Some energy, yesterday

Four of the ‘big six’ energy suppliers are in ‘big trouble’ with industry regulator Ofgem following mis-selling allegations and they could face ‘big punishments’ – but they probably won’t, obviously.

The face-to-face and telephone sales tactics of Npower, Scottish Power, Scottish and Southern Energy, and EDF Energy are to be investigated amid claims that some customers are finding themselves worse off after switching energy suppliers, possibly due to waffle, bollocks and mumbo jumbo.

New rules regarding sales were introduced at the end of last year, stating that potential customers must receive an estimate before a face-to-face sale is completed and that a comparison between their current and offered deal is provided. It has been alleged that this new code is not being fully adhered to. We stand amazed.

Following the conclusion of the Ofgem their CEOs could face one of the following punishments…

(a) Being wrapped up in a windsock and fired out of a cannon into the side of a shipping container.

(b) Being made to dress up as a Victorian prostitute before plying their ‘trade’ outside Millwall FC’s ground on a match day.

(c) Have their arms and legs surgically fused together before being dropped into a vat of hot tea.

(d) None of the above

In truth, it’s probably going to be (d) and they’ll probably end up with a warning or a fine that won’t actually be noticed thanks to their gargantuan profits. And life will go on pretty much the same as it was before…

Idiot

Get a quote from a price-comparison website and you might as well just start you own blog filled with loads of your personal information, then go on The One Show and tell Jason and Alex all about it. Those are more or less the findings of the dudes and dudettes at PC Pro, who have discovered just how easy it is to access the personal details of customers of Confused.com and Comparethemarket.com.

With Comparethemarket.com, PC Pro found that all they had to do to access the entire quote history of a customer was to input their email address, surname and date of birth. None of which is particularly hard to find, especially in the era of social networking where people are happy to sleepwalk their way into offering up so much of their private info.

Another idiot, with his idiot mate

By inputting those three simple pieces of information, a whole heap more was available – telephone numbers, car registration and make details, occupation, personal details of spouses as well as property details where house insurance quotes were available. Staggering stuff, and an identity thief’s dream come true.

When it came to Confused.com, PC Pro say that all that was required was to fill in a web form to reset the account-holder’s password before gaining access to quote history and further personal information. They said that any hacked account holder wouldn’t even know that someone had been sniffing aroung in their data as no email confirming the password change was dispatched.

PC Pro say that they have contacted both Confused.com and Comparethemarket.com but at the time of publishing the story earlier today, neither company had tightened up the security on their sites. Confused.com did say: “We take our customers’ data protection seriously. We are currently in the process of upgrading our password reset and retrieval methods to enhance security for our customers including use of additional security questions, and this will be available in the near future.”

The moral of the story – don’t buy your car insurance off an up-his-own-arse meerkat.

It’s always refreshing when a company drop the bland corporate-speak when personally interacting with their customers. So with that in mind, it’s hats off to Paperchase.

But it’s not so cool and groovy when they’re rude and patronising to their customers, especially when said customer has raised a valid point about gender stereotyping in their advertising. So it’s hats back on (or whatever the opposite of hats off is) to Paperchase.

Blogger and Paperchase fan Nancy Smallwood took umbrage recently at the window display in their Tottenham Court Road branch in the centre of That London’s fashionable That London. Advertising ‘back to school’ stuff, Paperchase had deployed a ‘pink is for girls’ and ‘blue is for boys’ theme, with pictures of the girls doing bakery and the boys playing with sharks and similar tough stuff and that.

An email of complaint was dashed off by Nancy, including points like…

“More than ever now big companies need to be trying to advocate equality for both sexes, and break down gender stereotypes, and in this day and age I was pretty disappointed to see this ridiculous cop out.”

She ended with “I’m a big fan of your store, as I said, but I’d really hope in future you could try harder to avoid this kind of nonsense.”

Fair points, well made. Well, not according to Robert Warden, the Marketing Director of Paperchase. His reply, dispatched around twenty minutes later was this…

Thank you for your email. However you rather miss the point… we are more than aware of the gender stereotypes and were making an ironic point by using archive mail-order catalogue photos from the 1970s…

When we are trying to sell stationery (please note spelling) there are images that appeal to boys and images that appeal to girls – and we have had a very successful season with the designs that we chose. So presumably the majority of our customers approved of the products.

Yours sincerely
Robert Warden

Presumably he also stuck out his tongue and waggled his fingers from either side of his head as he sent the email. Some nice pedantry regarding the spelling of ‘stationery’ there as well. We like a bit of pedantry round these parts.

There was more to come. Naturally, Nancy was unhappy with Warden’s response and probed him further on the inherent message in the Paperchase marketing merchandising. She sent a further email, pointing out that… “I wasn’t looking for you to argue that it sells well as a defence, rather an apology and demonstrate an awareness of the issues that I complained about (and not in the ironic 1970s – or should that be 1950s? – sense.”

A reply duly followed from Robert Warden.

Thank you for your email.

Consumerism is, first and foremost, a choice. Whether our campaign is subtle is not (… it is always reassuring to know that customers assume they can be rude to us but do not like being corrected themselves) is in the eyes of the beholder.

Our customers specifically asked for ‘boys’ stationery – and as we are trying to run a commercial enterprise (one of the reasons being to keep people in employment) – we did our best to provide something we thought 7 year old boys might appreciate either buying or being given. No-one has forced them to buy it.

If 7 year old girls are keen on sharks they can buy it too ! I leave the disagreements between us there – we shall continue to try not to offend all our customers.
Yours sincerely
Robert Warden

Since Nancy wrote about her interaction with Paperchase and Warden, the blogosphere has erupted with condemnation of the attitude the Marketing Director has taken towards a genuine complaint from a customer.

But how bad is it really? Should we be pleased that a ‘suit’ has tried to engage directly with a customer for once and explain why the merchandising looks the way it does, even if his social skills left a little to be desired?

Or is it unacceptable behaviour from Paperchase and should an effigy of Robert Warden be hoisted up on a pole and burned outside the Tottenham Court Road store for crimes against gender equality?

What do YOU LOT reckon? Eh?

Bell? Bell end more like

“Briiing briiing! Hello, who is this? Hello? HELLO? Why won’t you speak to me? Gaaaaaaaahhhhhh!”

That’s the type of mini-breakdown that many of us suffer from every day thanks to cold calls to our beloved telephonular systems, with ‘silent calls’ the most annoying of all. A new study by consumer champions Which! has revealed that Britons receive an average of six cold calls every month, with 32% of them being silent calls.

Which! say that 75% of those surveyed want such calls banned and that 60% hung up on cold callers right from the outset.

If you’re sick and tired of cold calls infiltrating your telephonular system, you could do a lot worse than register with the Telephone Preference Service. You can also find out just who is responsible for silent calls at Who Calls Me?

Ceri Stanaway of Which! also said: “Reputable businesses should stop making sales calls to you if you ask to be removed from their contact database, but if that doesn’t work you should report the company to the information commissioner’s office or Ofcom. Scam callers are more difficult to tackle, but start by screening your calls and if you do get a scam call, record as much information as you can – the name of the company and its phone number – and report it to your phone provider or to Consumer Direct.”

The EyeExperts.co.uk saga has been a long and weary one, but finally our Bitterwallet reader has managed to get a result.

If you recall, EyeExperts are one of the many guises of the Keswani Brothers (who are also involved in marketing, advertising and pornography, at least according to the Indian Police). It seems several readers have had problems with their service in the past, and in this particular instance, our reader was left waiting over ten weeks before receiving a satisfactory response from EyeExperts, after they refused to refund their order and made continuous excuses about lost orders and missing frames:

I am happy to update you on EyeExperts; on Friday they arranged for a call back from the boss who said he would refund my money. I requested both my money and expenses, he offered a refund in full plus a new pair of glasses made up from £25 range, and I agreed.

My money was paid back into my account yesterday and I’m now sending off for the replacement order.

I think your investigations have caused quite a stir and it is probable that the BBC may have contacted them. I hope all the others that have had problems with these companies (that these people run) have also received some sort of result.

We’re working with the BBC’s Rip Off Britain series on a number of stories, so it’s good to know they’re rattling the cages of these people. If you’ve had serious problems with any of the sites ran by the Keswani Brothers, send your details to us and we’ll pass them on to the BBC.

If you’ve got a dog that can say sausages, we’ll have that off you too. It’s a slow news day.

Right then. If you’ve missed the back story, here it is in four bullet points:

• a complaint concerning an ExclusiveEyes.co.uk making frames from used parts and ignoring their own guarantees
• plenty more complaints about the company followed
• the owners of multiple online glasses sites, the Kawani brothers, are involved in SEO wizardry and arrested in India
• a Bitterwallet reader declares another of the sites, ExpertEyes.co.uk, “a shambles”

It’s the final point where we pick up the story. Our reader still hasn’t received their glasses – or a refund – from ExpertEyes, despite it being nine weeks since the initial order:

“Since I last contacted you, they’ve rang me twice to say they would settle my order and I was told Royal Mail had scanned my glasses package, saw they were broken and returned them to EyeExperts.”

The ability to scan inside packages and return packaged based on a breakage would be a first for Royal Mail. Maybe they’ll start using transporters for next day delivery, too.

“I demanded a refund and was told they would ring me back and let me know. They also said the frames [I wanted] were now no longer available so could I choose another.”

Hardly surprising, since governments change hands in less time than EyeExperts have had to fulfill our reader’s order. Quite when ExpertEyes will get around to pulling their finger out is unclear, but the message from the majority of Bitterwallet’s readers seems to be clear – go elsewhere for your eyewear. If you’ve had first class service from an online service, feel free to spread the word in the comments below.

Mobile phone recycling has become an easy way of both clearing out the kitchen drawer of crapola we all have, and earning a few extra bob. Except when the website you sent your mobiles to goes to the wall before you’re paid – welcome to the world of Earth Mobile.

Businesses go bust all the time, but that’s not what’s irritating customers in the MSE forums, as well as avid Bitterwallet reader Alasdair:

“The obvious problem is that there are a lot of people out there who had sent in their mobiles and haven’t been paid. Most of these mobiles were sent in a long time ago, and as the company promised to pay “within 7 days” and haven’t paid for months or so… clearly they knew that this was coming but still accepted phones and offered to pay for them.”

According to these reports, Earth Mobile were whipping up plenty of interest by offering the best prices on used mobiles, swaying consumers from choosing more established services. After seemingly stringing many customers along for weeks with promises of payment, all the while accepting handsets from new customers, the Earth Mobile site disappeared on Monday to be replaced with a message stating the company has ceased trading.

The company operated through a rented PO Box number, but a dig through the details at Companies House (which still shows Earth Mobile Ltd as trading) and other websites show Earth Mobile was operated by Russell Malcolm Tilbury, and numerous searches reveal several addresses in the Windsor area. He certainly cast his business net far and wide; Earth Mobile appears to have been trading on eBay in both China and France.

Since Monday, Tilbury has gone to ground, taken his customers money and their mobiles with him. We’ve tried to call all the numbers littered about the internet, but all resolve in recorded messages or full mailboxes. There seems to be no footprint outside Earth Mobile for Tilbury or the company’s other director, Katie Iliffe. MSE members have reported recording the issue with Trading Standards; in the meantime, we’ll keep hunting for the elusive Mister Tilbury.

Travelling on the London Tube feels like a frame from a Dennis the Menace strip, where Dennis is holding Softy Walter upside down by the legs to empty the dinner money from his pockets. Maybe that’s a little too gentle.

Travelling on the London Tube is not unlike being mercilessly buggered until you sign away your savings to the Mayor of London. But even that analogy doesn’t allow for the fact that some Oyster card holders are being double-charged for the privilege of sitting silently in an underground oven sweating their tits off.

A Freedom of Information request has shown Transport for London (TfL) has had to refund £40,000 so far this year to customers who have been over-charged by faulty station terminals. Not only that, there have been over 2,400 complaints about station machines double-charging travellers attempting to add credit.

The terminals generating the highest levels of complaints can be found at London Bridge, Victoria, Liverpool Street and King Cross. TfL is now asking all customers to check their bank account statements for errors, since they claim not to know whether a mistake have been made until reported to them, which is incredibly convenient for TfL – if £40,000 has been clawed back by hawk-eyed customers who spotted the problem, there’s probably far more cash left unclaimed.

The BBC have been in touch with Bitterwallet via the secret Bitterwallet hotline, a phone that sits on Andy’s desk. Here’s a picture of it:

They want to let you know about a new series of Rip Off Britain coming up soon; we’ve told them about your dealings with Additions and ExclusiveEyes and their merry band of websites, but what have YOU got to say? Here’s the official blurb:

Have you:

• been ripped off?
• been a victim of unfair or sharp practice?
• paid for something that you feel was a total waste of money?

The BBC’s ‘Rip Off Britain’ team are planning the new series and want to hear YOUR stories. Email ripoffbritain@bbc.co.uk with details, or post your grievances to: Rip Off Britain, PO BOX 4360, Manchester, M61 0DY.

We want to expose the issues that matter most to you, the British public, and expose the rip off merchants.

Where to start with this one. Well, it’s Vodafone, so we didn’t bat an eyelid; they really can’t help themselves when it comes to helping themselves – to the detriment of their customers. Surely they can’t screw up again so soon after the last time?

Yes, yes they can.

What is it now? It appears that Vodafone have found a way to charge customers for sending texts – even if those customers have a contract with inclusive and unlimited texts. How are they getting away with it? In the words of avid Bitterwallet reader Chris:

I took out a new contract with Vodafone (unlimited texts, 300 mins, £25 pm) and noticed that I was being charged for MMS messages that I didn’t send – and on the bill they were marked as ‘Long text’.

After a bit of digging and querying, I found out that the Nokia N97mini that I had got as part of the contract treated messages over 160 characters as MMS. All my other phones simply took the text message and split it into two or more parts, than stuck them back together at the other end – so counted as a series of SMS messages, which form part of the contract.

The contract does state that long texts will be charged for – but doesn’t explain what that means. I get charged 15p (inc VAT) for each one – not a great deal but, if you didn’t check, it could mount up if across all of their users.

Chris tackled Vodafone’s customer services on Twitter, who told him it was nothing to do with them:

Ah yes, one of those ‘features’ that can’t be turned off and has no discernible benefit to the end user. Regardless, Vodafone’s explanation doesn’t quite ring true, because it isn’t a feature of the handset as far as the manufacturer is concerned; Chris took his complaint to Nokia, who told him the phone has been set by Vodafone to count longer texts as MMS messages.

Somebody appears to be lying to their customer – either the manufacturer or the service provider – while Vodafone are raking in the cash for a service the majorty of users might assume is bundled into their contract. Which, if we’re honest about it, it is.

Software updates are the way of the world in the age of smartphones. We recently covered Apple’s successful attempts at bricking the iPhone 3G with their new iOS 4 operating system, and today it’s the turn of Android. Sort of. It seems the real villain of the piece are our friends at Vodafone.

Yesterday, Vodafone released a software update for owners of the HTC Legend, which promised a handful of improvements and enhanced features. Unfortunately, some customers downloading the update, including avid Bitterwallet reader Nick, found there was a bug with the way SMS messages were displayed – new texts were displayed last in the folder, not first, meaning users had to scroll through all their old messages every time they received an SMS. It’s an error that rendered the SMS functionality “almost useless” according to one customer on Vodafone’s forums.

The thing is, a similar bug had cropped up in an update released just a week before by HTC themselves – an update Vodafone didn’t pass on to customers and denied any knowledge of – and that update was then pulled by the manufacturer. So somewhat inexplicably, it seems Vodafone have released a new software update to HTC Legend customers that’s based on a version pulled because of bugs.

How did that happen then? Vodafone customer ac75 summarises the possibilities:

Either VF have turned around the testing on this update much quicker than the last one (in that we never actually got it), or it’s not been as thorough. Also, the bugs in this release have been clearly documented in several places so surely that’s something to check before actually releasing to the public?

According to customers in the forums, the faulty update was pulled by Vodafone this morning, but none of the staff have yet explained to these customers how to correct the issues or rollback to a previous version of the OS. Brilliant.

Still, it’s only their first screw-up of the week; this morning Vodafone also released an update for HTC Desire owners – but not the Froyo update everyone was expecting. Instead it updated Vodafone’s own branding, added Vodafone apps and their own bookmarks. Vodafone – putting Vodafone first. Again.

You know us – any chance to pick up the burning torch and pitchfork in the name of the consumer. Occasionally, however, we’ll let the witch live – by checking whether she’s really a witch and not just warty. In this instance, the witch is Orange, and while we’ve attempted to burn them at the stake in the past, we’ve better news this time around.

At the end of last week, we were tipped off to an angry mob forming on Facebook, concerning Orange updating HTC Hero handsets with Android’s 2.1 OS update, Éclair. The operating system has lots of super-whizz bang features packed in but, according to some rumour-mongers, Orange were going to withhold the update indefinitely: “It was the Orange-branded OS causing the problems! And T-Mobile had their update a fortnight ago! And it’ll break the network! Burn the witch!”

We didn’t think another operator releasing the update first was a big deal, but the Facebook group has attracted nearly 1,000 members in less than a week. The most noticeable grievance has been that Orange operators didn’t know anything about the update which further rubbed salt in the wound.

We contacted Orange on Monday, who assured us the update is on the way, and last night they forwarded on this quote from a HTC spokesperson concerning the matter:

“We apologise for the delay in Orange Hero customers receiving their Éclair update. Testing the update across European markets took longer than anticipated. However, we hope to receive final approval by the end of the week and Orange handsets should start updating from next week.”

It’s still vague on the specific date, but it’s certainly not a case of the update being shelved indefinitely. Rather than an issue with the Orange-branded handsets or palpitations over the network requiring more data as a result, the delay is being attributed to the manufacturer, not the network supplier – although it doesn’t really explain why handsets on T-Mobile in European markets received the update ahead of Orange customers. We have been told the “final approval” mentioned in the quote is HTC’s internal requirement before roll-out, rather than of ORange.

And now, the continuing saga of the Keswani brothers. In fact it’s the saga of several online stores they operate, that offer cut-price glasses, “no-quibble” guarantees and plenty of broken promises.

The brothers own at least four websites – ExclusiveEyes.co.uk, EyeExperts.co.uk, perfectglasses.co.uk and Glasses Experts – all promising 100% refunds, three day dispatch on simple orders, and so on.

ExclusiveEyes first came to our attention when an avid Bitterwallet customer received a pair of glasses seemingly made from second-hand parts. From the comments of readers in a follow-up post, we learned about more complaints, and more about the Keswani brothers – their numerous online stores, their marketing and advertising company and their recent arrests that involved pirated software and porn.

And the complaints keep on coming; the latest is from an anonymous but nevertheless avid Bitterwallet reader:

“I ordered glasses from EyeExperts on the 7 June and have still not received them. I have rang the number given – 0845 2591400 – several times and the same man answers each time with the excuse that quality is important and [the glasses] must be perfect before delivery.

“Countless emails have resulted in no replies or confirmation that the glasses have been posted recorded delivery; I previously received two separate emails with two separate delivery times – these have failed to deliver.

“I have now ordered a pair from Specs-By-Post these took 3 days to arrive! EyeExperts.com is a shambles and needs outing before more customers get taken in.”

So apart from non-delivery after six weeks, our avid reader also suggests the company are faking Recorded Delivery information to avoid sending the order. We’re not overly surprised to receive another complaint along these lines; to date, we haven’t heard a single good thing about any of the companies operated by the Keswani brothers.

As always, if you’ve any information or something to add, we’re always happy to hear from you at bitterwallet@gmail.com.

The wheels of consumer justice may turn painfully slowly, but they do seem to be inching their way round. Of course, they may just grind to a halt and fall off, but we’ll take what we can get.

Remember our skirmish with Additions in April? The online catalogue store, part of the Liverpool-based Shop Direct group offered an external hard drive at a ridiculously low price. Unsurprisingly, the world and his wife attempted to purchase one (or many more) and, in a further lack of astonishment, Additions cited a misprice and cancelled all the orders.

However, although Additions refunded the cost of the hard drive (which they charged at point of sale), they kept hold of the £3.95 delivery fee they’d also charged per order. As far as we could tell, it wasn’t just in the handful of cases that came Bitterwallet’s way, but in all the instances reported by customers on Hot UK Deals. So Additions retained the delivery charge for a product that was never dispatched, and appeared to do so on a significant scale.

We waited the 60 day period allowed by the Distance Selling Regulations for Additions to refund the delivery charge, but it never came. It goes without saying Additions had no right to withhold the charge, but such a small amount of money could easily be overlooked by other customers, which begged the question – how much money owed to customers does Shop Direct have?

We asked Shop Direct’s press department, who chose not to answer, so we took the complaint to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), who did decide our (and your) complaints were worthy of a reply:

“Under Part 8 of the Enterprise Act 2002 (the EA02) the OFT, along with other enforcers such as local authority Trading Standards Services (TSS), has powers to seek undertakings and court orders to deal with infringements of a range of consumer protection legislation, including the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000, where such a breach harms the collective interests of consumers.

“As the trader is based in the Liverpool area, the OFT is of the view that Liverpool TSS is best placed to monitor the activities of the trader to ensure compliance with the relevant legislation. The OFT has therefore contacted Liverpool TSS to highlight your concerns.”

OFT did mention that if the action taken by Trading Standards is considered “informal” (“offering guidance, advice or warning the trader”) then it doesn’t have to report it, so let’s hope a more serious tone is struck. At the very least, we’d hope to cause Shop Direct some mild irritation, like hearing Alan Carr on the radio, or bout of thrush. We’ll follow the story to let you know what comes out it.

Sweet muscualr Jesus. It resembles a sex education film, but it’s actually a movie of a takeaway burger. Avid Bitterwallet Consumerist reader Andrew got his meal home to discover the chef had cooked his burger merely by breathing on it for a number of seconds.

Andrew received a gift voucher for his troubles but, in a manner typical of a mewling Englishman rather than a non-nonsense Yank, he got his wife to phone the restaurant and complain on his behalf:

[The Consumerist]