Comment by Nursie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nursie | Hacker News Reader

I've had lots of trouble with ISPs before. About a decade ago Bulldog Broadband were the first to offer 8Mb service in London, and at a reasonable price, and they oversold so massively their staff couldn't cope.

After a month of no service I called to cancel, and after 45 minutes on hold I gave up. I tried again. And again. Eventually I got through to someone who processed the cancellation. I got an email saying "To confirm your intended cancellation, send an email to cancellation-confirmation@..."

That address didn't exist. The next month they started to charge me for a service I wasn't getting. I had a different ISP by this point. I called and got the money back. They took it again the next month. I called and got the money back. The third month I got a letter saying I hadn't paid for three months, so they took three months money from my card. This time I called and got the money back and demanded they remove me from their systems. Eventually someone said OK.

Six months later I got a demand for 9 months service charges. I called and told them to stuff it. Another six months later they started demanding even more money and making threats. That's when I started the official (UK) complaints procedure. You start by writing a long email setting out your demands, end it by saying "This will also be sent by registered mail, and you have 30 days to resolve this until I report you to the communications ombudsman"

The first response I got to that was a letter saying "We understand you'd like to cancel your service?" So I sent another letter, stating my demands and that no, there had never been a service to cancel, and by the way this is being sent by registered post and you have 18 days before I contact the ombudsman.

I think by the third letter it had been resolved, almost 18 months since I first tried to cancel the account. I had to move house shortly after that though, and I've worried since then that one day they're going to turn around and say "hold on, this guy owes us for ten years of broadband! Let's ruin his credit rating!"

I don't understand why you put up with them charging you so many times. After the second fraudulent charge, I'd just deal with my credit card company directly. Call them up and have the charges reversed. You get your money back and they get punished by their card company for the fraudulent charge.

If more people did this, instead of waiting on hold for hours to fight with customer service for your own money back, the ISP would likely lose their merchant account for their fraudulent activity.

Edit: one other note when cancelling, make sure to take down the date, time and operator name & number during your interactions and note what was said. When I've had trouble with managing accounts, referencing that information strengthened my case dramatically.

I have a Google Doc that I keep for all these notes. While I'm on hold, I open up the doc and get it ready. Be clear that you're taking notes and they'll take the conversation more seriously too.

You can pay bills with credit cards?

Bank charges are also reversible.

I don't use a debit card much but I heard that you don't get as many consumer protects with debit cards as you do with credit cards. If you're going to pay bills, for many reasons, use a credit card instead of debit cards.

You have virtually NO consumer protection with a debit card. Once the money is gone, it is gone.

This is why merchant acquirers charge a flat rate of a few pence for debit card transactions, and an extortionate percentage for credit card transactions - chargeback risk. Cannae do with a debit card without bumping into Dante and his buddy in their digs first.

> a few pence

Is that the case in England? In the States, there are many debit card protections, they're just not as extensive as credit card protections.

There are some protections in the UK for debit card use, but less than for credit card. Credit Card use has more legal protections because it is an instrument of debt, and the CC provider is legally a party to the debt, which comes with a whole bunch of responsibilities. Debit cards are protected by some legal stuff and the banking code.

In this case debt is good :)

> You have virtually NO consumer protection with a debit card. Once the money is gone, it is gone.

Only if it's a card-present debit transaction (i.e., you entered a PIN). If you use your debit card and don't enter a PIN, it's automatically run as a credit card, and you have the same protections.

For many cases, yes. (At least in the US.) It's an easy way of earning points if you have a reward card.

Here in the UK most large (and many small) organisations let you pay bills (one off or recurring) by credit card, debit card, direct debit, bank transfer (and occasionally cheque in the post). Some will charge a small fee for credit cards, but most won't.

I think they had my debit card details rather than credit (foolish) on the third occasion I wanted to make sure they left me alone and it seems I was at least successful in getting them to delete my card details from their system.

After that they just sent demands, as they had no card to charge.

But yes, should have just called HSBC and told them the charges were fraudulent, I know better now!

Additionally, if you're in a one-party state, recording the call can never hurt.

Usually they are recording the call anyway (or reserving the right to). A robot normally mentions it at the beginning of the call. I'm no lawyer, but maybe this is enough to give you permission to record your own copy?

If both parties are aware that the call may be recorded, then either party may record it. That is covered by the boilerplate "this call may be recorded" language that pretty much every call center uses.

afaik Europe doesn't have the same rules regarding chargebacks and it's much harder to successfully dispute a charge there.

Chargebacks only work the way they do in the U.S. due to regulatory requirements that the card companies allowed to go into law because they'd figured out how to profit any time a chargeback was filed.

Chargebacks in the UK are protected by law, where credit is concerned, because the CC company is a party to the debt they are legally compelled to return the money to you pending an investigation.

I don't know about the rest of Europe but here in the UK it's just as easy as the US and just as black and white.

This reminds of a guy who was on Leno back in the early 2000's. He got a bill from his energy company telling him he owed $0.00 and should pay immediately otherwise his service will get shut off.

He ignores the notice and every couple of weeks, he starts getting threatening letters from the company. When he finally got the shut off service warning letter, he figured he'd better do something.

He sent the company a check for $0.00 and within a week got a notice back thanking him for his payment. He not only brought all the notices, he brought the canceled check and the final thank you letter.

Automated billing systems can be unreal sometimes.

It looks like a pretty old tale... http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/zero.asp

Hey, shared experience here - I also jumped on that bandwagon, and had the same experience when trying to cancel. By the time they acknowledge my numerous and increasingly furious demands, they'd flogged their customer base to Virgin, who insisted I had a deemed contract with them and couldn't cancel.

I went down a completely different route to you, ultimately - I took them to small claims court on the basis that they'd charged me illegally and therefore owed me £600 or so, they failed to show to either mediation or court, I got a default judgment in my favour, they didn't pay it, but they did stop contacting and invoicing me, and my credit score wasn't dented.

Now, British Gas and the electricity meter that ticked over from 99999 to 00000 and resulted in a £15k power bill is another story entirely...

I wonder if you could sell that debt to a collections agency.(I don't know how things work in the UK.)

I'd like to hear the electric meter story, too.

Iv got a similar story.

I had internet from our national monopoly for couple of years. Cancelled it in one of their brick and mortar rep centers no problem.

One month passes and new bill shows up, its like they didnt notice me cancelling. Called them, rep confirmed bug in system, said he resolved it and gave me confirmation number. Next month same thing. This time my first words were 'im recording this, state your name again' followed by 'I am holding you personally responsible if your company tries to extort money from me ever again, your name will be on court papers'. Worked like magic, no more phantom bills.

I dont care its just some some poor sob working for the man in call center. Company tried to steal my money and they were part of that system.

Yikes.

I tried both Speakeasy (now MegaPath) DSL and ClearWire WiMax. They sucked. The 10mbps DSLs downstream sometimes reached up to 200kbps. The TCP/IP behind the WiMax would regularly disappear for hours.

For each, I called to get the RMA (to send their gear back), cancel service, and then I immediately canceled the credit card on file.

Both then sent me to collections. I tried contesting the bills. "Sorry, we don't have any record of you canceling." (You'd think possession of the modems would be a clue.)

Neither have sent these bills to a credit rating agency (e.g. Transunion, Experian), so I've ignored them.

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