Homecall

Homecall provide me with an excellent home phone package. My average bill is alot lower than with BT and they also provide excellent links with internet providers. I now have an excellent package which is low in cost and very effective. The advisors on the phone are very knowledgeable and are able to answer even the toughest of questions in a simple and easy to understand way!!

Great value phone company who are very professional. They have a great range of packages to suit everyone. I currently use the mobile phone package which means calls to mobile phones are at a cheaper rate.They are also linked to a great internet provider.

I've been with Homecall/Pipex for over a year, but it seems loyalty counts for nothing! Everything was fine until I wanted to upgrade my broadband package. It took months and numerous phone calls to their 0870 number. I eventually got the upgrade but they totally screwed-up my bill in the changeover month. Four months later I'm still waiting for a refund of the over-charged amount. I've made numerous calls to them which have cost me money. Their call centre staff promise everything, but deliver nothing. I tried to make a complaint but couldn't get pass the call centre operator. Lets see if I get my refund on the next bill. Don't hold your breath!

I had no problems with Homecall until 2 weeks ago when the line failed - maybe it was bad cable on the nearby pole.

No-one from Pipex turned up to fix it in the official response deadline of 3 days.

Then they began to tell me it's going to be fixed the next day, every day.

They can't get a technician to work on the case and there is a 24 hour delay between every 2 technical tasks for reports to be written.

They refused to tell me when the line will be fixed, and they can't even predict when it will be. All they could say is "tomorrow the problem will be passed to a technician for review, and it will take more than a day to be fixed, and there is nothing else we can do or tell you".

We applied for a broadband/telephone contract in February last year. The modem never arrived, even after me phoning them repeatedly, managers and operators giving me their personal assurances that it would be delivered that week. This farce almost lasted 8 weeks. Anyway, Homecall still charged me for a broadband connection I did not have, so I closed the contract, and they did credit me costs, but the letter of termination of contract never arrived.

I joined BT. When I thought I would never hear from Homecall again, to my horror a bill for a monthly charge popped up in the post, 2 months ago. A year and a half after I had cancelled my contract with them. So, my wife phoned up and informed them. They apologised and offered to pop an apology letter in the post. It never arrived. Now this month, they bill me again, and also tried and get a debit order to go through my bank. Luckily the bank stopped it. I phoned up, but they will not let me speak to a manager, and promise that one will call back by 3pm today. No call so far, not surprising.

Does anyone know why they are posting "contact us and let us put it right" postings on this site (see also Homecall Broadband), then not replying when people try to contact them?

Homecall, what do you have to say?

Homecall have a good service, help desk have been polite in past when we have rang, and we are currently still with them.

One point to note if you do go with Homecall... The package is 24.99 or there abouts before line rental, which you have to pay to BT anyway; also, mobile and 0845 numbers you have to pay for. We were told this before we took out the package.

Our average monthly bill is around £38 for telephone calls 24/7, and 2Mb broadband and line rental, also the occasional mobile and 0845 numbers.

We were taken in by the Homecall ad after reviewing several other broadband packages, and we decided to go with Homecall, given that the 'anytime' call package was bundled into the £24.99 monthly charge. What they don't mention is that the charge Doesn't include phone line rental, and it doesn't include the 'free' temporary dial-up number they give you whilst waiting for the 3-4 week wait on the modem and broadband to be set up.

We had bills of £60+ for 3 months. We challenged their service manager after getting nowhere with the call centre adviser. He said we'd have to either pay up £80 plus £160 to cancel the contract. We want to move house, but still either have to cough up £220 to cancel, or wait a month and get charged £24.99 for the benefit of waiting for them to reconnect the broadband.

I subscribed to the Homecall £24.55 phone and 512 Broadband package one year ago, as they claimed it would save me money. After one year of having no problems, Homecall started to show its teeth when I decided to move to another phone and broadband provider. I called them to stop subscribing to the phone and broadband service, and I sent a recorded letter to them. Then they agreed in one letter and claimed the return of the modem (it is OK) and £85 connection fee. Further, they said that I have to continue to subscribe to their service at a higher rate of £19.99 per month. It seems that they are determined to take as much money as possible from leaving customers.

Homecall are simply a nightmare.

After experiencing the ineptitude of the BT call centre I was lured by the promise of Homecall's cheap calls. Oh how foolish was I?

It started off well, just until we realised our supposed 2Mb connection was more like a 0.5Mb connection!

Phone call after phone call resulted in a groundhog day style response. We were told to run 5 speed checks over a 24hr period, and get back to them. Each time we ran the checks the results were the same - an appalling low connection speed. We'd then be told that 'engineers were looking into it. The speed was still rubbish, so we'd phone up again, and be told that it must be a 'new' problem, and could we send 5 speed test results... We ended up with over 200 speed test results, countless false claims that the problem was rectified, and we were no where nearer to solving the problem.

A BT engineer even came out and said there was no problem at our end, but with Homecall's servers (or rather Tiscalli's as Homecall 'rent' space from them) not being up to the task.

No one would take ownership, or responsibility for the situation, and despite being friendly and polite on the phone, the call centre staff were (in my opinion) universally useless.

Four months later we decided to part company with Homecall. We escaped from the clutches of their contract by pointing out that they were in breach of it by not delivering the 2meg service as promised.

We transferred to TalkTalk, and all was well - until we started getting bills from Homecall for the period after we'd cancelled totaling £140, including an £85 charge for the Engineer's visit (which was all arranged by Homecall, and not us).

Whenever we phoned up they'd agree that they were in error, but as with the speed issue no one would take responsibility, so nothing was sorted. Bills arrived on a weekly basis, for over two months followed by threatening phonecalls preceded by an automated message. We were called up to three times a day, threatened with debt collection and even called liars by one charmless operator.

Eventually I found the number of someone high up in the customer relations dept who has agreed to cancel the bill and remove all charges from our account... Time will tell whether it's actually done.

The deal Homecall offered was great value, and if they'd been able to honor it we would have been customers for a long time, but with such shockingly poor customer service I couldn't get away soon enough and would most definitely not recommend them, nor their products.