| Basic Account Customer |  Small Victory against Telewest! Maybe it will help someone...
Got an internet connection with Telewest in October last year. It never worked properly from the beginning - connection was intermittent, then non-existent. Called out engineer, an appt was made, & I was told that if I wasn't in when they called, I would be charged £10 for their trouble. The engineer came and said the problem was with the signal-to-noise ratio & would be put right from outside, no need for me to wait in, the engineers would come on the Saturday (this was Friday, I think), or if not, the following Monday, and they would put a card through the door when it was fixed. You guessed it, no card put through, & still no service. During the next week I tried it again and it worked for a while, so thought it had been sorted. Within a few days nothing, however. Finally rang them again, & told the visit was scheduled for the following Monday. I told them to put a note on my file that if they didn't turn up I would be charging them £10 for my inconvenience (come to think of it, I should have already charged them for not turning up the first time). They would credit my account, so that I got free internet (or lack of it!), they said, until it was fixed.
The service never got any better, I never got a card through the door, and finally I just stopped using it. Then they started sending me bills! I was supposed to be paying by DD, so I hastily cancelled this and managed to avoid paying anything. Christmas intervened and when I remembered them afterwards, after receiving yet another bill, I e-mailed them & said your service is crap and I don't want it, basically. I got an e-mail back saying yes, they would disconnect me, but of course, a disconnection charge would be payable as I had a contract with them! (Couldn't believe the cheek of this one!) Then I got another bill!
This time I wrote a detailed letter pointing out that they must be aware that under the Trades Descriptions Act (or whichever one it is, not sure if I had that right or not!) goods must be fit for the purpose for which they are intended, and that since their service wasn't, as it didn't work (you wouldn't think it would even be necessary to say any of this, would you?) I had no intention of paying any fees whatsoever. I then said that their modem and associated leads etc. were packaged up and awaiting collection by them, and that if they weren't collected within the period allowed by law (couldn't remember how long it was so just worded it like this!), they would become my property.
Got a phone call a coupla days ago from a guy, who said, yes it would be no problem to disconnect me, but did I realise what I would have to do in order to be disconnected? Oh oh, I thought, can feel another 'disconnection fee' coming on here - so I said, well all I'm aware of is that your service was not fit for its purpose, and I'm therefore under no obligation to pay you anything - I have your goods ready for collection and if you don't collect them I'll be keeping them.
Funnily enough the guy seemed to go all quiet when I mentioned the 'fit for the purpose' bit, and then just said, ok, yes, I'll go and check what dates etc. we have available for collection. He rings me back, and, surprise surprise, says we don't need any of the stuff back, I'm disconnecting you now, and you can keep the modem, do what you like with it! To which I said, well, not much really, since it doesn't work. Actually, I'm just thinking, I did actually pay a connection fee originally, I should be claiming this back too, shouldn't I? Ohhhh, another battle ...... anyway, just wanted to relate my experience in case anyone is being told they have to pay for something that doesn't work ..... just don't give in to them, and make sure you know a little bit about your rights!
Good luck everyone,
Sirensinger |
