The much troubled UK ISP Freedial has finally responded to some of our questions regarding the serious issues with broadband ADSL line activations.

Many customers, at least those that are left, have been stuck waiting for up to two or three months and still their lines have yet to be enabled. The only updates received appear to be recycled versions of older ones.

Earlier in the week ISP Review put a few of the most common concerns to the ISP and asked for some clarity on the issues, their response is as follows:

Firstly let me start by saying that these delays have truly been out of our hands - We are now collating the details and preparing an update as a result of the current round of meetings with BT to obtain activation dates - this is due to go out within 24hrs.

1) Why are those choosing to leave your service being charged a £20 cancellation fee? The excuse given by one of your responses is that the £20 is because the kit had already been used (hard considering the service hadn't been delivered), while the T&C's state that it's an administrative fee. How can you justify the charge after such poor service, or lack thereof?

The majority of cancellations have incurred no charges at all. In some cases customers returning modem kits in poor or un-resalable condition or with components missing or damaged have been charged a maximum of £20. Some of the items have been returned in an extremely poor condition.

The £20 cancellation fee stated in our T&C's is a different matter and is for new orders where a request to cancel is made within a short period of placing the order - this charge is not levied for customers wishing to cancel having waited an unreasonable length of time. The returns/cancellation policy can be found here - please look under the Broadband Order Cancellations sections for more details: https://secure.worlddomain.ws/freedial/shop/shipping.php

2) If the MOPS (new BT ordering method) system is to blame for the continued line activation delays then why aren't you using the same method that every other ISP appears to use?

The MOPS system is part of a new product - basically a Managed Service which includes pipe sharing etc.. this is what we have signed up for. BT urged us to use this as a stop gap service insisting it was a much quicker option for getting our customers serviced. Unfortunately they have not been able to implement the service to our, and ultimately our customers', satisfaction.

3) Do orders actually get put to BT? Some customers have subscribed to both FreeDial and another service (such as Pipex), yet after placing the order Pipex cancelled it due to a failed line check and FreeDial kept it on. However in both cases only Pipex had a registered order with BT, what's going on? Why did FreeDial confirm the line check had passed when it clearly couldn't have?

Absolutely - all the outstanding orders have been placed on the MOPS system. BT failed to implement the service correctly at outset and the orders were just sitting there. Preliminary line checks were carried out and on an indication of a possible pass were placed on MOPS for further processing. At the point of activation further technical line issues/problems can arise that would rule an order out but obviously our orders at that point had not reached that level of processing.

There is now light at the end of the tunnel, another high level meeting to finally iron out the outstanding issues is scheduled for tomorrow - Friday 21st and we will be updating our customers as to the outcome as soon as possible after.

We note that Freedial has just issued another service update, which is much as stated in the last paragraph above and can be read under one of the topics in our Freedial forum.

Unfortunately actions speak louder than words, thus we’ll be stopping back on this issue toward the end of next week to see whether the ISP is still all talk or if things have actually improved. Here’s to hoping for a brighter future.