You obviously haven't been on the other end of the equation. As a pipes employee you aren't aware how difficuolt it is to get hold of Pipex CustomerServices. Last week for instance I was kept waiting on the phone a whole hour when I was cut off without even having spoken to anyone yet. When you do get through, the representitives aren't very nice or helpful to you, and when you ask to be put through to someone higher up you get told that they are all busy. In my previous dial up ISP Onetel, they would IMMEDIATELY put you through to someone higher up with real power to help you there and then,
Anyway, Pipex have been selling a service for months that wasn't in fact available, but did they tell us that when we joined? No. How honest is that? Did they send an email or letter with a user name and password and did they ever at any stage contact people to say that the Anytime service wan't there to be had? No, No , NO. I t was all up to the customer to TRY to contact Customer Services to try to find out why nothing was happening.
Not only that but our online bills were grossly wrong and even after being told they were put right they continued to show the same errors.
So don't start calling us sheep. We've suffered from a truly miserable experience. I've written to the Chairman at his private address and eventually even got to know about Customer Care which took 16 working days to reply. I also emailed ISPA with my complaints. Eventually I sent a registered letter threatening to leave if they didn't supply the service. They then offered to transfer my phone calls to Homecall but the thought of getting even more embroiled in the coils of the Pipex organisation was just too much. My trust in them was nil by this time. So I pulled out, got my MAC and have just been told by Pipex that as a gesture of goodwill they will not charge me the 9 months balance of my contract! Some goodwill! I couldn't be bothered to reply that the contract was not valid anyway and that there was no way they were entitled to any cancellation fees, goodwill or not. It was I that should be charging them for all the wasted time and expense in trying to sort things out.

In my original message I had showed the cost incorrectly as £12.87 for BB and phone, it is should be £19. The original figure was based on the confusing variation in monthly billing I have received, between £12.87 and £33.08, with no explanation from Pipex. I am still waiting to receive a refund from an extra payment taken in August and the reasoning for the varied billing

I was with Pipex until July this year when I had real problems with intermittent broadband connection. Pipex couldn't resolve the issue, though they did continue to take my £19.99 monthly subscription fee. I decided to migrate to another ISP and once I had received my migration code, Pipex didn't want to know. My main issue, however, was that Pipex continued to take my monthly subscription and I could only stop this by cancelling my bank card. Despite letters, phone calls and emails to Pipex customer services and billing department, Pipex refuse to refund 2 months' subscription over paid to them.

WARNING - when you migrate from Pipex, cancel your bank card/credit card to stop them taking your cash.

To the Pipex employee - how do I get my money back?

Pipex are in meltdown

I have been a customer of 123 reg for over 5 years and recently ordered a dedicated server from them. The whole experience has been a shambles. Despite what they say on this forum all calls to the dedicated server team are via a 0900 50p per min line.

I intend to write to the chairman and ceo at home, they have not responded when I wrote to the head office. If they dont intend to resopnd I intend to fax all stockbrokers in the uk with a warning about the company.

I have had the same incorrect billing issues with pipex, they also have not collected any of the Direct Debits since I joined in August and have now sent me a letter stating their intention to collect all oustanding monies two weeks before Xmas. ( good timing )

After sending many e-mails to Pipex customer services I have had two recent communications from Clive Frake on both occasions his response did not relate to my enquiries,perhaps they have a list of standard responses from which they select. (a real wind-up)

This standard response process would help them deal with the backlog buildup, there would be no need to investigate the complaint and type up a responce relevant to the enquiry. (any old crap will do)

On two other occasions I have telephoned Pipex and was promised the invoice ammounts would be corrected, I am still waiting.
Is it possible that these fraudulant invoice claims are meant to distract us from the performance issues ???

Pipex refuse to phone you back and expect you to phone more than one department in your quest for a resolution, why can't one customer support operative deal with all aspects of any enquiry. ( is income from these calls an operating requirement )

Efficient, effective and honest Communication by E-mail is the only way Pipex will resolve the escalating issues with their customers, they need to recognise that encouraging customers to phone with complaints will alienate customers and staff.

I am having an absolute nightmare with Pipex and am unable to sort it.

To anyone else reading this: I would recommend you avoid Pipex like the plague.

I was a "happy" Pipex customer until I tried to move house. During this move, they managed to connect up a phone line to somewhere other than my new house and were incapable of resolving this. In agreement with them, my contract was terminated and I returned to BT. All well, until they have decided to try and charge me for breaking the contract. I have been back in touch many times with them and allegedly had all charges quashed and the account closed, so they said. However, I am still being pursued by them for charges on an account they still say is active. Bloody brilliant for a phone line and BB connection that does not go to my house when I have a new contract with BT

As with the common theme behind all of these postings, the customer services department are incompetent and are unwilling to let me talk to a manager. I have written in and emailed with little success.

How did you get the home address for Peter Dubens? Perhaps you could send it to me via email so I may have some favourable success such as yourself.

Hi folks

I have had so many problems with Pipex, I set up www.pipexproblems.co.uk

If you get opportunity, stop by and have a moan, and meet some fellow victims!

I have just read February WHICH? where it says... you wanted info more frequently on broadband... here's our top three. Now I am pretty sure Pipex was well thought of last year and in addition to the WHICH? tables I think WHICH? editorialised favourably about Pipex. If I am right I think it is disappointing that WHICH? did not mention Pipex in the Feb issue. Maybe 'you' could be in touch. WHICH? is in my local library so may be in yours. Hope this is helpful. Good luck, Fedora.

Which is all about selling, not much good about service and is not as good as it would like to think it is. We don't have a local library, but I have seen this publication before and do not have much time for it.

Hello.

I have been with pipex for a couple months now and the speed has been terrible, I was getting dialup speeds this evening. I am on the Pipex Max 8mb service. I have also learned they throttle ports to about 20kbps ish and my online gaming experience has been terrible with major lag. To be honest when I signed up for a 8mb broadband service I expect to be able to go online and play bf2 etc and be able to download stuff.

I have of course been in contact with pipex over this but blame it on BT. I was with AOL 512k before pipex and got better speeds on that. I also done all the usual checks inc doing it through modem and router etc.

Being that I have only been with them for 2months do I have any chance of leaving without paying leaving fees' , If i cancle my direct debit will that sort it.

Thanks, Aaron.

Most online games connect on different ports and so I doubt throttling would stop you doing anything. You could argue that you have not received the service you are paying for and cancel.

---

'Now, I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'

Hi,
I signed up with Pipex 2 months ago having been contacted by their sales department. I specifically emphasised to them that my household had a router and that with 2 teenagers and my wife we were heavy private users. At that time I had been with BT and had never experienced any problems with them about our usage . We were assured by the sales representative that any download restrictions were many times that of our current BT contract. I repeatedly emphasised that I did not want any limits. They even agreed to contact me 24 hours later when I again emphasised and they confirmed that there would be 'no problems'.

Last wekend my broadband connection (1MB) suddenly went so slow that often my homepage would disconnect because of the time taken to download it. (Frequently 20 seconds or more). I presumed it was a technical fault but left it until the monday when I sent them an E mail. By tuesday they did not respond, so I rang their technical support. I was told by the engineer that because of my high usage, my connection had been grouped together with other high users and we had a restricted bandwidth which we had to share.
He suggested that I restrict my usage to avoid peak times of 5pm to 11pm. I work for a living! I also have to sleep! When does he suppose that I am able to do either?

He told me that he did not have the authority to resolve this but put me through to the Customer Services Department. As you can imagine I ended up with a pleasant lady who clearly works in a call centre operation with no authority to resolve anything. After explaining the above and with no satisfation I asked to speak with the duty manager. He refused to speak to me on the phone despite several requests. His response (via the operator) was that if I didnt like it then to cancel my contract and go elsewhere.!

Had I not been misled, I would never haqve signed up with this company.

I have now sent a formal letter of complaint but having read the above I am not confident of much success.

I am impressed with the other members who have written to the private address of the CE and the MD. I appreciate there are legal reasons why you may not want to print them, however, I would be grateful if you would confirm their full names and their office locations. The rest is down to me.

Thank You

You might be interested in downloading the following PDF (right click):

http://www.inteltab.com/pipex-bandwidth-bandits.pdf

Enjoy!

Hi ppl,

Well I've just recently joined Pipex Homecall on the 23rd Feb 2007. Costs £29.99 a month, up to 8Mb Broadband with Unlimited usage allowance and Anytime - savings on calls.

Problem is ever since I've connected up my connection speed seems to slow drastically to a complete halt when just browsing Web pages. I thought this was just because of the 14 day stabilisation period for my broadband to find the appropriate speed. Phoning support even iterated that.

However, its well past that period now and every day during peak times between 5 - 9 pm my connection still slows to an abrupt halt.
Just last night, 14th March, at approx 7:30 pm it happened again. Whats more is the strange number of Byte Errors I regularly receive shown in the Internet status window. It was approx 700 Received Byte Errors last night at that time for connection duration of approx 49 minutes.

I phoned and emailed tech support about my slow speeds and they asked me to fill out a speed check form, checking speeds 5 times in a 24 hr period. I did that, answered other diagnostic questions on that form and replied.
They then replied next day and told me that I had violated their fair usage policy and that was downloading over 1 Gig in a week.

Quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

The reason you were receiving slow speeds is because you were being affected
by the fair usage policy (please see policy below)

Our records show you are no longer being affected & should have normal
connectivity

Thank you
Garry




-------------------------------------------------------------------------

After looking at your account, it would appear that due to our fair usage
policy, you have been placed in a 'restricted use' group as it has been
deemed by our network engineers that you have been exceeding acceptable
levels of bandwidth usage.

Our fair usage policy has been set up as a safety measure to protect the
integrity of all of our customers connections. Anyone who has a cumulative
bandwidth (uploads & downloads) 1Gb and over in any given week (7 day period
between 6pm - 11pm); will find themselves subject to this policy.

We will be reviewing your usage weekly and your service will be resumed to
normal as soon as we believe usage to be acceptable.

The placement of your account within our fair usage policy will be for a
period of 7 days. We would advise that you monitor your usage to ensure that
your usage is not excessive in this period.

Fair usage policy:

4.5 You acknowledge that the Broadband Service is provided to other users
and that We, in conjunction with the relevant Access Provider, seek to
preserve network integrity and to avoid network degradation for the benefit
of our other customers and other users of the network. If, in Our reasonable
opinion, We believe that Your use of the Broadband Service has or may
adversely affect such network integrity or may cause network degradation We
may change Your Transmission Speed or manage Your use of Our Broadband
Service as We see fit in the circumstances. This includes, but is not
limited to, any circumstances where You are running an application or
program that places excessive bandwidth demands on the Broadband Service for
continued periods. Although We have not applied a fixed limit or a cap to
the amount of data that You may download and / or upload, We may also impose
a limit on your usage capacity at any time at Our sole discretion if Your
usage is affecting or may affect other users'enjoyment of the Broadband
Service or of the wider network operated by the Access Provider.

Kind Regards,

Technical Support



I already phoned support about this issue and what options I have are to either:

1. Pay the full 12 month subscription if I want to terminate the contract before the full 12 months are up

2. Have a technical issue that tech support cannot solve in which then they can terminate my service

3. Write a letter of complaint

4. Talk to tech support about how best to use my connection when the fair usage policy is in effect


They've even closed down my issue so I can't reply via emails and get a response now.

I am now left with the constant infuriating problem of my connection coming to a complete utterly slow hang during peak times every day, over and over again. The only solutions are to unplug and plug in the speedtouch USB modem cable or restart my PC to get connected again. I think it only happens once in a day sometime during peak hours.

There is also the strange issue with Byte errors I keep receiving. Not only that I am using Zonealarm Security Suite, version 7 and it keeps blocking these incoming TCP (flags:S) which are related to the svchost.exe program from source DNSs (such as 212-139-188
-159.dynamic.dsl.as9105.com) and UDP packets.

Today is the 15th March, 11:48 pm and I've currently received 2 Byte Errors with connected duration of 2 hrs, 11 mins. Zonealarm firewall is still blocking those TCP (flags:S) Source DNS and UDP packets.
Zonealarm Program Control is also still blocking incoming connections to svchost.exe of source DNSs, such as hx-cache-2.ns.uk.tiscali.com.
All this happens as well during the morning, afternoon and late evenings (after 9 pm) and the connection works fine. Just when it nears or within peak hours that my connection comes to a complete stand still once and I need to go unplug then plug-in.
I ping www.bbc.co.uk when this begins to happen as a diagnostic and the following message appears:

'Ping request could not find host www.bbc.co.uk. Please check the name and try again.'


Phone filters have been swapped, TCP/IP stack has been reset and I've reinstalled my OS twice.

I've also had a similar problem with Orange broadband previously but much worse. I couldn't even dial-up during peak times.

What can I do?

Regards

Albert