New Adventures in Software

This posting is brought to you via the magic of 44kbps dial-up Internet.

It’s now four days since my broadband connection suddenly stopped working. An hour of investigating routers, modems and phone lines revealed nothing. A telephone call to Pipex the next morning cleared-up my confusion. Pipex had cancelled my account. Not suspended, it was cancelled, which is apparently irreversible.

Why would they do this to me after over 3 years of a previously harmonious customer-ISP relationship? Because my debit card, which they had been charging every month, had expired four months previously. This was strange because back on 13th August they had sent me an e-mail threatening to disconnect me within 6 days because my card expired at the end of September (a little premature perhaps, but no worries because a phone call sorted it out and we arranged new payment details - or so I thought).

I’d completely forgotten about the summer’s confusion when I called up customer service again on Thursday morning to enquire why I couldn’t connect. Apparently, Pipex had continued to try to charge my card. It failed in September (no idea why since it was still valid) and it failed in October (by which time it had expired). Now rather than doing anything about it at this point (after all, the card was not going to become unexpired), Pipex attempted to charge the card again in November. Guess what? It didn’t work. Still, why not try again in December, just in case? Now it was at this point, on 18th December, that Pipex insists that they sent me an e-mail explaining the situation and outlining what would happen if I didn’t pay up. Somehow this e-mail never found its way to me. I’m not in the habit of randomly deleting e-mail (I still have the message they sent me on 19th December informing me of a change to the customer service phone number), but maybe this mail got lost in transit or got swallowed by an over-zealous spam-filter somewhere en route?

Anyway, I made the point to the helpful woman on the phone that it would have been much more constructive if Pipex had telephoned me or sent a letter to warn me of the impending disconnection. Even another e-mail on the eve of disconnection would have averted the situation. I was annoyed at the inconvenience but the woman told me I could pay the money owed and my connection would be back within 24 hours. Unfortunately, she couldn’t take my payment details but she’d put me through to someone who could. I didn’t appreciate having to wait 24 hours to get back online, but changing ADSL providers is a real headache, so you’ll put up with a lot of shit just as long as they get you connected.

So the helpful woman passed me on to the not-so-helpful man. I made my point again that the situation could easily have been averted with just a little bit more effort to contact me. He was entirely unsympathetic as he took my card details to pay for the previous 4 months and to set-up future payments. Great, so I’d be back online by the next day? No. It was going to take 48 hours, he said. I told him that I was not happy with this but I would make a complaint separately, and I thanked him for his cheerful assistance.

Now the best bit about having your account cancelled rather than suspended is that your mailbox is deleted. The 25 e-mails that I had read via web-mail but not yet downloaded were zapped and all subsequent mails to my address during this 48-hour period would be bounced. Brilliant.

48 hours passed. Still no Internet. Another phone call to Pipex and another unsympathetic call-taker. The woman seemed incredulous that I expected to get back online within 48 hours. This was going to take 7-10 days. My account hadn’t been suspended she reminded me, it had been cancelled! I’m not sure what the justification for such a delay is since, if I was a new customer, I would be online much more promptly.

It was at this point that I raised my voice for the first time. Again I made the point that the situation could have been avoided with better communication. I was informed that it was not their fault if I chose to ignore their single (apparently undelivered) e-mail. I told the woman that the situation was completely unacceptable and that I no longer wanted my account re-enabled. I asked for, and received, assurances that I would not be charged again and that my phone line was not locked by Pipex, so that I could use an alternative provider.

So that’s where we are. Waiting for the new ISP to set-up my ADSL connection, which, because of the weekend, is probably still going to be a few days. Pipex’s inflexible customer service turned a minor misunderstanding into a major inconvenience. They’ve gained yet another thoroughly dissatisfied customer and, without my business, they’ll have ever-so-slightly less money to piss away on David Hasselhoff and the under-performing players of Fulham FC. As for me, I’m getting a connection that is 4 times faster and costs less. And while I can’t vouch for the new ISP’s customer service, I feel confident that it can’t be any worse than Pipex.