Ordered Pipes broadband a fortnight ago - and my activation date was
earlier this week. But I am still waiting for delivery of the 'free'
modem Pipex promised and which they apparently sent out over a week
ago.

Spoke to a guy today n what is laughingly called Customer Support.

"Could take 10 days or could be even longer"
"But I will be billed from my activation date, even though I dont have
a modem to yse?"
"Basically yeah".
"And there's nothing you can do?"
"No, nothing"
"You really couldn't care less could you?"
silence
"OK, well thanks for your help"

No apology, no suggestion that they will try to find out where the
parcel might be
But at least he was honest - his tone was couldn't give a monkey's,
and he made that very plain. Yes im looking forward to a fun time with
Pipex. Another great British Company.

There are a lot of ISPs out there - and most of them must be better
than this lot!

On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 14:03:55 GMT, ngrayling@lineop.com (nick grayling)
wrote:

Shame really, any company is only as good as the person who answers
the phone.

I used to be in management and found it quite easy to make a customer
feel appreciated even if something went wrong. A free or discounted
month would cost them nothing but keep you sweet.

I've just signed up with Pipex but am buying my own hardware.

Geoff Lane

nick grayling wrote:
//
Why didn't you say: "You'd BETTER NOT bill me from my activation date,
considering I will be unable to use your product from that date."

And why not: "I DEMAND you do something about this to my satisfaction or
else..." [Insert your own rights here, preferably from a sound Trading
Standards point of view.]

I totally sympathise, but if you'd been a bit more assertive, you might have
got a better result. And I really don't mean to sound insulting by saying
that. The customer all too often gets a bad deal in the UK, particularly
from cut-price internet retailers as well as service providers.
Unfortunately, the only way to get a result - most of the time - is to take
an authorative role. You shouldn't ask questions which makes it easy for
them to respond in the negative ("but I will be billed from my activation
date?"; "And there's nothing you can do?"). You should tell them exactly
what you expect them to do....demanding to speak to a manager (or somebody
outside New Delhi in Dell's case) if you aren't happy with the solution
offered by the lowest tier of telephone support.

Ring Trading Standards in the morning to find out where you stand. Write
down the direct questions you intend to ask on paper. Then ring Pipex and
play hell if you meet with the same blasé level of incompetence.

FWIW, I've been a Pipex ADSL customer for a couple of years, and I accept
that I might be just lucky having only required telephone support on two or
three occasions, but I've always found them rather professional. Hopefully
you just got the office prat on a bad day.
--
Lee J. Moore
http://cafe-society.com

Hope I don't live to regret this but I've been with Pipex about 3
weeks on 1 Mb service and I love it. Was with ntl indirect for the
previous 5 years and they had their bad moments too.....

On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 14:03:55 GMT, ngrayling@lineop.com (nick grayling)
wrote:

Filthy Rich
Music House

In article <3fc4b0da.5127188@news.ntlworld.com>, ngrayling@lineop.com
says...
Unlucky choice ... if you'd signed up with PlusNet they'd refund your
money for the period from activation to when they actually dispatched
the hardware. Not much help in this situation though.

Hi,
Sorry to hear you've had a bad experiencewith Pipex.
My experience was quite the opposite - 9 days between registering and being
on-line,
including receiving the Speedtouch modem. Am well-pleased with both speed
and reliability.