Ex-Bulldog customer still being billed

Troubled communications provider Bulldog has admitted it continued to bill an ex-customer who quit the company last year after experiencing a poor quality of service.

Brendan Smee joined Bulldog in July 2005, a time when the telco was having problems providing an acceptable service to its customers. At the end of September he quit the company, after 13 weeks during which his telephone line simply failed to work.

As Smee was on a monthly contract, his service was disconnected in October. But Bulldog kept billing him through the rest of 2005 and in January 2006.

Smee said last week: "Bulldog is still unlawfully deducting monies from my account on a monthly basis. I have tried contacting them several times to no avail. Today, however, I was told that it is confirmed my service was terminated but the money is still being deducted."

By this stage, Smee was also considering taking legal action against Bulldog, as he claims repeated calls to the company had no effect. Other Bulldog users have also claimed to have struggled to contact the company but late last year the company said it was expanding its customer call centre from 50 people to 300 to address this.

silicon.com sister site, ZDNet UK, contacted Bulldog last week about Smee's experiences. The next day, he was contacted by a company employee who said Bulldog would be refunding his money.

A Bulldog spokeswoman confirmed: "We were disappointed to hear that Mr Smee had experienced difficulties with Bulldog, for which we apologise. We have fully investigated the status of his billing and he has been refunded any monies due to him."

She added: "Ensuring that our customers receive excellent service is our number one priority. Bulldog is continually taking steps to improve the support we offer."

Although Smee's experience could be a one-off incident, the spokeswoman did indicate that other ex-customers will continue to be billed if they owe Bulldog money.

Last year, as first reported last July, many Bulldog users found their new service wasn't delivered on time, or didn't work at all.

Although Bulldog claimed last November that it had addressed these problems, ZDNet UK is still being contacted by irate users complaining of problems.

On Monday, one reader reported suffering very poor customer service from Bulldog. "I was told at least six times in the last four days that someone will call back, but they never did. No one seems to know what is going on."

Another reader, IT project manager Alan Wright, is also experiencing billing problems with Bulldog.

He said: "I joined Bulldog in September 2003, the equipment I ordered never arrived, and it took three months to get the line active. The Bulldog technical dept continually told me the problems were at my end - it finally turned out to be a setting on their equipment. In October 2004 they stopped billing me. My emails were not answered and getting through on the phone was next to impossible."

Wright added: "Now I have received an invoice for the whole period from 2003 to date. Again my email was not answered until I chased, and then the reply was incorrect. It finally took an hour on the phone to get a sensible response but the revised invoice hasn't arrived."

Graeme Wearden writes for ZDNet UK