vinylweatherman
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Posts: 13
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This just shows OFCOM is "not fit for purpose". OFCOM stated that they did not expect to see companies mass migrating to 0871 as they assured us that it was the facilities they were interested in, which would not change. A table of companies making the change between the OFCOM announcement and the changes next February will be useful in demonstrating how big a snub UK Business has delivered to both OFCOM and citizens. So far, only Tiscali has come to my attention, but it seems that together we will find many more.
I have already tried complaining about mis advertised 0870 numbers, but it gets me nowhere, the company simply claim ignorance, and promise to "look into it", but nothing changes.
One dodge is to phone the free or geographical number, and claim you have tried without success to phone the preferred 0845 or 0870 number, and have found/been given, "this number". This should get you put through rather than told the preferred numbers to call. I have even claimed my "phone provider seems to have blocked 0870...., and the only other alternative would be to write in".
Any complaint needs to be supported by evidence, so many complaints about this topic fail because they are put into general terms. One example would be 0844, I would have to demonstrate an actual instance of a rip-off, or failure to get through, in order to pursue a complaint.
Virgin Media - they still have 150, and all it takes is a threat to cancel and they will "cut a deal". I was able to get £20 off a month over the loss of SKY ONE, and this was before the change to Broadband phone support. I previously complained when they changed from 151 to 0845, and they changed back to the 151 service a couple of months later. Broadband support is not even worth the geographic charge, let alone the 0906, half of it is done from India, where they are graduates, but totally clueless outside of their script of tests and responces. They completely misdiagnosed my problem TWICE, and when the engineer finally came a different problem was found. They will make a lot of money from the new 0906 broadband number when there is an "area fault", this is because they only declare one if a given number of customers call to report a problem. This means that nothing will be done UNTIL they have enough "volunteers" on their 0906 number, after which the service status line will be updated and a fault declared. All engineer bookings will then be cancelled, not that they let you know, and this can be confirmed by phoning 0906 after you have waited in all day and no-one turns up. With the change to Virgin Media, they have resumed the NTL habit of each change being detrimental to the customer.
I spoke to TalkTalk about their "free" broadband and asked about the cost of technical support. They told me this was free from a TalkTalk landline (I have not verified this - I never trust such statements from a sales rep, but I will use this against Virgin Media at the first opportunity).
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