Beautifulexpe - Why don't you post your direct phone number and extension number, and your full name on this site? There are many customers who are having problems with Homecall and, since you are adamant you will be able to resolve their problems, you should give them your details without hesitation. Or are you all talk and no action, just like your fellow colleagues?

I too wonder if Pipex are aware of your abuse to customers on this site.

Hello,

Im with PipexHomecall and ive been with them for about 4 weeks now. Ive had nothing but bother in the likes of slow download speeds very high latency(ping). Ive spoke to them on phone every 2nd day for the 4 weeks ive been on and nothing has been done about it. They keep asking me to fill out emails full of speed tests which ive done twice now. Every time i phone them its like groundhog day, they ask the same questions and ask me to do the same tests, you would think all my previous conversations where noted on my account on there system.

Most recent thing ive asked them to do is to move me onto a less crowded server and to turn interleaving of on my connection. One guy said he has requested BT to do so but that was last week, and another guy told me "this is a service that we dont provide". They even had the cheek to say "BT have found no faults on your line so theres nothing much more we can do about it".

I was with Pipex about 3 year ago before i changed to my prevoius provider Vault5.LTD, but when those folded i wanted to go back to pipex as they where very good the time i was with them. Only thing i didnt know is that i joined pipexhomecall instead of pipex. Back when i was with pipex i had a high latency problem aswell and they changed me onto another server straight away and fixed all my problems.

As you can tell im really frustrated as i cant use my internet for the things i use it for which is online gaming which is impossible to do when you have a ping of 200 as any of you gamers out there will know, i really dont know what to do,i cant get out of contract for atleast 12weeks (ofcom said you need to give them 12weeks to fix connection before breaching contract) and im not really wanting to phone them anymore as its just the same conversation everyday which ends in "we will ask BT to test your line" AGAIN! which always comes back with no faults. I know that theres no fault on my end as ive used ADSL for years now and all my problems started as soon as i switched to pipexhomecall.

If we cant get through to them then maybe i agree with your sara, cant see how they cant get away with this. Im sure in the contract somewhere there must be something about the level of performance they need to stick to but i cant see it.

There's a lot of obvious frustration about PIPEX here. I sympathise with the person who works at PIPEX, I think we all agree ultimately it's not your fault, but all of this seems to be a much wider problem across all ISP's in relation to poor customer service.

I'm not defending PIPEX, they must be aware by now that they have a customer service problem, particularly in relation to billing and also connections/migrations.

If you're experiencing problems with your ISP the worst thing to do is become hostile, this makes it so much harder to get anything resolved and more importantly it becomes harder to switch away to a new provider.

If you think a petition against PIPEX is a good way to highlight the issue I'm all for it, but I feel that these problems are industry wide issues that can only be resolved with tougher regulation.

---

Jason Lloyd

moneysupermarket.com

They are just over crowding there servers in my opinion. They say they use a 50:1 ratio on there servers but im betting its alot more, it proves my thoughts just last night when i actuallly managed to play one of my games at 2am for about an hour with a steady 30ms ping. Then woke up this morning and pings are sky high again. But they refuse to move me onto another server which i feel is not right.

Hi

I'm new to the forum, but am so relieved that others have had such a problem with Pipex!!!!!!!

Mine started on 10th August, when I moved from rented accommodation in Reading back home to Morecambe to buy a house. As most people who buy a house will know, it's not a quick process!
I contacted Pipex who said there is no homemover policy as such, but you have 60 days to reactivate the account, so thinking this was reasonable the account was cancelled. Immediately £216 was taken from my account by them, and unless i'm mistaken this is not a 60 day grace period????
Being quite reasonable I left it as long as possible hoping the house purchase would go through quickly, but it was not meant to be so in order for me to get my money back I had to activate the internet at my parents house as an interim measure. Bearing in mind there is no computer there so internet access in entirely useless, but that £216 is extremely vital upon buying a new house!
So this new account was activated on 28th September. As luck would have it we managed to move soon after - but I was relieved as I was told the refund would be given in 7 days. Skip to a few weeks later - no refund. Numerous calls to Pipex - your query will be passed to the finance department who can only be reached by e-mail. Plenty of e-mails later - we have a backlog of refunds. A further phone call later I am told a payment is missing from the previous account and I cannot be given a refund until this is paid - ok so I should have been told, but finally things can get moving - I WISH!!!
Now I am told the refund will be given in 28 days approx - 5 weeks since the intial 'it will be 7 days' fiasco.
Now after a letter detailing how I want my refund, they broke their terms and conditions and I do not want their service as they have not heard of customer service, I get a reply stating their terms and conditions (like I don't know) and that if I try to cancel the internet at my parents house - even with re-joining after 12 months worth of payments will be taken and will be non-refundable.
I can't understand how they can be so incompetent and uncaring of people's situation. How can I be charged £200+ for cancelling a service that I was forced to take in the first place to get money back that shoul;dn't have been taken, or the fact that they have no policy for normal home-movers??????????

Sorry to rant so much, but I think a petition to Watchdog is a fantastic idea, as it's obvious they can't be bothered to do anything about it if you complain in the normal way!
Strangely enough prior to this the connection was fine :)

How can people take cash and offer a service they can't deliver upon is beyond me, and the 12 month taking money issue is a joke.

I wish we had never used the company as it feels like there's nothing we can do, so any help is completely appreciated!!

Sarah

Hi Sezzika - I would suggest that you send a recorded delivery letter to BEN SIMS at Pipex. Don't bother sending letters to the Managing Director, Chief Exec. or the Chairman - they will not reply. After much letter-writing, I was finally able to rescind my contract without any cancellation fee, so it is worth persevering. I'm sure you don't need any help in composing a letter, but if you do, let me know and I will try and help. Stick to your guns and good luck. Sara.

Thank you very much Sara, I was on the line of customer care address, did you contact Ben Sims at the customer care address (there seems to be several for the same place)?

Really appreciate the advice - hopefully i'll get some favourable response ;)

Thanks so much - Sarah

(Just out of interest anybody actually found an ISP that provides what they advertise? and they would recommend?)

Hi Sezzika, send the letter to the same address Pipex ask you to write into for all correspondence (I don't have Ben Sims' letter with me at the moment - sorry). I actually sent my last letter to Peter Dubens, Chairman, at his home address and he must have passed it on to Ben Sims for me. Send it recorded delivery in any case. If you wish to rescind your contract (which legally you should be able to) tell him this. Don't ask him, simply state that you wish to cancel your contract because of the X, Y & Z and you also request a Mac Code.
Good luck. (PS) I cannot find any good reviews about any ISPs. They are all bad in one way or another. I have until the end of November to switch to another provider otherwise my Mac Code from Pipex will be useless, but I'm having real trouble finding a decent ISP. I was going to opt for AOL, but a friend of mine, who knows a lot about stuff like this, told me to forget AOL because they have over-subscribed and provide poor service as a result. He recommended BT, but I'm not sure about them because they want to tie you into an 18 month contract. I noted that Virgin do not have any minimum contract, so I may opt for this company. I wouldn't like to be tied into another 12 month minimum contract, not get the full package/support again and have to spend loads of time writing letters.
Let me know how you get on. If you would any help in the drafting of your letter to Ben Sims, you can e-mail me directly, but I will wait to hear from you first. Kind regards, Sara.

Sezzika - I've just read my last post to you and I've left out a couple of words - sorry, but I'm in a rush - I'm not usually rubbish at composing letters.... Bye for now, Sara.

Regarding an ISP, I am hearing good things about Madasafish and Zen, but as Jason pointed out, this does seem to be a universal problem.

By the way, my 8MB adslmax connection has now stabilised at 3MB. Not great by any means, but I think much of this is down to the internal wiring in my house affecting my sync speeds. The thing that I've noticed about being on the service is the absolutely wild fluctuations. Last night at about midnight I was getting 4MB. Earlier at 6pm I was getting 800K. I think the whole adslmax system needs looking at by BT. It's just so full of holes and quirks that it's literally impossible to get a stable connection.

What I'm gonna do next year once I can contract away from Pipex is activate another phone line that I've got in the house and use it solely for broadband. I'll get good sync speeds then and should have a much better connection.

Best

YC

"I feel that these problems are industry wide issues that can only be resolved with tougher regulation."

Agree, but meanwhile Pipex seem to want to push things that much further than the rest.

As an example, read

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=pipex&Number=2745378&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=

and other posts there.

Hi Sara,

Where i have been, i thought it was just me!

I was talked into the £6.50 deal through Pipex Homecall. I called them after a few days of joining because i was shocked at how slow the connection speed was and i cant believe i actually get disconnected - on broadband!!

i called to cancel and they said as i had plugged the box in i would have to pay the 12mths up front, i explained i must have 7/14 days grace period but no they were adamant i didnt. i explained how do we know what their connection is like until we plug in the box?

i was with Tesco before and they were great, no issues - only left to save money, what a huge mistake.

Any advice on how we can get rid of my account?
Are they right that there is no cooling off period?

Ive been told by pipex that i need to give them at least 12weeks to fix my connection before i can breach the contract. Its been 4 weeks and im getting more and more annoyed each day. The main problems i think with ppls connections is that they are either overcrowding there servers ( which i have asked to be moved onto a new server with lower ratio,didnt happen) or they are telling us our connection can handle more then it actually can. My connections max when i moved in a year ago was 1mb and now they seem to think i can get 8. Sending to much data through your line can cause all sorts of problems. I think this because a few sites i check my availablity on there packages and they say i can only get 2mb, and the problem about overcrowding,well, i was with pipex 2 year ago and they where great, i had a high ping problem with them and they moved me onto a less crowded server and all was fixed. the only reason i left pipex is my friend started his own hosting/gameservers/adsl company and i got my adsl from him which was reallly got as he didnt have many customers and i was about the only one on his server :D. But after things didnt go right for him i had to go elsewhere and the mistake i made was thinking i was going back to my original pipex when i had actually joined pipexhomecall.

Anyways, ive asked for my line to be capped to 1mb to see if it settles my ping(only on a temp basis), but even this i think could take a few weeks as they have NO control over there own servers.

scissors78, go to ofcom about your situation.

thank god someone is trying to do something about this, ive been posting about it on my regular forums but no one seems to be able to recommend anything or help in any way :(

i stupidly didnt research enough b4 signing up to this mob which im really angry at myself for as ui usually do! if i had knew there was traffic shaping getting used on everyone and not just heavy users i obviously would have looked elsewhere to make sure i was getting the service i was paying for! ive never had above 20k/sec using any torrent client since i connected and believe it or not i use it for legitimate reasons so im getting punished with throttling for no reason, paing for 8 meg broadband and downloading at 20k/sec?! wtf

anyways, ive phoned a few times to try get out of the contract but no joy and the ignorant bastards had the cheek to lie to me down the phone saying they dont use any sort of traffic shaping, mentioning the national outcry all over forums on the web didnt seem to change his tune either

bottom line is, i need to get out of this contract as the painfully slow downloads are driving me insane, so if anyone has any ideas on what to do i too would greatly appreicate it, Sara do you think this letter sent directly to the guy you mentioned would help my case?

another thing id like to mention is, when using the adsl speed test they identify my isp as Tiscali, and the pipex homecall guy said i was on the Tiscali network due to my area, is this ok? as you'll all know they severley throttle p2p as well..

thanks

Tony

I've just tried sending a letter to Ben Sims, but not sure if he's still there or not, a woman replied to the letter apolgising for the mess up,and that she's raised the refund (like i've not heard that before) and as a gesture of goodwill she's giving me one months free broadband on the new line it's been actiavted at !!!!!! Wow what an offer, almost makes up for the hassle.........
So it's yet another letter saying I do not want this service - i'm going to try Sara's method and just keep sending letters, that way perhaps i'll eventually get it cancelled. On a positive note Natwest have been excellent and blocked Pipex from trying to take any money, so at least they can't sting me for more funds - worst case scenario I lose the original money taken but at least they can't keep taking more!
I think the only thing to do is write numerous letters, cancel any direct debits as you're in dispute and hope someone in the customer service department actually has the right attitude to sort things out.

In the meantime as we can't be without the internet, we've connected with Virgin no 12 month contract service - it was connected v. quickly and the line speed seems pretty good so far (though fluctuates over the 10 days)

Maybe a submission to Watchdog is a good idea, as more and more people seem to be having so much trouble - can't believe a company can operate this way and keep running!