email from upc regarding price increase

shanemhoban

for the past two weeks i have been emailing upc in relation to the price increase's and the fact that they did not notify anyone by post to the change in their terms and conditions, all emails i received avoided the fact that they did not post any letter to customers about the change in t&c, finally after threatening to cancel my subscription they have replied,they also state that i will recieve notification of price increases in my jan bill but i have not received a paper bill from upc since joining last year! have a read below and please let me know what you think

shane

Dear Mr xxxxx
Thank you for your email
Please accept our sincere apologies for any upset caused to you regarding our price increase as we would be really sorry to lose you as a valued customer
I do agree our Terms and Conditions do state in section 16
16. Changing the Terms and Conditions
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]We retain the right to amend, modify or substitute these Terms and Conditions at any
time and we will notify you in writing 30 days in advance of doing so. Any such modification, amendment or substitution shall also be posted on our website at www.upc.ie. You have the right to withdraw from this Agreement without penalty if you do not accept the modification,
amendment or substitution. If you do not object to the modification, amendment or substitution by giving notice to us within 30 days, the new
Terms and Conditions shall then become applicable to you.
[/FONT][/FONT]As above we did post this information on our website from the 3rd December 2010 and also advertised this on the 3rd December 2010 in the Independent Newspaper
A letter advising of these increases will be included in your next bill on the 14th January 2010
Please be advised your billing will increase by €2.00 a month (€1.00 extra for your Digital TV package and €1.00 extra for your Broadband package )
Please also be advised we have increased your Broadband speeds from 5 MB to 8MB

I will as a goodwill gesture if you agree not to disconnect your account apply one month's free Sky Sports
As I advised above we would be really sorry to lose you as a valued customer so please advised if you wish to avail of this offer or if you wish me to proceed with your disconnection request without penalties

Kristopherus

Why, oh why, could they have not sent something like that to all their customers. Anything would have been better than the nonsensical way they have behaved. And the regulator is worse than useless:(:(:(

STB

Kristopherus wrote: »

Why, oh why, could they have not sent something like that to all their customers. Anything would have been better than the nonsensical way they have behaved. And the regulator is worse than useless:(:(:(

They arent regulated!

shanemhoban

STB wrote: »

They arent regulated!

not for tv but i thought they would be for broadband?

dub45

Here I again - this is the behaviour of a company without integrity and who have no wish to be upfront with their customers.

UPC have over 760,000 customers - the Irish Independent has a circulation of 150,000 customers so even if every one of the Indo readers was a UPC customer and read the paper that day (is every bb customer supposed to pore over a paper (and which paper?) every day on the basis that a company might increase its charges?) the ad means that over 600,000 cusomers were not informed of the price increase. How can anyone trust a company that behaves in this way?? And as for saying its on the website? how many customers visit a website regularly and anyway it is tucked away in the bottom right hand corner just in case you might see it.:rolleyes:

Ask your correspondent in UPC to answer those points.

As for regulation if they dont respect their own terms and conditions they are not going to respect any one else's. The only thing that bothers companies like UPC is bad press and embarassment.

Notifying customers in their next bills is far too late according to their own Terms and Conditions.

Bear in mind that this price increase could net UPC up to €8m per year if every customer's monthly bill increases by an average of one euro!! Nice going for a price """ change""" that they dont want to tell anyone about.

shanemhoban

it would be interesting to see if upc have replied to any other customer complaints in relation to the price increases admitting what they have done in the email above and what they have offered to the customer to stop them cancelling

dub45

shanemhoban wrote: »

it would be interesting to see if upc have replied to any other customer complaints in relation to the price increases admitting what they have done in the email above and what they have offered to the customer to stop them cancelling

But they knew what was required of them in advance. They did exactly the same thing last year and will continue to do so as long as they can get away with it. They changed their Terms and Conditons last September did they inform anyone about it?:rolleyes: Oh yes there was a notice on their website.

Even if they do admit it to a few people in an email so what? Its massive public embarassment that they fear. And unfortunately if the Matt Cooper show f**ks up a good opportunity to do this then whats going to stop them doing it again next year?

shanemhoban

dub45 wrote: »

But they knew what was required of them in advance. They did exactly the same thing last year and will continue to do so as long as they can get away with it. They changed their Terms and Conditons last September did they inform anyone about it?:rolleyes: Oh yes there was a notice on their website.

Even if they do admit it to a few people in an email so what? Its massive public embarassment that they fear. And unfortunately if the Matt Cooper show f**ks up a good opportunity to do this then whats going to stop them doing it again next year?

"Even if they do admit it to a few people in an email so what?", im interested in what they have said to other people even if your not, this is a forum for discussions isnt it?, your attitude seems to be that they cant be stopped from doing this and maybe they cant but the more people who post there replies from upc the more people are informed

okidoki987

Rang UPC and asked was my package going up?
They told me it was going up €3 (from 29.50 for 8mb to 32.50 for 15mb).
Asked why they didn't inform me, usual answer was in the paper, on the website etc.
Asked what other b/b packages they had and they said there would be a new 10mb for €25 a month coming out today.
Asked to go onto that package - 10mb ag 8mb - 29.59 ag 25.
Was told there would a €10 downgrade fee!
Spent the next 10 minutes trying to gt her to explain how it was a downgarde as I was going up from 8mb to 10mb?
Eventually got it waived and now have 10mb at €4.50 cheaper then last months bill.

dub45

shanemhoban wrote: »

"Even if they do admit it to a few people in an email so what?", im interested in what they have said to other people even if your not, this is a forum for discussions isnt it?, your attitude seems to be that they cant be stopped from doing this and maybe they cant but the more people who post there replies from upc the more people are informed

Firstly can I assure you that there is nobody on boards.ie who has been more consistently critical of UPC and their "lack of integrity" than myself. I have done my utmost to alert people to their practises and nobody would like to see them taken down a peg and forced to behave honestly than me.

The only thing that will force UPC to behave honestly is a massive outcry which will only be generated by bad publicity which will force Comreg to get up off their asses and stop being effectively complict with UPC in their behaviour.

Even if UPC sent out say 1,000 emails like the one you got that will only reach 1/760th of their customer base. UPC have 760,000 customers!!!

And UPC have absolutely no problem in disavowing what a customer rep may say or write - I have personal experience of this. They are utterly shameless as a company.