Bulldog Broadband

After surfing around the internet for a few days, looking for an alternative internet provider, I decided that I would move away from Pipex and BT, my current set up - and move my services to Bulldog Broadband ( www.bulldogbroadband.com )

At that time, they were doing a special offer, of 1p connection fee, and the first 4 months at half price. I opted for the phone and broadband Super@ctive package at £41.50 per month, which included the telephone line rental and the 'up to' 8mb broadband connection.

Comparing it to my previous 'set up' I thought that this would be good value for money. BT was costing me slightly more on the line rental, even though this was billed on a quarterly basis. Pipex were charging me £24 per month, for a 2mb connection. After checking the distance from my house, to my local exchange, it worked out at approx 1.9km - so as it was under the 2km for the 'best' results, I knew that I would receive the 2mb AT LEAST for my 8mb broadband.

All in all, the provisioning process was good. They assign you a username / password, to log into 'My Account' via their website, and can actually track the progress of your order. After approximately 12 days, my service had been transferred to Bulldog. I actually received an eMail to notify me that the services had all been set up, and were now activated - having received this on my works eMail address, I was keen to get home, and check out the connection.

The first thing I did when I got home, was to check the telephone line, after reading several items on their online forum, I noticed that some people had problems initially with the telephone line part of their service. Having checked that I could receive, and also dial calls from the line, I decided to move onto the internet connection. I accessed the web based interface for my Router, and changed the username / password that were previously stored in there for my Pipex account. I waited a few seconds for the connection to syncronise with my local exchange, and authenticate with the Bulldog account, and hey presto, there I was. Connected - with a sync rate of 7600kbps - I was very pleased. My phone line had been moved over - and there were no apparent issues. My broadband was working, speed was excellent, nearly 4 x the speed of my previous 2mb Pipex connection. I was very impressed.

However, thats where the 'feel good' factor ended, and the nightmare began.

Bulldog do not understand the meaning of customer services, and their technical support team are no more than 'Google' look uppers. I used to actually be the technical support manager for the AIL group of internet providers such as WHSmith.net Pgen.Net, Surfanytime.co.uk, Breathe.com, 0800dial.com etc etc, and I am obviously technically competent myself. My credit card details were entered, at the original sign up point, and was debitted with the £1 connection charge. After approximately 5 weeks of service, and the first bill being raised on my account, I was rather alarmed to see that my bill was just over £100 - for a months service. By my calculations, and the comparison I had run on my previous set up with BT for my telephone line rental, and also Pipex for my ISP, I knew this had to be a billing error. Not being one to spend hours on the phone - I knew it couldnt of been due to telephone calls. The 'My Account' section of their website, wouldnt actually let me view the call itemisation, or a breakdown of the bill itself. I then telephoned the customer services line, to see whether they could post me a paper copy of my bill, and also raise a call for the technical team to check why I was unable to check my bill online. After the intial call, I could see why so many people were complaining about Bulldog. After waiting on the phone for nearly 50 minutes, I got through to a customer service advisor and went through the problem of accessing my online bill. I was given the response that I need to call technical support to raise a call ( which was a fair enough response really, as the technical support team, would be the ones to deal with such an issue ) I then asked the customer service advisor, if he could either post me a copy, or fax, or eMail me my bill. He said no - Bulldog didnt provide that facility. I then asked him if he could go through the bill with me, as I couldnt understand why it was over £100 for a months service. I was shocked when the advisor when on to confirm that it was for

£60 connection fee
£41.50 for 1 months service, which included £10.50 for the telephone line rental - and the rest was call charges ( approx £3.00 ) and of course that dreaded VAT.

I asked why I had been charged the £60 connection fee, and also the full price on the first months subscription on the account, as this was stated as being half price for the first 4 months when I initially signed, and also free connection. I was advised that it was a billing error, they had several other customers who had phoned up with the same problems. I was asked to pay approx £40 - and then the remainder of the bill, would be resolved once the next bill was generated. They would place credits on the account, to counter-act the charges that had been produced initially. I believed this to be an acceptable response, and decided to pay the £40 that had been requested. I thought that even if I should of been paying less than the £40 for the first couple of months, this would just leave me in credit for the following month, and reduce the payment anyway.

To my shock, the following month, there was no reflection of what I had been told my the customer service advisor. Over £60 was carried forward onto my second bill, and again a charge of just over £45 - so again, I was being billed for just over £105 - again, another call to the customer services team. 30 mins on hold, and then I was given the response after explaining the whole story from the beginning that the offer must of changed, and that this was my bill, and in fact I was in arrears on my account, as I only paid £40 the previous month, and not the full £100 balance that was requested. I asked to speak to a supervisor, and was told that none were available to come to the phone, however he offered to put my on their list, and a supervisor would call me back to deal with my complaint.

3 days later, a supervisor did phone me back, and apologised, stating that there billing platform had some issues that were being resolved, and that the bill would be sorted out on the following month. After the call, I started to wonder whether it was a good move. Yeah, no actual problems with the services being used, just the billing aspect.

About a week later, I actually received a letter from bulldog, which was mass mailed to all its users, advising they were aware they had billing issues, and a promise that this would be resolved, and that there customers were important to them. I can only put this down to a high churn rate received for the previous few weeks, and bulldog attempting to put a stop to people leaving them.

The initial billing problem was resolved, and the charges creditted back to my account. However there was then, and still is now another problem. I had received my bill for October, and to my shock, there was over £200 worth of call charges to a premium rate number. Now being a 'techie' guy, I knew this wasn't down to some malicious dialler software that had inadvertantly been downloaded onto my PC, which then in turn was dialling up a ridiculous connection, charging me huge amounts. For a start, I dont even have a phone line connected to the v.92 modem that is installed in my PC, and gathering dust :-)

The calls only lasted approx 30 seconds each call, and were literally one after another for 2 / 3 hours. Each call was charged on my bill for £0.85 ( add the vat on top of that - and your looking at nearly £1 per call )

I put a complaint into Bulldog straight away over these charges, via phone, who advised they would pass it onto their complaints team, I was also given the complaints team eMail address ( as they are not customer facing, and do not take in bound calls from customers - funny that !! )

I eMailed them approx 1 week later, after not having a response.

I was told that the charges were on my account, so therefore I must of made the calls, and I was liable for the call charges. I couldnt really believe what I was hearing. I mean come on - a communications company, that would also need the support of network engineers, and that was the best answer they could come up with ? I asked them if they had not heard of call slippage, or hacking, or any other form of internet / telephone fraud which was highly apparent on the internet !

You can then imagine my outrage, when I received a telephone call the following Saturday morning by Barclaycard. At this time, my bill with Bulldog stood at just over £300 - as I had refused to pay for the call charges + VAT on my account, and had only being paying what I had worked out to be the amount for the line rental, the broadband service, and the telephone calls that I had ACTUALLY MADE. The fraud investigation agent @ Barclaycard asked me whether I had used my card at all that morning - wondering what was going on - I advised her that I hadnt, in fact I was still in bed. She then went on to tell me that there were 2 transactions taken from my card, in the space of 3 minutes. The frist transaction was for £483.45 - and was taken by Bulldog Communications - The 2nd transaction was taken 3 minutes later, and was for the sum of £321.87. She told me that they had been having massive problems with customers of Bulldog, and asked whether these transactions were authorised. I told her they were not. My credit card details were only on file with them, from when I first signed up and that the monthly payments were being made by the form of a telephone call to their customer services team, and a charge made via my Debit Card. She then advised me she would put a stop on the charges excessing £800 to bulldog communications ( cheap broadband hey ?? )

At present, my complaint still goes on - having several responses back from the company, which all come to the same conclusion, its on your bill sir, you have to pay it. I have logged a complaint with a contact @ OFCOM - and have been told they have a major problem at the moment with Bulldog Broadband, and that their investigations are commencing.

I can only warm other people of this company, and advise people to stay clear. If you want a fast internet connection, then stay with BT, and check out www.bethere.co.uk - thats what Im doing.

Remember, you have been warned.