clara.net - Avoid

**Rob** · 22-01-2010, 16:31

This bunch of cowboys make Virgin Media look highly proficient.

Supposedly clara.net are a competent business grade ISP. Their pricing would certainly suggest they should be, at their rip off levels. Indeed my firm has found itself paying for a ADSL Max connection at twice the price that truly unlimited business grade ISPs such as eclipse.net.uk are charging for their up to 20meg ADSL. Companies such as Be, Pipex and even BT are even less money.

You are signed to an annual contract. OK standard for many ISPs, but at the end of that period, if you haven't cancelled three months (yes three months) before, you are automatically locked in for another year. You aren't contacted to give any offer that they might be able to move you to a better speed package. It's best to say the customer is ignored.

Over the last fortnight it's been my misfortune to be trying to contact their technical support in order to transfer my domain registration and migrate the ADSL. Despite being a customer, they require stuff on headed paper for authentication, so email support tickets are useless. So you fax them. I know they got the faxes because of the time stamp. But they loose them. Or if you can speak to a real person (vitually impossible), you find the fax went to the wrong queue, despite using the fax number specifically listed on the support pages of the website. Email support tickets are equally ignored or if you do get a response it is many days later.

Worst of all has been the support phone lines. I'll never complain about VM's overseas call centres again. At least Virgin Media answer. I've given up trying to call clara.net. You can be hanging on the line, held in a queue for an ever repeating "your call is important to us" message, and yet the system cuts you off after an hour (yes it was that long), 20 minutes or whatever timer they impliment this time. I wonder how much money they get as a share of their 0845 number calls.

The final insult to injury is transferring our ADSL line to a new provider. Apparently because we cancelled our services (as their terms required all those months ago) we can't have a MAC code. That would require clara to reinstate services and start us on another year's contract at their rip off prices. It's taken 10 days to elicit a response to the fax / support ticket (you can't speak to the people concerned as they aren't in the call centre) to find that A MAC can only be issues on a live service which has more than 30 days to run. Why would a customer know that? So maybe I should have known, but would many customers? When the cancellation notice was sent those months ago, it would have been nice to have had any form of acknowledgment, even by email saying sorry to loose you blah blah and reminding us of the transfer limitations.

Ho hum, you live and learn.

Turkey Machine · 22-01-2010, 17:38

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martinsaunders · 22-01-2010, 17:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob

Ho hum, you live and learn.

Dear Rob,

I'm very sorry to hear you feel you've had an unsatisfactory level of service from clara.net. I would be very keen to have the opportunity to discuss your issues in more detail to make sure I understand them properly. If you are happy to accommodate this please feel free to contact me through this forum or via my e-mail address below.

Kind Regards

Martin Saunders
Marketing Director
clara.net
martin . saunders (@) uk . clara . net

webcrawler2050 · 22-01-2010, 18:02

Clara are shocking. As is their service. As is their up time, as is their control panel. As is everything about them.

martinsaunders · 22-01-2010, 18:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by webcrawler2050

Clara are shocking. As is their service. As is their up time, as is their control panel. As is everything about them.

Dear Sir,

I'd like to know more about your experiences as well please? Your post isn't as detailed as Rob's. Like most providers we have our issues, but I'm not sure it's fair to say 'everything' is 'shocking'.

Regards

Martin

--
Martin Saunders
Marketing Director
clara.net
martin . saunders (@) uk . clara . net

**Kymmy** · 22-01-2010, 18:11

Makes me glad that my companies internet connection is with NTL/Telewest..

Weird though that the marketing director is quick enough to jump on a public complaint on a 3rd party forum within 90 minutes of it being posted. Anyone would think that they go searching for public issues rather than deal with the customers correctly first time. Rob perhaps it might have been better to ask for your mac code on here

Raistlin · 22-01-2010, 18:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kymmy

[...]Chris perhaps it might have been better to ask for your mac code on here

Rob might get more joy doing that as well

**Chris** · 22-01-2010, 18:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kymmy

Weird though that the marketing director is quick enough to jump on a public complaint on a 3rd party forum within 90 minutes of it being posted.

Wehey for our Goooooooogle ranking, methinks.

I'm looking forward to Rob's next post in this thread.

**Kymmy** · 22-01-2010, 18:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob M

Rob might get more joy doing that as well

cowwected

martinsaunders · 22-01-2010, 18:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kymmy

..they go searching for public issues rather than deal with the customers correctly first time.

This is why I'm very keen to understand more! Rob's experiences don't fill me with joy, although I'm pleased to say his experiences aren't terribly common. The sooner we understand what went wrong the quicker we can stop it happening to another customer, hence why we're so quick to respond to a post like this.

You may be pleased to hear we don't manually trawl the forums, we have better things to do with our time!

We get an automated notification when our name appears on a commonly read forums and blogs.

Rob, a gentlemen called Alan Tavernor should also have sent you a PM by now. Please feel free to get in touch with either of us.

Kind Regards

Martin

--
Martin Saunders
Marketing Director
clara.net
martin . saunders (@) uk . clara . net

**Rob** · 22-01-2010, 18:27

Interesting the speed of response on here when I couldn't get anything earlier this week. Even when I worked out how to call the head office and got the receptionist asking to speak to the MD, all I could do was leave an extremely miffed message supposedly on the PA's voicemail which didn't get returned.

But I'll try contacting both Martin Saunders. and the other Clara chap who has also registered and PM'd me his details this afternoon. Trouble is they probably won't be able to respond to any email I send as the ADSL is about to be cut off.

**Kymmy** · 22-01-2010, 18:35

Martin, I appreciate that clara.net doesn't want bad press in any form on the internet but when the marketing director is the first point of contact for someone who has a problem with a company then that to me personally is a very bad sign..

Hopefully Alan (whatever his role is within clara.net) will help Rob with his migration issues but it's still help that should have come a lot earlier.

webcrawler2050 · 22-01-2010, 18:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob

Interesting the speed of response on here when I couldn't get anything earlier this week. Even when I worked out how to call the head office and got the receptionist asking to speak to the MD, all I could do was leave an extremely miffed message supposedly on the PA's voicemail which didn't get returned.

But I'll try contacting both Martin Saunders. and the other Clara chap who has also registered and PM'd me his details this afternoon. Trouble is they probably won't be able to respond to any email I send as the ADSL is about to be cut off.

This is always the case, the support is pants along with other variants but as soon as customers "moan" on a forum, then they are quick to jump. My opinion, is, if the support is this quick on an "unofficial" support forum. Then, the support should be as quick / if not better on tickets / Phone.

**Rob** · 26-01-2010, 20:24

By way of update this thread has somewhat galvanised clara.net into action. Thanks to Mr Tavernor and his colleague my office's ADSL has been extended and a MAC code provided which should enable a smoother migration to our new ISP without too great an interruption.

Bluffdemon · 28-01-2010, 10:13

The power of an internet forum !