Pipex Communications Plc .com

Pipex Communications Plc: is this the worlds most unreliable, hypocritical, deceptive, incompetent and disinterested website hosting company?

"King of the Internet"? : Is David Hasselhoff, the star of "Knight Rider", "Baywatch" and the NBC TV show "America's Got Talent", wise to endorse Pipex Telecommunications Plc? Or is he just interested in the mega Pipex fee even if it means associating his name and already tarnished reputation with a company which sucks? "The Hoff", with comically grand pretensions, claims an "Internet Empire". If he reads the correspondence file below, he will realise that in reality he is an Emperor with no clothes. If my horrendous experience is any guide, all of the spin and hype is just that: a load of BS designed to deceive the gullible. I hope for his own sake that this likeable if sometimes intoxicated global celebrity will check out the information published herein before continuing to endorse Pipex. The tongue-in-cheek TV commercial is amusing and entertaining, but the promoted company is hopeless.

REALITY OF MY HORRENDOUS EXPERIENCE WITH PIPEX 123-reg.co.uk

One of the most important requirements for a website is that it is operational on a 24/7/365 basis with minimum downtime. As is evident from the correspondence below my 123-reg.co.uk website, www.tellshell.net has been plagued with bandwidth problems which has put the website out of action for over a week at a time. I invested time and a considerable amount of money in promoting the site on an international basis. This included having teams of people distributing leaflets in London and in The Hague. Each time that I have built site traffic and representation on the search engines it has all been lost after the following notice suddenly appears on the site without any advance notification.

"ERROR: This blog is on hold because its bandwidth has been exceeded. Please contact your blog provider."

Despite numerous phone calls (at 50p per minute), faxed letters and emails, we have never been able to find out from Pipex/123-reg.co.uk what the bandwidth allowance is for the blog package we are on.. We have purchased extra bandwidth countless times but the site remains down and no one at Pipex/123-reg.co.uk seems the least bit concerned.

Please read the astonishing correspondence below with Pipex 123-reg.co.uk which anyone interested in using Pipex products should consider before doing business with this company . You will then be able to make your own judgement on what the correct answer is to the question posed in the heading of this page. You will see that there is also a major question mark over the honesty and integrity of Pipex/123-reg.co.uk. Unfortunately we were taken in by the false promises of good service and reliability. We have never even received the courtesy of a response from Mike Read.

If you have had a bad experience with any Pipex product please contact me via the email address below and I may be willing to feature your case as a further warning to anyone considering using Pipex.

I was contacted on 3 October 2006 by Mr James Menzies advising of his appalling experience with Pipex. His comments can be read on...

http://www.reviewcentre.com/review208337.html

On 28 December 2006, I heard from another thoroughly dissatisfied client of Pipex (name and email address have been provided). Click here to read his story

On 5 February 2007, I received an email from "Andy" who descibes Pipex "as a bunch of tossers" (surname and email address supplied).

Click here to read what Andy has to say about Pipex

On 18 February 2007, I received an email from "Sophist" concerning unspecified download limits in relation to Pipex Fair Usage Policy.

Click here to read the relevant correspondence

Email received 29 March 2007 from "Alan":

Hi there, I've set up a blog documenting my experiences with Pipex Homecall.

http://mypipexhell.wordpress.com

Worst company I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with.

Alan

Fax from Lorna Hamilton to Pipex 14 May 2007

EXTRACT: We have already lost money because of this and will continue to do so until the issue is solved. Our website has online learning tools that our clients need to use! We are a charity (not-for-profit, limited by guarantee) and this situation has the potential to bankrupt us – seriously!

While desperately trying to resolve this problem... Read the correspondence

Email from "Carleeddie", 31 October 2007

Hi alfred pipex have many names webfusin,bulldog,123-reg and more thay call them sistar companys but thay are all pipex. anyway i have a website with pipex and i upgraded not that long back and i have a limit of 25gb bandwidth i have never used that much i have had like 10gb left each month about a week ago pipex tried withdrawing £313.08p out of my bank for bandwidth there's know way my site has used that so i looked at my charts in my control panel and most of this bandwidth was used in 2 days i phoned pipex after waiting i got through and i got know where the women i spoke to just said send a e mail to them that she could not do anythink i got the feeling that she could, t be ased i pay £12 a month for 3gb space and 1 sql database and php enabled & 25gb bandwidth. I can, t believe how much they charge for bandwidth if i go over my limit they charge £50 for every 1 gb i still waiting for a reply off them because i can, t afford that my site is only a hobby and i make know money at all that's how i found your site i Googled problems with pipex and got your site pipex i will let you know how i get on.

Email from "Carleeddie", 9 December 2007

Hi alfred I have had to change my host because pipex sent me another bill for £100 and they keep trying to take that £312.08 out of my bank and I don,t have it so the bank charged my for money being returnd so I stoped my direct debit with pipex and swaped hosts I will never use pipex again not in my life thanks

Email from "Daz" in Spain, 17 November 2007

They have been off all day today, Saturday 17th November 2007 when ever i send a support question to 123 and webfusion, i hear nothing back ever there isn't even anything posted up on their site saying it is down today.............. best wishes daz in spain

Email from Mhairi Gordon 4 February 2008

hi alfred, i'm a disgruntled pipex customer and wondering if my suggestions can be added your webpage? they're most relevant to UK pipex customers, but could give people in other countries some ideas about getting some action re their complaints:

• stop phoning the call centre and write directly to the chief executive: Mr Mike Read Chief Executive Pipex 1 Triangle Business Park Stoke Mandeville Buckinghamshire HP22 5BL

• report your problems with pipex to the communications watchdog Ofcom:

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/internet/

I'm just starting the process with pipex, but when I used the above with my former ISP, i got about £600-worth of refunded broadband fees. Many thanks and keep up the good work,

Mhairi Gordon (northern England, UK)

Emails from Caroline Blair 18 November 2008

FIRST EMAIL

Dear Alfred

Thank you for putting these Pipex correspondences on the website pipexcommunicationsplc. We too have had horrendous problems with Pipex. It is "nice" to know we are not alone. We are a small company and Pipex has cost us a lot of time and money through their incompetence.

I hope it eventually resolved for you. We are still thumping tables with them.

Kind regards,
Caroline

Caroline Blair
Accountant, Global Integration
+44 (0) 118 9328910

SECOND EMAIL

Is it possible still to post comments to the website or is it old? I too would like to warn others of how wrong it can all go.

Kind regards,
Caroline

Caroline Blair
Accountant, Global Integration
+44 (0) 118 9328910

Friday, December 19, 2008 8:26 PM
Subject: PIPEX ARE RUBBISH

Hi - Thought Id add to the letters about Pipex. I joined them 2 years ago (on a one year contract) and they have been overcharging me for months and I had been telephoning them, Writing to them and e mailing them consistently and even had a letter from them at beginning of October this year admitting that I should be on their £14.99 per month system - which means ive been overcharged for a long time, and I decided to leave Pipex (after almost 2 years) and they then had the nerve to take out of my Direct Debit account £100.86.

I would suggest that anyone looking for a Broadband supplier, would be much better looking elswhere , and I am now getting phone calls from them telling me I owe them -£5.22. I cannot understand how they have the nerve to ask for this, with all the overpayments, they owe me.

Cheers
Cyjan (email address supplied)

Latest Pipex news: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35465

Also worth checking the following Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipex#Pipex_Customer_Service

"If you are an existing Pipex / Webfusion customer and are experiencing repeated problem with service levels, support and downtime for your web site(s) I strongly urge you to report them to Trading Standards and to the BBC's Watchdog. If enough of us make an issue, perhaps something will be done! "

"Want my opinion? If you are thinking of hosting with Pipex, Webfusion or it's sister companies, don't!!! The downtime is getting far beyond a joke and what I think of customer services can't even me worded on a family website. I'm starting to get the feeling that if we (users) aren't aware of the downtime, well, it didn't happen. What is wrong with a courtesy email apologising for downtimes as and when they happen, eh!? Now that is customer service. Proactive firefighting. Keeping quiet on the subject smacks of a cover up, for me! To take a line from Monty Python:"

"Trying to reach customer support, but the lines are continually busy. Guess I'm not the only one ticked off about now, eh! Got through, waiting an email back. More to the point, reminded them that I'm waiting for an email back and added my aggravation over continual downtime on the main server to the list. "

"I spoke briefly with you over the issue with the extraordinary time the Mango server was offline and playing up. What recompense are you offering myself (and presumably the offer resellers and site owners affected) for the stress and downright aggravation caused by this issue? Personally I find it both inconceivable and negligent that an ISP company of your size needed almost two weeks to fix a server. My friends similarly find it incredulous that you couldn't just swap over to a backup box and restore to that when you realised it wasn't going to be straight forward. Albeit /just/ a low end resellers server without the associated levels of redundancy, we cannot but wonder if you'd appear as slow if it was say Dabs or Dixons websites that vanished off the net..."

"Spoke briefly with Andrew T. ( hosting-customerservices@pipex.net ) about making a claim for losses and he will look into it considering the extraordinary situation with the Mango server. Now to compose a polite but firm email explaining that, no, honestly, I'm REALLY, REALLY wound up over it all!"

"There's that many trying I can't get through to customer services ( 0115 917 0000 - option 6 ) so I'm spending - I'm wasting - the morning reading Pipex/Webfusion's convoluted Terms & Conditions before I take the matter to Trading Standards and seek legal advice later today."

"...given this isn't my first issue with the way Webfusion has been managed since being taken over by Pipex so I firmly stand by my extremely negative feelings about the company as a whole and would never again recommend them to anyone..."

The above negative comments about PIPEX (and many more) can be found on the webpage below:

Found on another website (link below comments) under the heading of "Worst Host"

"By far the worst host I have come across is 123reg.co.uk - a part of the Pipex mess. Their control panel is seriously useless and outdated and their whole system, including ftp, email, redirecting and DNS changes all crawl along so slowly that I found myself cursing in both amazement and frustration at just how very very very bad a service provider/host can be. My own personal control panel that I wrote (in php/perl) for my clients far out-classes this multi-national corporation's efforts. Laughable. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with it."

"radio2XS.com moved to WebFusion which is, as another poster says, "part of the Pipex mess" in late 2003. It was good until Pipex took over the previous owners, Host Europe. Since then, it's got worse and worse. Previously excellent customer service has become awful (employees are probably now treated like s**t) and outages are almost daily - sometimes for 10 to 30 minutes. Recomment a GOOD one to me someone, please!
Cheers
LDP"

"WebFusion - Bloody hell what a complete nightmare. They used to be a very good company but they were taken over by Pipex and they started cramming everyone onto their servers and were constantly going down. This happened for the last 6 months of me being there and I was tearing my hair out at how nobody was answering their phones and my customers just couldn't access my site. If you did a search on webfusion + issues you'll soon realise how bad those crazy buggers are."

"Basically their service has been $hite for 3 months now, with frequent server downtime and screwed up DNS. In early November, I pointed out to them that they were falling way short of their 99.9% uptime guarantee ("99.9% Uptime - We make sure that your site is available day and night." http://www.webfusion.co.uk/whypipex.shtml) and asked for a refund, to which I received the following intriguing response: "While the 99.9% on our website is based on previous performance and what we strive to achieve for our customers, we would not offer a service level agreement against achieving this." I replied asked on which particular historical period the 99.9% claim was based and received no reply. How many of their other claims are fraudulent?"

Website owner and publisher, Alfred Donovan, 8054 Washington Street (b 143), Port Richey, Florida 34668 USA: Email: alfred@shellnews.net

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