Pipex enters the valley of woe
Pipex has become the latest UK Internet Service Provider to earn the dubious honour of becoming the subject of a Web site devoted to customer complaints about its service.
PipexWoe, launched this week, aims to provide Pipex customers with news and information, as well as giving them the opportunity to voice concerns or even to defend the company.
The site accuses the ISP -- which won much praise when it launched a self-installation broadband package at £19.99 (ex. VAT) per month -- of providing its users with an unacceptably poor service.
According to PipexWoe, one customer has complained to Pipex that his Web pages -- which were hosted by Pipex -- have now vanished.
Other customers have claimed that they have been unable to successfully contact the company to get answers to queries or to cancel their accounts.
The early evidence thrown up on PipexWoe is that Pipex has been providing a satisfactory experience for at least some of its users. On PipexWoe's Tales Of Wow section, one Pipex broadband customer has written in to say that they have nothing but praise for the company's service, and another has said that he has had a perfectly acceptable service since signing up five months ago.
Such customer complaint sites are becoming increasingly common in the UK. PipexWoe itself is a sister site of BTOpenWoe, while cable firm ntl recently took the rather extreme step of buying protest site Nthellworld.com.
Industry analysts have said these kind of sites are a way of identifying companies who are in trouble.
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