Troubled communications provider Bulldog has admitted that it continued to bill an ex-customer who quit the company last year after experiencing a poor quality of service.
Brendan Smee joined Bulldog in July 2005, a time when the telco was having problems providing an acceptable service to its customers. At the end of September he quit the company, after 13 weeks during which his telephone line simply failed to work.
As Mr Smee was on a monthly contract, his service was disconnected in October. But Bulldog kept billing him through the rest of 2005, and in January 2006.
"Bulldog is still unlawfully deducting monies from my account on a monthly basis. I have tried contacting them several times to no avail. Today, however, I was told that it is confirmed my service was terminated, but the money is still being deducted," said Mr Smee last week.
By this stage, Mr Smee was also considering taking legal action against Bulldog, as he claims repeated calls to the company had no effect. Other Bulldog users have also claimed to have struggled to contact the company, but late last year it said it was expanding its customer call centre from 50 people to 300 to address this.
ZDNet UK contacted the company last week about Mr Smee's experiences. The next day, he was contacted by a Bulldog employee who said it would be refunding his money.
"We were disappointed to hear that Mr Smee had experienced difficulties with Bulldog, for which we apologise. We have fully investigated the status of his billing and he has been refunded any monies due to him," confirmed a Bulldog spokeswoman.
"Ensuring that our customers receive excellent service is our number one priority. Bulldog is continually taking steps to improve the support we offer," she added.
Although Mr Smee's experience could be a one-off incident, the Bulldog spokeswoman did indicate that other ex-customers will continue to be billed if they owe Bulldog money.
As first reported last July, many Bulldog users found last year that their new service wasn't delivered on time, or didn't work at all.
Although Bulldog claimed last November that it has addressed these problems, ZDNet UK is still being contacted by irate users complaining of problems.
On Monday, one reader reported that they had suffered very poor customer service from Bulldog. "I was told at least six times in the last four days that someone will call back, but they never did. No one seems to know what is going on."
Another reader, IT project manager Alan Wright, is also experiencing billing problems with Bulldog.
"I joined Bulldog in September 2003, the equipment I ordered never arrived, and it took 3 months to get the line active. The Bulldog technical dept continually told me the problems were at my end — it finally turned out to be a setting on their equipment. In October 2004 they stopped billing me. My emails were not answered and getting through on the phone was next to impossible," said Wright in a TalkBack posted to another article earlier this month.
"Now I have received an invoice for the whole period from 2003 to date. Again my email was not answered until I chased, and then the reply was incorrect. It finally took an hour on the phone to get a sensible response, but the revised invoice hasn't arrived," Wright added.
Talkback
I have not paid my bulldog bill or phone bill for 7 months now.The bill is now in the region of 400-500.I have phones up and given them my new card details to take the payment from but they just dont take the money.Im basicly getting an 8meg connection,free phone line and free phone calls! great! but what happens when they catch up with me and demand all there cash? id like to go back to bt and get a ukonline account or be 24meg but i fear that this will be messed up as well.the account access is terrible, you cant access email.i have more account no.`s and passwords i cant remeber them all..its such a mess!! i have to say my connection is great! but thats the only good thing about it..
HELP!!
Well it seems no matter what happens to bulldog they keep providing extremly bad service and probably the most diabolical customer service ever. Its all very well charging 8meg broadband and low low prices, but if its not going to work then there is no point in saying you provide such a service. I remember when bulldog first started offering 8meg, "wow thats a bargin" i thought to myself, but after holding off for a couple of months i soon learnt that bulldog are completly useless and that is definatly putting things nice. All i hear is constant complaints about bulldog, yet they try and say the problems are over when they are clearly not. With the way bulldog are treating their customers at the moment, if it was me that was being billed for a service i didnt get id be taking it to the courts asap. It seems that complaints from people and investigations into the company arent doing anything to make bulldogs service any better. In my honest opinion i think bulldog should just shut its doors and not provide broadband anymore, afterall its not like they're actually doing good job of providing it in the first place is it?
This ISP is one of the worst i've been with, im currently trying to get disconnected & get my MAC code which they wont provide me with.
Avoid this ISP by all meens.
To quote the advice always given to investors, "past performance is no guide to the future". I recommended Bulldog to my sister-in-law when it came top of the PCPro customer satisfaction surveys a year or two ago. It would appear that it has been downhill all the way since then for Bulldog, although she hasn't had any problems herself.
Their customer service has never been good. Departments do not talk to each other and I have called several times to tried stop Bulldog billing me when I am not their customer. I sent a cancelation notice last September and moved to my new providers last October.
I have sent several complains about their customer service nightmare.
Their customer service staff often blame their finance team and vise versa. Records are often not found on their system.
Given such bad service, their staff do not follow any complaint handling process or refuse to escalate my call. Supervisors are either on another call and do not call me back. the list goes on...
I will be happy to join any class action, because bulldog do not seem to understand service management and customer care.
Exactly the same thing has happened to me. I closed my account in August last year due to the fact I had no service for a month. Still got billed random ammounts from my card until November. Not one of these payments were authorized.
This is March, and I've got half the money back in two payments 78.67 and 5.33. Are they drunk?
They still owe me £67.50, I call them every week and they repeatedly lie to me, telling me it's been authorised and that the money will be with me soon. It never turns up. Quite simply the worst company I've ever had to deal with and if you've read this and still decide to use them then good luck, but don't expect anything good to come of it
Bulldog aren't the only problem providers, I live in Ireland and had Esat/BT as my provider. The service itself was ok but when I cancelled my subscription using the appropriate channels and having received confirmation of this by email, it took them a whole 9 MONTHS to finally close my account. In this time they had not cancelled my direct debit payments and my account was still active. I had rang "customer services" several times and was assured everytime that it was taken care of. I'm thinking of writing to trading standards as ESAT/BT's "Customer Services" is a total misrepresentation of the service that I personally received from the company. No one took ownership, no one called back, no one even thought that after nine months of waiting upto an hour to talk to a representative deserved some sort of goodwill gesture for the inconvienience of nine months waiting and €450 of my money gaining interest in ESAT BT's bank. The companies that are going to survive and prosper are those that provide customer service. Vote with your feet and walk away from these unprofessional organisations. The problem is finding a good one !!!
I sympathise with you.
After a dispute with Bulldog in 2004/2005
I transferred to another ISP in May 2005, being told that the account had been closed. In Janury this year I recieved an invoice for £305.37.
I have been trying to get to the bottom of this ever since. I have telephoned and spoken to just about every department,. Of couse everyone I speak to is always going to look in to it, email various departments , return my call etc and nothing ever comes of it.
They cannot tell me where they have got this figure from.Often when I call them they still have an old email address and an old telepehone number even though I have notifed them of my current details,( I have had a couple of 'phone calls from them on my new number! )
I am so sick and tired of emailing and telephoning Bulldog that I have contacted BBC Watchdog, and am preparing a complaint to CISAS and have asked for a reference number which I can quote on the application form.My next step is to write to the Chief Exec but I don't think that anyone cares.
I have been told that I have been sent an email confirming that the account has been closed but I have never recieved it. Bulldog's answer is that it must have been lost in the system. I have asked if they would resend the email but as yet I have not recieved it.All they seem to want to do is get me off their phone and on to another department. I have asked to speak to people in charge but they can't even tell me who to address an official letter of complaint to.
No one looks in to the case properly, they only read the last entry on the computer unless you insist that they read back certain dates, then the penny drops.
The last conversation that I had I was told that I had been disconnected.What they have disconnected from what I don't know as they quoted and old telephone number and I have been withanother ISP since last summer.
All I want is peace of mind.Just a letter or email to say that my account is nil and has been closed. This seems to be beyond their capability.!!
They should be renamed" Bulldog lack of Communications"!
I've had endless problems with bulldog. I must have called them around 30-40 times this year. The problem arose when I tried take over my flatmates connection when he moved out. To cut a long story short, after adding up all of my bills individually, (and many stressful phone calls) they ended accepting the fact that they actually owed me £240. They said they would pay it back into my acc. They haven't. Now i've cancelled the service but they won't give me a 'mac key' to switch/migrate providers. This is because they think I now owe them money as my bill now says i owe them £125 for the last 2 months. Its actually the case that they owe me around £50. I'm left with no internet connection and a lot of calls to sort this mess out.