Re: Pipex billing error - solved?

*Update*

I have just had another phone call. This time from Sarah, who introduced herself as the finance manager. She has informed me that they will credit my account with the outstanding balance of £44.25 and I will no longer owe them for this.

She also explained they had problems with their billing system in February. As I suspected I should have been charged a standard monthly fee for that month. As such the higher bill for April is to bring my account back to normal and make up for the cheaper invoice in February.

I now seem to be fully sorted with them, however it could all have been resolved so much easier. If they had been upfront about the billing error for February to start with I wouldn't have had a problem with the higher April invoice. I was also perfectly willing to pay them the outstanding balance if they had only got themselves organised and given me an opportunity to pay it.

Regards,
James Luff

James Luff wrote:
It's a long story, but I think it might finally be resolved. After querying the over charge for April, I was sent the following response from Pipex:

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Dear Mr Luff,

Thank you for your email.

The payment of £25.76 has occurred due to your last invoice covering more than 30 days. This has occurred because your billing date is the last day of each month but as there were 28days in February. The period for April has started from 28th of March, the period it covers is from 28/03/07 - 30/04/07. This is to sync your billing date back to the end of the month and will continue to cover 30day periods as usual.

If you have any further enquiries please do not hesitate to contact us.
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This still didn't add up, and I am still waiting for them to take money from me for two months that were unpaid for January and February due to a problem with them charging me. Therefore I sent this reply to customer services, peter.dubens@xxxxxxxxx and mike.read@xxxxxxxxx:

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I am in disagreement with you regarding the charge for April. My invoice date clearly states the 1st of the month not the last day.

I had already phoned your support line to query invoice ####### which was for February. This was only billed at £17.71 but was told it was due to February only having 28 days. This seemed odd to me because I have been a customer since 2002 and always paid £23.44 regardless of the length of the month.

I do not understand how the period for April could start on the 28th of March. I have already paid for the whole of March (invoice #######) at the standard £23.44. So I am effectively paying for the last few days in March twice!

I must also bring your attention to the Direct Debit guarantee which states that you must notify me at least 10 working days prior to the charge if it is different. As my invoice was issued on the 1st of April and you took the money from my account on the 4th of April that is only a period of 2 working days. The 1st being a Sunday and the 4th the date the payment was taken. This is clearly in breach of the direct debit guarantee and I shall be contacting my bank Tuesday morning for advise.

As it is I am still waiting for someone to contact me regarding outstanding payments of £44.25 on my account which you failed to take. I have been chasing you for several weeks to resolve this, sent numerous e-mails, made several phone calls and been unable to get anyone from Pipex to do anything about it.

I initially spoke to Richard in your accounts department on the 21st of February. I offered to pay the debt off on my credit card immediately. However, he advised me that he was unable to take a credit card payment over the phone and instead asked me to write to you with a direct debit mandate form and a covering letter requesting you to take the monies owed from my account. I did this on the 22nd of February and a few days later the direct debit was activated. I waited for you to take the £44.25 until eventually the standard monthly subscription of £23.44 was taken on the 6th of March. At this point I made another phone call to your support line and spoke to someone else who apologised for the failure to take the money. The lady I spoke to said that she would organise a direct debit payment that day and I went away assuming everything would now be sorted out. A few days later I checked my account, but the payment had still not been taken.

Another phone call to your support line ensued on the 12th of March and I spoke to another or your representatives. This time I was offered the chance to pay by credit card, which I had previously been told wasn't possible. However by this point I wasn't going to argue and was happy to just have the situation resolved. I gave him my credit card details and he said the payment would go through later that day. After a further week had passed and no charge had been made I sent another e-mail to your customer support team on the 25th March. I was told someone from the finance department would be in touch. It is now over two weeks later and the payment still hasn't been taken, nobody has contacted me and now I have been overcharged for April!

It would seem to me you finance department are totally incompetent. All these problems have led me to seriously consider leaving Pipex after 5 years of loyal custom. Unless these issues can be fully resolved in the next few days I will be terminating my service agreement with you. I have given you every opportunity to sort this mess out. The ball is in your court to fix my billing problems, I really can't do any more than I already have.
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They sent another reply:

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Dear Mr Luff,

Thank you for your email

I can confirm that I have passed your email onto my Finance Department who will endeavor to respond to you as soon as possible.

At the moment they do have a response time of 7-10 working days so I thank you in advance for your patience.
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I wasn't satisfied with this response so followed it up with this, also sent to customer services, peter.dubens@xxxxxxxxx and mike.read@xxxxxxxxx:

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Thank you, but I have heard this before and nobody ever does contact me. Please be advised that I will wait until Friday to get a satisfactory response from you. At that time I will start proceedings to take my custom to another provider.
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Approximately 10 mins later I got a phone call from a representative apologising for all my problems. She has organised for the outstanding amount to be taken by direct debit and credited me the overcharge. I have been told that management are currently investigating how the over charge for April occurred. If Pipex have charged you more this month, get in touch with them asap!

I'm still waiting to see if anything I have been told will actually happen. But it seemed like she knew what she was talking about so I will let her try and sort it out.


--
regards, James Luff Gamertag: Lufferov
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"There are 10 types of people in the world:
Those that understand binary, and those that don't."
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