Broadband
A few years back, I wrote numerous letter of complaint to my old broadband provider. I had happily been with them for a couple years with no problems when the time came up for renewal...

I can't remember the name of them now, something 7? I renewed my contract with them and paid a years service upfront in order to get the cheap deal.

When they renewed my line, I lost broadband service. I spent many an hour on their premium rate number and sent many an email trying to get it fixed. I got replies saying there were problems and it was being sorted / looked into but for 2/3 months, I had no service and no internet having paid the money.

It got to the point where I threatened legal action and went to Ofcom, Watchdog and the financial Ombudsman... I kept hearing nothing but excuses. I had paid up front in one lump sum but my bank told me there was nothing I could do as I paid by a debit card and therefore it was my problem! Had I paid by credit card, they would have instantly given me my money back and investigated on my behalf, cost free! There were many many others in the same situation registered on forums and I was told this and that they were being investigated.

Their IT support was crap and kept fobbing me off with excuses as to why it was not working in my area but it would be sorted. Eventually I went to a small claims court and made a summons for the full amount I had paid for no service. Two days later I was fully reimbursed with my monies and had an apology from the company. Fair do's, I was happy and could now change supplier.

It was only afterwards as I went through the router settings that I realised that actually, it was my fault I had not received service as the router they supplied with with was not set up properly and therefore not set up to receive broadband. I felt a little guilty at such a minuscule mistake.

But... I immediately felt better when the next day I saw in the news the company had gone bust and that no one else would receive money back that I was happy I had got out when I did! All they had to do was tell me to set my router to automatically get it's ip address but they spent 3 months deciding it was not worth the hassle...

I feel bad when decent companies go under for offering competitive prices but the fact they charged £1 a min for support service and couldn't identify a simple button click option in the router settings that they gave me makes me happy I was one of the fortunate people to be able to get my money back when I did. Many hundreds of others had the same problem but lost out as the company collapsed the day after they paid me...

Oh well...

sorry for the length... but it was 3 long months with only the same old downloaded stuff to keep me occupied!!!
(Something funny, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 23:38, Reply)