More Pipex confusion

The already dubious future of beleaguered ISP Pipex has been thrown into further uncertainty following announcements of staff redundancies in various call centres, particularly the ones set up to deal with customer complaints.

Despite the company currently supplying Broadband and phone services to over 570,000 customers it has still been unable to find a buyer; by presenting prospective creditors with the opportunity to inherit a consumer base frustrated with a lack of any infrastructure to support it seems an odd way of making the offer sweeter.

It had been rumoured that everyone from BT to Virgin were interested in taking over Pipex, but as pretty much everyone in the market has had their share of highly-publicised customer service woes in the past – particularly TalkTalk – it seems unlkely that anyone will want to take up such a poisoned chalice.

Pipex itself had inherited a large amount of debt after it had acquired the services of niche ISPs Toucan and Bulldog, which it spent over £30 million on. Even though customer ranks swelled slightly, partially attributed to a cheesy but likable ad campaign starring ‘The Hoff’, Pipex took a bashing for failing to get its customer service and technical support together, and failing to refund customers who were overcharged for services.

This, coupled with news of call centre staff getting the chop does not indicate that Pipex will have the problem sorted anytime soon – they are expected to make an announcement on their future plans ‘in the summer’ which could be anything from the end of this month until September.

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