Don't even think about investing in Pipex

I've been with pipex for years and have never had to call them (or any other isp i've been a customer iwth in the last 10 years), the fact you appear to have to call support regularly suggests stupidity on your part.

Or perhaps suggest the fact that Pipex have given me reason to call them. I don't spend hours on their support line every month for fun Peter.

So they have their support costs under control - should be a good investment then.

Small company? Pipex have been around for years and owned by UUNET one of the original ISP's, they're hardly a start up.

Not if it means disgruntled customers will be leaving in droves.

Tried contacting any utility companies lately ?

If that was the case NTL would have disappeared years ago.

I've been with Pipex for a number of years and have no complaints thus far. It does seem generally the case however, that service levels generally decrease (at least initially) when a company's user base increase dramatically, and the existing support resources become insufficient.

Colin Wilson wrote

"If you have lost the will to live, please press button 9".....

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Colin Wilson said

I just had to contact 4 of them after my father died. NTL cabletel were the only ones I got straight through to, and they fixed the account online in seconds. British gas get the wooden spoon - 20 minutes of muzak (15 plus another 5 when i was transferred to the right department).

Unfortunately large companies like Pipex need an awful lot of customers to leave for it to have an impact. In actual fact if those customers that do ring technical support (whether genuine or not) then decide to leave it could leave Pipex far more profitable as it is left with all those users that never bother their technical support line at all.

It helps that their services are reliable and steady - from my 3+ years of experience. They could do a little more, especially concerning spam targeting their easily guessable IDs but they're doing well enough to be able to buy up and expand without any obvious large-scale problems. Touch wood. It is *nice* to be able to use the same email addrs for a long time: compare with the changes freeserve custs have gone through (and not finished yet either).

Satisfied customer does not mean a good investment.. In fact based on experience, poor cust experiences are probably better indictors of good investment opportunities! Those mean bad companies are focused on quickie returns and ignore cust churn.

It might not have much of an impact on its profitability directly, but it can have a lot of impact on investor confidence, hence acting to stifle expansion.

Nice try. I remember several companies putting something into the blurb they hand to actual customers. It goes something like "If we get it right, tell your friends, if we get it wrong, tell us". In fact happy customers are not all that likely to tell their friends, unless they're extremely happy, but unhappy customers (even if only slightly unhappy) are more likely to warn their friends.

If a friend of yours left a company because they were unhappy with their customer service, would you think "So what, I never use customer service" or would you think "Well, I haven't needed CS yet and if I'm lucky I might never, but if for some reason I ever did need them, I'd want to be sure my problem got sorted out with a minimum of fuss"?

Are there any customers who never bother technical support? Pipex's network is not immune from technical faults, and everybody is going to be affected by some kind of problem on the network eventually. What else can customers do in that case other than contact technical support?

Chris

If there is a proper (separate system, off site) support page and a similar telephone system with a message on it that may be sufficient without the customer having to connect a 'real' support person. If I can find out that my ISP (or hosting company) already knows about a problem and is working on it then I don't really want/need to talk to anyone.

Wait until the problem goes away by itself. And no, I'm not being flippant, it's a serious option, depending on what kind of problem it is. If it's the kind that will be affecting other customers too, then let some other poor sod waste their time with the damned call centre, and go away and do something else.