Warning to ALL Telewest users

[mick094m]

This is a warning to all users of Telewest Broadband.do you check your bills if not I would start doing so.I paid a bill over the phone with Telewest and instead of them taking £70.47 they took £170.47. This only came to light when direct debits failed and I got a letter re-charges etc. Another bit of advice if you have a problem with them "don't " take it to CISAS they are ""supposed" to be the "independant" arbitrators. Thats a joke, if anyone is interested in the whole horror story will put the details up but be warned it don't make nice reading and will put you off Telewest as a provider after you read it .Don't forget to check your bills Telewest rely on you not doing so in order to rip you off

[Rob]

to Cable Forum

you've obviously had a bad time with Telewest. I'm not making excuses for anyone, but mistakes and errors happen with any company large and small. It's whether the company is interested in correcting the error that is just as important.

Have you had your money refunded? Did Telewest deny that they were responsible, hence your complaint to CISAS. Did you get offerred any compensation, if they agreed they were at fault?

[mick094m]

Telewest admitted they were wrong and no got no satisfaction out of CISAS thats why I said CISAS is a waste of time so it will be a court case

[Rob M]

Originally Posted by mick094m

Telewest admitted they were wrong

So have they refunded your money?

It's worth noting that if you can get written confirmation from TW that they are in the wrong you will probably be able to get them (or more likely your bank) to refund your charges under the Direct Debit guarentee.

[mick094m]

They refunded the £100 but then they offered £395 compensation then when I agreed that they reduced it by £155 this started in February this year thats how I got CISAS involved they accused me of being unreasonable for not accepting a cheque that would take 2 to 6 weeks to process so refused to pay any compensation they also would not accept the fact that it would take a cheque 7 days to clear in my bank account, it is a long and involved saga that makes Telewests customer care leave a lot to be desired and a big question mark about the complaints procedure. Also this is not the first time it has happened to me it happened again in 2001 with a direct debit of £134 taken from my account unauthorised took me best part of a year to sort that one out

[stuartalston]

how can a direct debit be unauthorised? the very nature of dd is that you authorise the money to be removed until you cancel the mandate. if you did that then it would be your bank at fault not telewest

[Graham]

Originally Posted by stuartalston

how can a direct debit be unauthorised? the very nature of dd is that you authorise the money to be removed until you cancel the mandate.

I think the point is that if they take out money when they shouldn't (eg making two deductions in one month) that would be an "unauthorised" DD, as would changing the amount debited without them notifying you as they should.

There again, the moral is *always* check your bank and credit card statements when they arrive!

[mick094m]

Thanks for saving me the problem of explaining the obvious, I bet there are many out there who never ever check any statements, and it was only because I am on a tight budget being a BT Pensioner and not being in the fortunate position of having a large monthly balance to call upon that is how this came to light so soon. I bet there are loads of others that this has happened to without them noticing it, unless they check every statement from Telewest against bank statements.That was my main reason for posting the thread as a Warning, so that others are made aware of the fact that these "mistakes" are made it and takes a long time to get it sorted out with Telewest, I am still trying to sort it out and this happened in February.

Finally if you do get into this situation............forget using CISAS ( thats another story ) they are useless , they did not even notice that when Telewest sent in thier defence to them over my complaint that it was nothing about my complaint but another persons details was sent plus a copy to me ,I mean do they know anything about ths Data Protection Act surely that is an offence that CISAS shoulsd have jumped on them for doing that instead sent some sort of lame apology to me saying it was a mistake from Telewests end, I am thinking of forwarding all that to the Data Protection People to see what they think. My advice if you have aproblem with Telewest go straight to a Solicitor , that's what I should have done instead of following the complaints procedure they use it as a delaying tactic and get away with it.