.

I have just given them the required 28 days notice having been with them over 12 months so hoping to avoid the £50 termination fee!

Anonymous (they might read this!)

In a nutshell - Do not touch with a bargepole!

Like many others on this forum, I was suckered in by the deals they had to offer and assurance (after 3 calls before signing up) that we would not be charged setup fees... we were.

That was back in April 2007. Since then, it has been a very steep decline in service. "Broadband" speeds like a 56k dial up, phone bills for hundreds of pounds for services I've not used (wi-fi?!! WTF? Since when do you pay for your home wi-fi?), countless phonecalls and letters to their customer services team and I've NEVER had a reply... until now (I canceled my payment to them). The letter from them is dated 20th Dec 2007 and I recieved it today... 16th Jan 2008!!! I've got missing bills which have carried over to following months with no explination and I'm finally giving up on them.

I URGE everyone who's had the displesure of DST to get in touch with OFCOM, Trading Standards and CISAS. The more of us that do that, the better we all stand a chance of getting our money back.

PLEASE TAKE NOTE!

Grant

their is no such thing as one month contract, they charge £50 if you decide to cancle your contract, if you move address they will charge a further £50, dont even bother mentioning the connection fee, which could be upto £90. the broadband speed was meant to be 8MB but it hardly hits 1.5MB, their customer service stinks, extremely rude staff, please do yourself a favor, just AVOID AT ALL COSTS. thanks.

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Direct Save Telecom seams like a family run business. Nothing wrong with that if it was a restaurant, a pizzeria or something. But you can not run an ISP this way, with naïve and untrained staff that know absolutely nothing they are talking about and who all seam just arrived in the business, probably reccommended by the uncle, the owner of the business.
They are currently not able to provide BB connection to the whole of South London, and they don't even know why!! The reason behind it is that they are not the "real" isp. They are actually reselling BB accounts that they buy from Eclipse ( http://www.eclipse.net.uk/). The point is that if there is a problem in the network, they absolutely never know what the problem is, because their so caled "customer support" has to call Eclipse's customer support before giving you anything close to an explaination. And they can't anyway, they can't tell you when the service will be up again, they have absolutly no clue, lost in their own failing business. No customer care, no care for the customer, no idea of the business. Direct Save Telecom sucks and will bring you down, in trouble, telling you that it's not their fault... forget Direct Save Telecom and go somewhere else. If you got Virginmedia on Cable (only if it comes on Cable) choose them. I experienced both and I know what I am talking about.

Join the club! I myself have also had appalling not existent service from DST. I have had no end of problems with them...I have been trying to sort a query out for 8 months and they can't be bothered to reply to my letters!

Waste of time.....

In answer to your question - I don't think DST can spell good! They are awful!

 The sad thing is that they have the most amazing Sales team! I couldn't believe how marvelous the Sales service was! Also can't believe I got suckered in by it.....once I had signed up nothing worked and unfortunately the other departments are that bad that I don't believe they exist!

The broadband never went live when they said it would.  There were problems because I had a tag on my line.  They didn't bother to tell me this though - I had to ring them to find out. When my package arrived I set it up but it never worked. I called them to help - but they are only open during the week when I am at work so they couldn't help me which was very useful.

I cancelled my non-existent service with DST.  I first complained in March - I have used their online customer service, well lets say I tried to use it 3 times but never got a call back.  I have spoken to customer services, I have sent registered letters, emailed the director, I have called again - I have requested a deadlock letter too.  Now 8 months down the line - I keep being told on email that the Customer Services Manager is dealing with my query.  No such luck!!! They have not even written to me once saying that they are looking into it.  I called them to sort out my bill - I told them I was willing to pay my phone bill - less the broadband charges that I had paid between March and July and they said they would call back . Not surprisingly they never did!!!!

I have now received a debt collection letter as I haven't paid them!  I am furious that after all this time they have just ignored me which is highly frustrating! I followed their whole complaints procedure and have heard nothing back.

If I had to rate DST I would give their Sales team 10/10, customer service 0/10, broadband 0/10 seeing as it never worked!

 

 

DON'T DO IT!!!!  I sincerely hope you haven't signed up with DST...biggest mistake I ever made!

You will have no end of trouble....

 

I was a subscriber with this company on the option 4 scheme,compared to other businesses they suck big time.I changed to Sky for my broadband and then kept my phone with DST.

I then went to option3,things were going fine until this summer,however,I told them I would be away for about 2 months and would they leave the phone on.Unfortunately,I owed them £30.60 for my bill in July ,August bill was  £44.40 the amount wasn't paid they disconnected me.I have tried 4 Emails to get the problem resolved and nothing.

On top of this they have now included a bill of £36.05 for a disconnection service ( restricted incoming ).They want a total of £111.05.

I am not happy at all,being disabled with no phone is a disgrace.I would not recommend these people at all.

It's perhaps not the most accurate test possible; all tests use HTTP protocol and yu dont appear to have switched machines. If you can lay your hands on a laptop to take round and test too, and use a variety of protocols; time the sending and receiving of a huge email (send it to yourself), use bittorrent to download openoffice, anonymous ftp to mirror.ac.uk and download something big, try a few broadband speedtest sites.. etc

 Taking a look at the machine;s config might help too; check that no proxies are in use and that proxy discovery is off. If intermediary hardware is used like a router, remove it, etc..

 

AVG? urgh..