RE: Freeserve - twist the knife!

["Graham Howe" <graham@xxxxxxx>]

I still have the service at the moment as I have not got round to setting
up
my home site so 'only' access the service on average about 50 hours per
week. But I will be looking for a 24 x 7 service soon to give me remote
control of the house once it is fully automated. What do people think about
the latest offering from AOL (saw it advertised on TV last night), it
claims
24 x 7 for £15 per month.

Regards

Graham
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark McCall [mailto:mark@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 15 November 2000 09:44
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] Freeserve - twist the knife!


I'm on The Register !! (Fame at last)

Read on....



http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/14714.html
Freeserve: the worst customer service in the world?
By: Kieren McCarthy
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. ®



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