Posted: 07th Apr, 2006 By: MarkJ
Complaints continue to flood in regarding E7evens dire service and support troubles, yet information reaching us from an industry source suggests that it may not just be E7s users having problems communicating with them.
Clearly our piece last week on the connections between a string of past defunct ISPs and E7 caused a lot of interest (
HERE). So much so that a source pointed out how at least one of E7s suppliers may also be having trouble communicating with the provider.
The anonymous individual even suggested that E7 could be
struggling to pay their bills. The supplier in question quite naturally refused to comment when we enquired further. Typically getting any kind of response out of E7 leads to a dead end, or as one of this weeks many complaints put it:
----
What is totally infuriating is that there is no way of contacting anyone at E7even - the only email replies you ever get are automated and no one ever answers either of the phone lines. The web site has no relevant information and even claims that their ADSL system is all working properly. Until last December E7even had a satisfied, loyal group of users but their complete disregard for any form of customer support has destroyed that.----
Service and support complaints aside, the information suggesting that E7 might not be paying their bills or communicating with the odd supplier should be taken with a big pinch of salt (rumour). While we know and trust the source, its difficult to verify.
Sadly the present climate is rife with such speculation and there can be little doubting that E7 is in trouble, service problems on this scale are not common among ISPs (exceptions: Tiscali and
Bulldog etc.).
Readers may recall that we have also been endeavouring to contact both Ofcom and Otelo regarding E7s situation. Unfortunately Ofcom makes a habit out of taking weeks, if not months, to respond. Meanwhile Otelo have been able to issue a response, albeit doing little to raise customer hopes:
Otelos Communications Manager, Andrew Bradley, issued the following statement:
It is important to understand that as an Ombudsman Service it is our role to resolve complaints between our members and their customers. The company has up to 12 weeks to try to resolve the problem for the customer.
The customers of E7Even have the legal right to take a complaint to Otelo if the company doesn't resolve the complaint within this time period or if it sends a letter to the customer indicating that it cannot help any further. I can confirm that we are handling complaints from customer of this company.
As an Ombudsman service we deal with every case on its own merits and as such we don't set precedents. We do not issue punitive measures against our member companies, rather we look at each individual case and establish what, if anything, should be done to make things right. We are in the process of doing this for those customers that have asked Otelo to investigate their complaints, which fit our criteria for acceptance.
ISPreview first started receiving complaints about E7even (on any kind of scale) during late January this year, its now April and the difficulties continue. Some have even been having problems as far back as November 2005.
Should the ISP stand any chance of a consumer reprieve then it will have to resolve all these issues soon or risk facing an eternally battered reputation. Presently, ten foot barge poles are simply too short.