Freeserve: it gets worse
Posted: 15/11/2000 at 16:26 GMT
Freeserve had sent us a copy of its statement
regarding
the appalling mass mail of customers demanding money or the boys will come
round. In it, it claims it didn't know the email was being sent out and
apologises for any distress. However it then goes on to say that the email
still
stands and all those receiving it will have to contact Energis and tell it
their
bank details. What a cock-up.
This is the statement: "On Friday
10th
November, approximately 26,000 Unlimited Freeserve Time (UFT) customers
received
an email from Energis Communications Ltd., the network provider and billing
agent for UFT. Freeserve acknowledges that the email which brought
attention to
amounts outstanding on members accounts did not take into account the fact
that
many of our members have endeavoured to settle the outstanding amounts with
Energis.
"Freeserve was unaware that the email was being issued and
on
behalf of its service partner apologises for any distress caused. The
request
for payment by Energis remains valid. Freeserve politely requests that
those
members with outstanding amounts please re-confirm their bank details with
Energis by telephone on 0845 0700066 or email at time-enquiries@xxxxxxx."
We were also supposed to have received a call this morning from
Freeserve's Investor Relations Manager Paul Barker to explain why were
wrong to
suggest that the company was running out of money. Nothing as yet. Can this
be
counted as a confirmation a la Woodward and Bernstein?
And while
we're
having a go at Freeserve, we might as well run through in a few criticisms
that
Freeserve customers have emailed us.
You know those 700 naughty people that were kicked off last month for
"abusing" the service. Well, four of them have contacted the Reg to
tell
us that, er, they haven't been kicked off at all and are still enjoying the
service, this time free of charge.
As for the argument over the number of hours people had to spend online
to
get kicked off. A Freeserve spokeswoman told us that the 17 hours a day
figure
was an average of all the people abusing the service so it is possible that
someone could only have been on it 11 hours and still be kicked off. This
is
definitely not what Freeserve said at the time.
The original email
to
those affected said: "We have identified that a very small percentage of
our
members (less than 1%) are using the network for an average of nearly 17
hours
each day, everyday." Hmmm.
Another reader using Freeserve's Off-Peak option was surprised when the
£5.99 he thought he was paying suddenly turned into £8.99, without prior
notice.
Here's an extract from his email:
"I joined Freeserve's Off-Peak
option
a few months ago, at which time there web page read something like 'We
believe
in Free Internet Access so you will only have to pay 5.99 a month to BT for
Surftime'. But a few days ago my computer crashed and I lost the dialer
software. I e-mailed Tech Support and asked them for the link to the dialer
software (and they never got back to me). I then went to look on the
Freeserve
website and upon looking in the Off-Peak time webpage it now says 'You will
be
charged 8.99 a month for Off-Peak Freeserve Time, however you will get the
first
three months for 5.99' I was never e-mailed or notified about this extra
charge
in any way. It seems Freeserve is trying to sneak these charges in behind
everyone's back."
Some have also accused Freeserve of changing their T&Cs without
informing customers. Legally, customers will be only held to the T&Cs
that
they signed up to, but reality is likely to be somewhat different.
Freeserve has failed to come good with a £3 rebate it said it would
give
customers at the end of each quarter if you use one of its Net offerings.
One
reader has bugged Freeserve for weeks but has yet to receive a reply or any
credit in his bank. Of course the suggestion that Freeserve may not be able
to
fund the rebates is ludicrous.
Another group of readers are justifiably furious that they received an
unencrypted email which contained all their bank details. This is almost
criminal negligence. Again it looks like Energis and Freeserve don't know
what
the other is doing. One reader with a particularly good knowledge of how
these
things work had this to say:
"The current email from Freeserve was
almost certainly directly injected into the mail system by Energis-rooted -
I
designed that bloody email system and know very well how it works, and the
complete lack of useful headers shows it has never been through the main
mail
system at Energis-rooted, and was instead directly dropped into the mail
spool
(a rather large NetApp filer which went embarassingly wrong last year). Why
Energis would do anything quite as stupid as that email I don't
understand."
All of this appears to point to Freeserve having some serious problems.
We'll be playing careful attention to it from now