A productive complaint.

[RogerM]

I used to be a customer of Onetel, and had a box that plugged into the telephone socket, and into which I plugged my phone and the result was cheaper phone calls, especially to America where SWMBO had an aunt that she liked to phone regularly. In 2009 I found a better service, cancelled onetel and threw out the box, so I had no means of making calls through Onetel.

All went well until last Autumn when I received an email saying that my direct debit had failed and that a fee would be added to the 38p cost of the call. I politely told Onetel that I had made no call, not least of all because having thrown away the box it was impossible for me to do so. No reply. I received another bill saying that the direct debit had been declined again and adding a further fee to the bill. Again I appraised them of the facts and asked for teh number I was supposed to have called together with the date and time of the call. I just received an email saying that £27 was outstanding and ignoring the request for information, but providing endless helpful info on how to pay.

This was repeated a further 3 times, the most recent one last week. Again no information. So I responded with the following email :-

FORMAL COMPLAINT.

I refer to my previous email dated 30th Jul 2013 and the reply from Eslao Joeffrey dated 31 Jul. Once again you have failed to answer the core of my complaint which is :-

I have made no calls using onetel since 2009 when I informed you that I no longer required your service and disposed of the box used to connect to your system. Therefore since then I have had no means of connecting using onetel and cannot have made a call since then.

I have now asked for details of the number of the person or organisation that I am supposed to have called in 2012, and the time and date of that call, on 3 occasions, but you have failed to provide it.

I confirm that I DID contact you again to cancel my account in January 2013, but only after these spurious bills started to arrive. My complaint is therefore that you are demanding payment for a call or calls that I did not make, and could not have made, to a number that you will not disclose at a time and date that you are also not prepared to disclose, and that you have ignored the information that I have supplied and merely heaped spurious charge upon spurious charge whilst doing so.

THIS IS A FORMAL COMPLAINT AND SHOULD BE TREATED AS SUCH. I REQUIRE IT TO BE DEALT WITH BY A MANAGER AS SET OUT IN YOUR "HOW DO I MAKE A COMPLAINT" PARAGRAPH OF YOUR CUSTOMER CODE.

Please note that as I have better ways of spending my day than to provide the same information over and over again, all future correspondence will be charged at £20 per letter or email, and I shall invoice you accordingly.

Yours sincerely


Less that 10 mins later I received the following :-

Dear Mr **********,

Thank you for your recent email.

My apologies for the inconvenience and frustration.

I confirm that your account has been disconnected and understand that you did not make these calls. As such, as a gesture of goodwill, I have raised a credit request of £27.68. This will be approved within 24 to 48 hours, and once approved, this will reflect on the account within three working days.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

If you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Service Team who will be happy to help. Alternatively you can email us securely via "My Account" 24 hours a day 7 days a week at http://www.onetel.co.uk

Regards,

**************
Senior Customer Services Adviser

Result!!!!

 

[stevebuk]

well done, just going through a similar thing myself with Aims review..

 

[paul-c]

well done
just one thing bothering me - is their "gesture of goodwill" to raise a credit of £27-68 thus bringing your account to zero
i.e. you won't owe them anything. when infact you didn't owe them anyway.
so they still believe they were correct but are willing to let you off with no payment.
some gesture that is - if it is as i read it.
best of luck
paul-c

 

[Grahamshed]

well done
just one thing bothering me - is their "gesture of goodwill" to raise a credit of £27-68 thus bringing your account to zero
i.e. you won't owe them anything. when infact you didn't owe them anyway.
so they still believe they were correct but are willing to let you off with no payment.
some gesture that is - if it is as i read it.
best of luck
paul-c

That was how I read it as well.

 

[RogerM]

It's easy to prove a positive - i.e. that you DID something - but proving a negative, i.e. trying to prove that you DIDN'T do something is far more difficult. We call America quite frequently - our son lives there - but in this case I knew for a fact that I couldn't have made the disputed call as we no longer had the box that connected us to Onetel. However, they were claiming that I must have used the 4 digit prefix that would have allowed us to connect without it, although I didn't even know of it's existence. On the face of it, it was their word against ours and they were insisting that I had made a call through them. How do you prove that you didn't if their records show that you did?

So in this case I regard getting them to accept that I owed them nothing just 10 mins after changing tack when I have been arguing with them for 9 months and getting nowhere apart from accruing their charges for non-payment as a positive result. I think the key to such a quick response was :-

1. Reading about the complaints procedure, referring to it, and insisting that they treat it as a formal complaint. Onetel (now part of "talktalk") have twice as many complaints as the next most complained about telecoms company and that must be an embarrassment to them.

2. Going on the attack with my own clearly set out scale of charges. I have heard this used before to good effect, and companies have actually paid these invoices.

3. My guess is that the decision maker realised that I wouldn't go to those lengths just to avoid payment of a disputed bill which started off as just 38p, but which escalated to over £27 when they added their late payment penalty charges, unless I was really incensed and that arguing over such a trivial amount wasn't worth the effort.

Anyway - I'm happy with the outcome.

 

[Woodchips2]

Well done Roger :lol:

I've found a good way of getting big companies to react when I've been sorting out an estate recently is to e-mail the Managing Director direct with the word COMPLAINT in capitals in the subject line. You can get the e-mail addresses at http://www.ceoemail.com/. I used it on two large companies (NPower and Virgin Media) and both reacted within a day and finalised their accounts within a week =D>

Regards Keith

 

[paul-c]

hi roger
i hope you didn't take any offence at my post - that was not my intent.
i agree getting it sorted is the main thing and the most important point being you don't have to waste any more time dealing with it.
my point is "what a cheek " that they think correcting their mistake without admitting any fault ( without prejudice ) is a goodwill gesture . cheeky bar stewards.
the nice thing is you can put it behind you.
cheers
paul-c

 

[RogerM]

Paul - no offence taken and I'm sure none intended. I agree with what you say, but I just had visions of having to pay it to ensure my credit rating didn't get stuffed with them adding charge after charge. Whilst I'm sure i could have won out in the end I have better things to do with my time. Funny how they stopped as soon as I started admin charges of my own!

 

[Tim_H]

I would second the CEO approach, I was getting nowhere with a spurious bank charge, wrote to CEO of major bank resolved next day! Frustrating that customer service obviously means something completely different in some companies and that you have to waste your time escalating up the food chain.