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Biscit and Netservices on Radio 4

You and yours on Radio 4 had another piece on Biscit just now.

Netservices' Head of Marketing (Maria Goggin) was quite vague about the nature of their dispute with Biscit, but stated that they were owed money by Biscit and were in turn facing bills from BT, so were left with no other choice.

Next up was the Biscit CEO (Hugh Patterson) who gave a little more detail. The dispute is over "excess bandwidth charges" incurred by V21 before Biscit bought them, back to Dec 05. Biscit have a letter from Netservices CEO from June this year saying they wouldn't invoice for this (presumably requested during the due dilligence prior to the acquisition). They want the MAC codes so they can migrate all their V21 users to the Biscit network.

A Netservices spokesman replied that they couldn't provide 10,000 MAC codes in anything like reasonable timeframes.

It looks to me like Netservices were about to lose 10k users off their network and have pulled this stunt out of sour grapes.
 
regardless this thread is still very interesting and there's definitely interest here move 10.000 users to an ISP who resells off their network makes them money... provide 10.000 MAC codes and they loose allot of custom, which is the best buisness-wise decision if you don't take the moral high ground? only one choice if you don't care about ur customers imho.. but then in my case l think the moral high ground would have given NS some credit especially in the Fast24 case by allowing customers to choose ISP's
 
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regardless this thread is still very interesting and there's definitely interest here move 10.000 users to an ISP who resells off their network makes them money... provide 10.000 MAC codes and they loose allot of custom, which is the best buisness-wise decision if you don't take the moral high ground? only one choice if you don't care about ur customers imho.. but then in my case l think the moral high ground would have given NS some credit especially in the Fast24 case by allowing customers to choose ISP's

The moral high ground?
I see no morality whatsoever in being dictated to as to which ISP you can or cannot move to..all the alternatives Netservices have ever offered in these cases are all users of their backbone products.

No ....in every case where NS has wall gardened EU's, it has been for their own benefit and damn the rights of the EU...after all it is only the EU's connection they are in effect selling to the highest bidder. The EU gave them the right to tag it to their company in order they may provide a service...not so they could sell it on later.

Each and every EU had paid to have their line ADSL enabled and in my book what NS is doing is totally and morally wrong.
I am not by any means a Biscit apologist (HP will testify to that!;) ) I don't give a damn who wins what in the ensuing legal battles between Biscit and NS, but what NS is doing to the EU is scandalous no matter how they care to attempt to justify it.
 
...move 10.000 users to an ISP who resells off their network makes them money...

Ezeedsl I think are the retail arm of 186k so Netservices will lose all those that migrate over.

provide 10.000 MAC codes and they loose allot of custom, which is the best buisness-wise decision if you don't take the moral high ground? only one choice if you don't care about ur customers imho.. but then in my case l think the moral high ground would have given NS some credit especially in the Fast24 case by allowing customers to choose ISP's

How much do you think Ezeedsl would pay to get an other 5 or 6 or 7,000 new customers? Especially as the pricing offered to V21 customers would seem to offer quite high margins?

The longer this goes on the more Netservices come out of this smelling like sh*t.
 
I consider myself to have been hijacked.
We're defiantely being held to ransom over this and I for one am not giving into their bully boy tactics.
If I have to wait until the 10th oif December before I can sign up with a decent broadband provider then so be it.
I did email Jeff Prestridge of Financial Mail on Sunday to see if they could apply any pressure to Netservices but haven't had a reply (story of my life at the moment)
 
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maybe my wording was a lil off in my last post but l know what l ment lmao.. in any case regardless of who it is they come out smelling like roses while we suffer at the fate of been forced to take up contracts with ISP's we didnt want or choose or end up with downtime, frankly taking away our freedom to choose will hurt them the most in years to come if they pull this crap too much, because eventually they will end up regretting what they did while their customer base declines in years to come.
 
I have tried my best to cancel the useless and nonextient service from v21/Biscit. Phone Calls at 50p/Min to hear you have choosen to leave a msg. All i did is to follow the instructions of the recorded service and to speak to the accounts dep, Then by magic it went to voice mail. So i left my details. Biscit never got back to me. So I called again and tried all deps, Tech, Sales Accounts Left so many msg Nothing. So i Called again and this time left a msg saying i want o upgrade and want some stupid deal they were doing(A LITTLE FIB). Well guess what i got a phone call. Then I explained to the Biscit Customer service. That Excess Payments Have been taken ou and Twice and , I want to leave their company. She told me to put all my grivence in writing and send to Biscit Accounts dep. So I sent them a letter Recorded Saying i want to leave & i am moving out of my current residents, the amount of money they owe me, etc, have been trying since september. Well no action has been taken so far. Oh but the excess payments continue to come out for a service i no longer use. I have paid £200.00 for broad band for one month. But my account is still active. I have called consumer direct on 08454040506. They adviced me to write another letter asking for my money and to cancel my account and to take no payments. They said if they dont reply to me within 10 days. Under the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982. Trading Standards officers will investigate. I have tried everything. So PEOPLE who are affected by this poor service call consumer direct get a ref no and build your case.
 
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Hi Wrote a letter to So Called Biscit to ask for my money back and to Cancel my service. (Also Adviced by Biscit Customer Service Once) The address i used was from their website back in Sep-October was no 9 Hale Lane London NW7 3NU, Which now i found out is a estate agent. Went on to their website again guess what the address has changed again to Berkeley House
18-24 High Street
Edgware
HA8 7RP

Berkeley House with many different companys listed But No BISCIT ON BIG CON.....

http://www.biscit.net/biscit_about/biscit_contactus.php (Biscit New Contact Details)

PostCode Finder Royal mail Results
http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/a...&gear=postcode

But when you do a WHOIS search here is their reg details:

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obtaining information about or related to a domain name registration
record. BulkRegister, LLC makes this information available "as is", and
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Contact: hostmaster@biscit.net

Domain name: BISCIT.NET

Registrant Contact:
Biscit Internet Limited
Biscit Internet Limited (NA)
NULL
Fax:
9 Hale Lane
Mill Hill, London NW7 3NU
GB

Administrative Contact:
Biscit Internet
Nathan Relevy (hostmaster@biscit.net)
+44.8703830030
Fax: +44(0)7092 111511
9 Hale Lane, Mill Hill
London, . NW7 3NU
GB

Technical Contact:
Biscit Internet
Nathan Relevy (hostmaster@biscit.net)
+44.8703830030
Fax: +44(0)7092 111511
9 Hale Lane, Mill Hill
London, . NW7 3NU
GB

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
ns0.biscit.net
ns1.biscit.net

Creation date: 24 Jan 2002 07:58:48
Expiration date: 24 Jan 2007 00:00:00
 
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Yes i read all that rubbish.....................

I JUST WANT TO LEAVE BISCIT. I DON'T EVEN WANT A MAC CODE. I AM IN A NEW ADDRESS WHERE I HAVE TRIED TO CANCEL MY V21 SINCE SEP. I AM WITH A NEW SERVICE PROVIDER. BUT BISCIT STILL TAKE OVER EXCESS MONEY OUT. FOR A SERVICE I DON'T USE. TO DATE I HAVE PAID £200.00 FOR A MONTHS BROADBAND. THEY SAY NET SERVICE CHARGE THEM EXCESS. JOKE RIGHT
 
We're all annoyed, but I'm stuck on bloody dialup and i've just waited for every single thread to load and found the same message in all of them! :mad:

Anyway, I emailed Consumer Direct today about the 'free' dialup, as I feel this is deliberately misleading. Everyone else should do the same.
 
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The dispute is over "excess bandwidth charges" incurred by V21 before Biscit bought them, back to Dec 05. Biscit have a letter from Netservices CEO from June this year saying they wouldn't invoice for this (presumably requested during the due dilligence prior to the acquisition). They want the MAC codes so they can migrate all their V21 users to the Biscit network.
Aha! (Forgive me but I can't get my realplayer to work right now - why can't the beeb use Ogg Vorbis instead?!) - so what you're saying is that Biscit were planning to migrate V21 customers off the Netservices platform from the outset, even before they took over V21 in the first place?

And that Netservices have been dragging their heels about allowing this to happen?

This really isn't making Netservices look good! If they have a legitimate claim against V21 for these extra charges that V21 dispute, then Netservices should be able to make that claim crystal clear. If they can't make it crystal clear, then it's very unlikely they'll be able to enforce that claim in the courts. The fact that Netservices in turn have to pay BT bills isn't good enough - they should have thought of that before they agreed the terms with V21 that they did.

For EzeeDSL customers, this begs the question of what will happen when Netservices run into the same problem with EzeeDSL! Is there any reason why it's less likely to happen with EzeeDSL than it was with V21, E7 or Fast24? It sounds to me that E7 and Fast24 chose not to fight it, and just let Netservices's claim push them under. But V21 is made of sterner stuff.

Not that that helps any of us, at least not in the short term. But it's good to hear that the media hasn't got bored of the issue just yet.

I see no morality whatsoever in being dictated to as to which ISP you can or cannot move to..all the alternatives Netservices have ever offered in these cases are all users of their backbone products.
I think that tracker has missed timeless's point - indeed, I think that's the point that timeless was trying to make. The point is, what if netservices didn't care about the rights and the wrongs of it, and were just trying to recoup some losses that they have made somewhere, we're not quite sure where?

What if they thought they would try to do it by nailing E7 and Fast24 for some dodgy bills - but found that didn't work, because E7 and Fast24 threw in the towel? So, what if they then thought they would do it to V21 as well, who suddenly became a lot more valuable after Biscit bought them out - but that that didn't work either, albeit for somewhat different reasons? And what if they thought that the reason they shouldn't give in and give up the MACs is because they think they stand a better chance of nailing EzeeDSL with dodgy bills in the future - and perhaps they thought the poor bright-eyed people at EzeeDSL are too naive to realise what they're getting into?

I'm not saying anything for certain - I'm just saying, what if. How else do we explain the apparent emerging patterns? Netservices seem to have had problems with many of their other clients besides V21. But have V21 or Biscit had similar problems with many of their other suppliers - and if so, when?

Still, I don't know, I could be wrong on all this. I don't doubt that Zeddust from Motley Fool was wrong about Totalise.

If you think I've overlooked something very obvious here, I'd be most grateful if you can post it.

Then again, considering that both sides have threatened legal action, I appreciate that it would be wrong for people who are involved to comment. We can only guess about what's going on - and indeed, I'm very surprised that there was any extra comment on a Radio 4 programme.

And besides, I don't see how any of this solves any of our problems. Any other comments? Thanks.
 
What if they thought they would try to do it by nailing E7 and Fast24 for some dodgy bills

E7even were selling 'unlimited' 1mbps broadband for £10 a month and even buy one get one free offers at one point, there was little doubt amongst the regulars here at least that E7 were doomed from day one. although I had thought that they might have been able to make a profit by selling their customers on at some point.

I think it likely that they owed BT a very significant sum before they migrated all their customers from their own BT centrals to Netservices and Tiscali wholesale products.

I don't doubt for one minute that they (or their supplier genuk) owed significant sums to Netservices. What stuck in my throat was the attempt to foist a 12 month Ezee contract on E7even's customers.

Now if sleezey had offered the option of a monthly contract or a cease my brother probably would have joined ezee, although to be honest considering the price and the complaints about ezee from e7 Ezee customers he probably would not have stayed more than a month.
 
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E7even were selling 'unlimited' 1mbps broadband for £10 a month and even buy one get one free offers at one point, there was little doubt amongst the regulars here at least that E7 were doomed from day one.
You have a point there. Question is, how much of Netservices's sales were represented by E7 and Fast24? And how much of V21's cost of sale is represented by Netservices? Most significantly of all, though, have V21 had any other major run-ins with suppliers?

It's probably possible to find all this out by looking at the figures and matching them all up, but I guess that trying to decide who's the good guy and who's the bad still doesn't solve any problems. I don't know why I even indulge it, to be honest.

Thanks for the comment.
 
I personally have my doubts that there are any good guys, just blacker shades of grey and unfortunate customers who failed to do enough research when choosing an ISP. Although I can remember fast24 having a good reputation.

My brother only signed up for E7even because I told him that if he paid the £240 by credit card he'd get the rest of his money back when they collapsed if they were not taken over and he didn't mind if he got dial-up speeds at that price or if he had to switch back to dial-up.
 
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