I'm on The Register !! (Fame at last)
Read on....
Freeserve: the worst customer service in the
world?
Posted: 14/11/2000 at 12:58 GMT
UK ISP Freeserve has gone one step further in
alienating
its customers by sending out hundreds of thousands of emails demanding
payment
within seven days or risk being cut off Freeserve Time altogether.
An
estimated 250,000 people received an email beginning: "According to our
records,
the following amount is outstanding on your account: £xx.xx. If the amount
shown
above remains outstanding, you should note that under the terms of your
agreement with us you are required to pay by direct debit and if we are
unable
to collect the amounts due by direct debit, the debt will be forwarded to
an
external agency for manual collection and may result in the Service being
suspended or cancelled."
Except a number of readers have contacted
us to
tell us that they actually set up direct debit accounts with Freeserve and
so
would like to know why they are being threatened with bailiffs for less
than
£20. A number of them contacted Freeserve and were informed that Freeserve
Time's billing system had fallen over and had been unable to access direct
debit
accounts for at least three months. This was confirmed with reference to
readers' bank statements.
It would appear there has been a complete
breakdown and so a mass (hysterical) email has been sent out to claim all
outstanding debts. One reader, on calling Freeserve for information, was
told to
send a copy of his bank statement proving what he had paid (to a different
address) as the company had no record of who had paid what when. People
are,
unsurprisingly, not very happy about the situation.
We gave
Freeserve a
call and outlined the main problems. It confirmed an email demanding money
had
been sent out but insisted it had not been sent out by Freeserve, rather
network
supplier Energis Communications. A statement is apparently "being prepared"
and
confirmation was needed for all other points.
Yesterday, Freeserve
annoyed hundreds more customers by cutting them off for "abusing" the
service.
******THIS WAS ME**********
We received an email from one of the 700 original
people
pulled off last month. In it, he claimed that in response to a letter sent
by
him to the Freeserve board, he was informed that anyone using the service
for
more than 340 hours in August had been pulled off.
***********************************
As he points out, this equates to 11 hours per
day,
and not the 17 hours per day that Freeserve was claiming. A Freeserve
spokeswoman told us that those pulled off had been the subject of "careful
investigations" but she would look into the situation.
All this
looks
extremely bad for Freeserve. It also begs the question of how much cash and
liquid assets Freeserve has at its disposal. Is Energis dragging out what
it
can? Can Freeserve not afford to run at a loss any longer? Has funding
dried up?
We'll wait and see. ®