The High Court and UK governments Insolvency Service, which is responsible for dealing with financial failure in the economy and any related misconduct, have forced two notoriously bad providers of domestic focused fixed telephone line and broadband internet access services - Continental Telecom Ltd. (CT) and Plus Save Ltd. (PS) - to be wound-up after they abused customers through "unacceptable sales tactics" and failed to co-operate with the related investigation.Regular readers may recall that the communications regulator, Ofcom UK, fined CT £50,000 in December last year (full details) after it failed to co-operate with their investigation of the firms landline mis-selling (i.e. consumers were switched to the provider without their express and informed consent) and generally poor customer treatment (e.g. disconnecting users without warning).

Primary Complaints vs Continental Telecom* Customers had been transferred to Continental without their permission. Customers were persuaded (or misled) into giving their bank details even though they had not agreed to transfer to Continental. However, they were then billed by Continental, and told that a substantial termination fee would have to be paid if they cancelled.* Continental misled customers into believing that it was calling on behalf of BT, or that their existing BT lines had already been transferred to Continental.* Customers were not provided with contractual documentation, or informed of their right to cancel within a “cooling off” period. When customers sought to cancel within the usual cooling-off period, Continental would not cancel or transfer the contract without penalty. * Continental charged customers more than they had been led to believe they would be charged, and charged excessive cancellation or termination fees when customers sought to cancel their contracts.

The High Court said that CT had rented its telephone lines from BT and O-bit Telecom Ltd., which were then provided to customers. However its customers were actually obtained by "cold-calling targeting vulnerable members of the public, particularly the elderly, in order to seek to persuade them to transfer their telephone service."Ofcom was also forced to start a second investigation of the firm after it discovered that CT was quietly attempting to avoid the regulators whip by transferring its customers to Plus Save in September 2010. Customers were either not informed or not properly informed.The High Court said that both companies "were under [the] common ownership and management" of ************. It's sadly not uncommon for dodgy firms to avoid accountability by simply setting themselves up under a new name.The petitions to wind up the companies were presented on 23rd June 2011 under the provisions of Section 124A of the Insolvency Act 1986. The companies were officially wound up on 3rd August 2011.