Hi Jason,

I have just posted a message today (Sara - 14.10.06) re. ZoneAlarm. Please could you take a look at it (saves me explaining all over again) and get back to me. Basically, I need to know that if I had been able to download and install Pipex's anti-virus software before end July 2006 (when Microsoft determined there would no longer be any support for ME users after that date) would I have been able to install and use ZoneAlarm successfully?

My e-mail address is: toadhall1 AT ntlworld.com

This is my friend's e-mail address (my Pipex e-mail is not running properly at the moment....)

Thanks, Sara.

Hi Sara

I've just sent a response to your request via the email address you mentioned.

Kind Regards

Jason Lloyd

---

Jason Lloyd

moneysupermarket.com

hi Sara
Why don't you post your request for people to write to Watchdog on the Pipex forum of the www.asdlguide.org so as to get a greater audience? Could you also post the address of Watchdog too?

I've just seen this post on that forum which I thought I'd share with you as it's yet more evidence of the mess they're in:

Been with pipex for 3 years, migrated mid june to nildram. I was aware at the time of migrating that pipex were very fond of taking customers money beyone their contract so i phoned them a couple of days before my handover to ensure i would not be billed beyond june. I was told that i would be billed for june, then refunded half of that as i was migrating mid month.

So i find out that they have been billing me £34 a month since june. I contacted them via email and waited 3 weeks for a reply, when no reply was forthcoming i phoned them to be told "yes we are still billing you", "we dont know when we will be able to stop billing you" and my personal favourite "we dont know when we will be able to refund you".

I sent a further 3 emails to pipex requesting that this is sorted out. Again no reply. So today i phoned them again, determined this time to get a satisfactory response to this issue. I spoke to the usual clueless rep who told me that i would be refunded "soon" but he was unable to tell me when or by how much. I demanded to speak to a team manager, but surprise surprise none was available. So i told him i was not going to hang up until i had spoken to someone higher up the food chain.

So after an hour of sitting on hold, i eventually get passed over to the provisions dept and i spoke to a female robot who told me she would contact the finance dept and phone me back before 5.30 pm with details of what was happening.

Lo and behold, i actually got a call back and she explained that she had spoken to the finance dept and they were going to issue a refund of £101. When i asked why i was only being refunded 3 months money when they had incorrectly billed me for 4 and a half months, she told me to take it up with the finance dept as it was their decision, when i asked to be put through to finance she told me she was unable to put me through or give me an email address and that i should go through cs. Her attitude was disgraceful and NOT ONCE has anyone apologised for anything.

So at this present time, they are refusing to refund me what they owe me, refusing to cooperate in any shape or form and refusing to apologise. Time for trading standards.

I have never, in all my life, encountered such unprofessionalism and poor attitudes from a company like this. A warning to all potential new customers- AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE.

They are thieves and liars

Hi Curlew,

Yes, it's a total disgrace. The amount of distress Pipex are causing is dispicable. Every department seems to lack any intuition or good manners. Mind you, if the CEO and the MD can't even be bothered to answer complaint letters personally, preferring instead to pass the buck to someone in their so-called 'customer care' department sort it out, then is it any wonder their staff have the couldn't care less attitude?

Your experience with Pipex is terrible. I hope you have cancelled your direct debit with them. You know, by law, a direct debit means that the company with whom you've set up the mandate, cannot take out any other amount from your bank account - only that amount you have agreed to. Many companies do not adhere to this, which is another thing that needs to be regulated. I was billed recently by Pipex for 2 months subscription, instead of 1, which shouldn't have happened, not least because the direct debit mandate is for 14.99 per month - no more and no less.

Yes, I will post a watchdog request on the adsl guide as you suggested. The address for Watchdog can be found on the BBC website - I don't know it off-hand.

Are you going to post a comment on the adsl guide? We need to get as many people as possible. I'm sure this is what's needed and the only reason this hasn't been done so far, is that many people feel like maybe Watchdog wouldn't consider their letter if it is just a lone one.

OFCOM are quite useless. I'm not knocking them, but I've rang on 3 different occasions because I've never been happy about taking just one person's word for things, but actually all 3 people I spoke to all basically said the same thing to me - which was just to write to Pipex and give them the chance to sort things out. Fat chance!! Trading Standards, at least in my area, are also non-committal. What we need is some regulated body who is on the side of the customer, but there doesn't seem to be any organisation like this about. CICAS is apparently to be used only as a last resort. (That's the way I read it on their website).

I hope in the meantime your refund from Pipex comes to fruition. Probably not - but here's hoping.

Regards, Sara.

Actually I don't need a refund from Pipex. In 3 months they haven't even set up a direct debit yet! When they do I will immediately cancel it. I have already written to them cancelling the service , requesting a MAC code and instructing them to send me my final (and only!) invoice by post.

I don't trust them enough to let them set up a DD for the payment as I feel they might do ANYTHING- try to charge me for the full 12 months (They can't legally because I am now at a pre-contractual stage with Pipex, they not having fulfilled the contract), try to charge a termination fee, or a fee for the return of the modem. All of these things would be totally out of order, as I have said, but with Pipex, who knows?

I have posted most of what you see here on asdlguide.org also, and had lots of replies. If you look, you'll see about 45 replies to my BEWARE PIPEX post and my CUSTOMER CARE REPLIES also had quite a few replies.

If you cut and paste your entries here onto their site you'll get lots of responses. Also a separate thread for the Watchdog idea would be good. I sometimes wonder if it's a good idea to post entries that are too long, as I have, because nowadays people don't seem to have a long concentration span - we're in the era of the soundbite after all.

I've just received quite a speedy third email from Customer Care, this time about my innaccurate bill. It was probably because they have just received the letter I sent to the Chairman, Peter Dubens, at his private address.

So it seems Pipex has no problem with my cancelling the DD and is quite happy to be paid by cheque:

(Dear Curlew),

I have also today received the letter received by our Chairman, Peter Dubens.



You are correct in your calculations and the outstanding amount is £27 (£6.50*3 + £7.50). Pipex can send the invoices to you which require payment and in this scenario cheque payment would be necessary. Once you have received the invoices please send a cheque payable to Pipex Internet including a brief covering letter containing your username, telephone number and order reference number, in order for our Finance team to allocate to the correct account.



I am sorry that your Pipex experience has not been as happy as wish it could have been. Pipex are always concerned when a customer cancels early into their Pipex relationship but I appreciate the reasons which you have given.

Kind regards

Customer Care

Pipex Internet

Hi Curlew,

Wow - I'm surprised but very pleased you have sorted out your problem with Pipex. Maybe I should try and write to the Chairman. I would love to cancel my DD, but I'm afraid that if I did that, I would not get a MAC code from them. What do you think? I also looked on the Zonelabs website and, apparently, if I had been able to access ZoneAlarm's pre-6.5 products before support for Windows ME ceased on 16th July 06, the product would have continued to run successfully after that date. In other words, if I had been able to access ZoneAlarm straight away when I first signed up to Pipex, I wouldn't have the problem I have now of having no firewall and no anti-virus installed, which is imperitive with ADSL connection. I now need to install this security software from another site (hopefully for free) but this isn't what I wanted. I wanted security through a third party proxy server and I am paying for it as part of my monthly subscription.

Anyway, congratulations Curlew. I will let you know the outcome of my on-going saga as and when.

Regards, Sara

Whilst watching the fulham v charlton game i saw 'PIPEX' advetised on the fulham shirts. I decided to research online and was surprised to see how cheap it was. I was going to sign up but read this thread about how terrible they are. I have decided to not switch to pipex. Thank you.

Good decision. Stay away from them.

I was a bit too quick in choosing Pipex and I will research my next ISP more carefully. Quite a few of my friends are with NTL (they are in a cable area) and they've never had any problems. The Direct Debits are always correct and their tech. dept. are polite and very helpful. Not one of them has had to resort to complaining to the company either, which is a big bonus.

NTL doesn't come very highly recommended on the Which? website and my friends can't understand why. Pipex on the other hand are rated as one of the top, yet as you now know yourself, they are terrible. I don't know how Which? came to their conclusions, but I think the best way of choosing an ISP is to look at websites such as this one and read what others are saying.

Pipex have a fancy website and want to promote themselves as modern and forward-thinking. In fact, what they say about themselves is utter garbage, but I was sucked in to going with them because of their fancy website. I didn't realise I could be so gullible.

Good luck in your search for a decent ISP. Whoever you choose, wait a couple of months and then post a comment on this website - good or bad. All comments help.

Thanks, Sara

My experince with Pipex broadband/ Anytime contract is exacrly the same word for word as 'curlew' Beware Pipex!!! I signerd up in July 2006.
Still waiting for them to honour the contract.
How do Pipex get away with such shady practice.

Curlew, you said; " letter I sent to the Chairman, Peter Dubens, at his private address."

would it be possible for you to post the private address, I will write to him.

Many Thanks.

Chairman:

Mike Read
Chief Executive
Pipex
1 Triangle Business Park
Stoke Mandeville
Buckinghamshire
ENG HP22 5BL

I sent a letter to both. You can read the reply I got from Customer Care on page one of this thread. Have you not emailed them? They are meant to take 10 working days to reply but they took 16 for me. However they did offer me the Homecall phone service as an alternative to Anytime, as you will read, but I chose not to accept it. As they have broken their contract I have written them a 14 day letter and then, after the receipt of the Customer Care email in which they confirmed they couldn't yet supply me with the phone service I contracted for, I sent them a termination letter and email. I am now getting out - just waiting for them to send me the MAC. As they are the ones who broke the contract there will be no penalties or termination fees to pay. I think I'm migrating to Madasafish, which Jason says is a very friendly company. It even has an employee from Customer Care called Samara scouring the forum all day looking for problems to solve and questions to answer - what a differece from Pipex!
It's a pity about Pipex though , because £19 for long phone calls and quick broadband was a good deal I thought , but too good to be true as it turned out!

Seems it's not getting any better. In August I switched from a Xtreme package after 3 years of good service to Anytime to include phone for £12.87 per month. Alledgely I could get 6mbps service but at best now get 2.1 mbps and have been overchaged by over £40. Customer service is non existant and it is almost impossible to get through to billing . I'm now considering moving elsewhere after a stream of non answered e mails and being on hold for many many minutes.

Hi,
I don't know if it is of any interest,but I found this site when I was trying to find out why my webfusion hosted site was down again!!!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/897063558?ltl=1161616533
I think I will be signing it.