Rant Migrating from Pipex

[rynnor]

I think at this point I'd start doing everything by snailmail and using recorded delivery - for one thing it scares em because they know that they cant worm out of this stuff and you mean business.

Secondly it gives you the highest level of proof to back up your claims against them if they dont sort you out toot sweet!

I'm currently having a fun dispute with Tesco Pet Insurance after they ignored both phoned and written terminations of my insurance and charged me for several months health insurance for a dead dog - lol!

 

[Ch3tan]

Jesus christ brooky, talk about scare mongering.

Let me guess, it's the same way someone "hacked" your steam account via chat?

 

[Dark Orb Choir]

fuck you chet, its the fucking truth........


i was only repeating what i was told by the guy who was on the project when o2 bought BE, and i had no reason to doubt him


as far as the steam account hack, that is tru as well ,or are you calling me a cheater?

 

[Dark Orb Choir]

i worked at o2 for 4 and a half years in tech support (in the samne building that the BE adsl project was being done) dealing closely with other tech teams, i knew the project guy really well, i had no reason to doubt what he was saying.


this isnt something i have read in a conspiracy website, i heard it first hand.


and Kryten, thanks for the negative rep

 

[nath]

I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't calling you a liar. I was just saying that regardless of what you heard, it's not as simple as that to break in to someone's machine.

 

[SheepCow]

Urge to care falling, move on or face wrath.

 

[WPKenny]

Meanwhile, back on topic...

Still no MAC. They've got till the end of tomorrow then it's a phonecall to them and then OFCOM.

 

[Kryten]

WPKenny: Don't forget ISPA first and foremost, they were my first port of call and I had action taken and problems solved the next day. Of course if they're really getting on your nerves feel free to merely CC Ofcom in. It's a shambles to see such a successful company treat it's paying customers like this.

 

[Chilly]

brooky, the only way theyd be able to snoop is if they foun some flaw in windows and were exploiting it. Yes, they have access to your LAN via the router, but as long as you dont run any open shares from windows you are safe.

It's clearly bullshit, the bloke was probably blowing his own horn trying to sound impressive. He was probably just logging http requests.

 

[WPKenny]

Bastards. Really, really, really didn't want this to happen. 5 days and no MAC. Arse biscuits.

 

[WPKenny]

Another fun bit of info for those reading...

I called up Pipex today. They couldn't explain why my two emails had been ignored.
What they did tell me is that my second request had gone to Provisioning, someone had looked at my account while scratching their arse and chatting to their mate and decided that as I already had a MAC on the account (the invalid one which is why they were requesting a second one) that they didn't need to do anything else. They didn't bother to tell me this though so left me hanging until I chased it. Fuckers.
What she did say was that after actually bothering to look at my details, I have a certain type of ADSL connection that needs a special MAC code. All very technical. In fact she confessed she had no idea what it all meant but the person who ordered my MAC before hadn't bothered looking at what type of connection I had.

She assured me that THIS time the request would go off with a flag on it to make sure it was a special request due to the way I'm connected at the exchange.

I think what she was trying to say is that my exchange was LLU'd after I got my ADSL and I was never regraded. Which makes sense.

So if the first person I spoke to at Pipex had bothered to read my account details instead of wondering what he was going to have to dinner that evening I might not have wasted £5-£10 on phonecalls to them chasing up a MAC code that was never going to work anyway.

 

[WPKenny]

Well pipex are still wonderfully shit.

After waiting for 5 more days I still didn't have a MAC. So I called Pipex again and they told me that there was nothing they could do. Openreach had said they would not supply another until the original had expired... a month!

So I asked why this was and the guy at Pipex said he had no idea, he's never seen it before and he would email Openreach for an explanaition and it would be forwarded on to me. Well surprise suprise, nothing was forwarded on to me. I left the month to expire since I was in the Lake District anyway and meant to be on holiday.

So this monday just gone I called them up to try and get my MAC for waht seems like the hundredth time. I told the girl to ensure it was ordered in whatever special was was needed for my seemingly unusual line. She didn't have a clue what I was talking about but assured me she would put a note on my request and provisioning would hopefully see it.

So yesterday I was checking me email, rather hopefully for a MAC and noticed an email from Pipex dated 00:21 on monday (before I'd phoned about my MAC later that day) saying that my broadband service was now live. Which was a bit odd as I'd requested no changes at all, just my MAC. So again I got on to the phone to them and told them I didn't want any changes being made. I told them I didn't want some system cock up to seemingly tie me into them for another 12 months etc. He didn't get what I meant at first but repeating myself several times seemed to get the message accross, not before he almost cancelled my account through misunderstanding.

So does this story have a happy ending? I'm not sure yet but it's looking a bit more hopeful.
I check my email this morning and had a MAC from Pipex. I went straight onto the O2 website and entered it. All apparently went smoothly and the MAC has been accepted as valid.

So fingers crossed within a week or so I'll be shot of Pipex and had little or no interruption of service. Touch wood.

 

[dysfunction]

Woohoo!!!

:bazbeer:

 

[Nate]

Get your credit card to reject any further payments from Pipex when your changed over, or you'll be where I am now.

I gave them a ring again the other day, asked to confirm the date I changed over and the dates they require payment for. All of them are after I've changed over so it's being forwarded to zero the outstanding...again.

 

[TdC]

omg Kenny that story is simply mind boggling. imo you should forward it to the watchdog and the pipex complaints department on general principles.

 

[Chilly]

do we all get to be famous?

 

[Milkshake]

Just FYI, having a good time with BEInternet just now - seem to be a switched on, sensible, techy bunch of people.

 

[SheepCow]

Yeah Be* are quite a techy bunch like the fine folks at Zen. Be's network is tweaked to buggery to get the speeds with the hardware they use so I guess they'd have to be

 

[dysfunction]

I liked Zen but they are a lot more expensive.

Be* is definitely the way forward at the moment

 

[WPKenny]

Today is P-Day!

The day I finally ditched Pipex!

Connection to home died about midday today. Got home a few mins ago, changed settings on the router to suit O2, rebooted it. First sync was 6.5meg. Now sync'd at 7meg out of a paid for 16meg after just one reboot.

I know it has to go through a "training" period of about 10 days but can I expect much improvement over 7 meg?

Do I let it do it's own thing or will it affect it if I reset my router every now and then?

So I've gone from paying 34 quid for 2meg down / 512k upstream to paying a tenner for 7meg down / 1meg up. Not a bad start.

*does the happy dance*

I was wondering one thing. If O2 let me, could I downgrade my contract to 8meg and still expect to sync at 7meg?

 

[inactionman]

Glad to hear you're off tiscali (pipex) as soon as I heard tiscali taking over I switched to O2.

You should be able to downgrade, if they quibble you can talk about being mis-sold.

To get an idea of the speed you can get, how far are you from the exchange? I got 16Mb immediately, and get just 19Mb now (not using their router), but I'm less than 500m from the exchange as the crow flies.

Do you have a static address? Their DHCP servers can have problems.

 

[Kryten]

I got 20mbps within my training period, having paid for only 8. Sorted itself out within 2 weeks though

 

[dysfunction]

I'm too far from the exchange so I only ever get around the 7meg mark