Opal, Pipex and their band of wacky characters
Saturday, August 14th, 2010 | Life
We got in this morning to find that one of the server’s external connections was down. Upon further investigation I found that the internet was in fact working fine, we just had a different IP address which is why the network monitoring was reporting that the server wasn’t responding.
I phoned up Opal, a part of TalkTalk, who have apparently taken over from Pipex – they didn’t tell us or anything, I just headed over to the Pipex Business website and found it was now an Opal website. I tried logging in to see our customer details but it didn’t accept my username or password and I couldn’t reset my password because I didn’t have an Opal customer number.
I phoned them up and sat in a queue for 10 minutes before getting through to someone who told me I was through to the wrong department. She informed me our line had a block on it and then put me through to the “other” technical department at which point I sat in another phone queue for 10 minutes before finally getting through to the right person.
I asked about the block and he informed me that they had cut us off because we hadn’t paid. This is because none of the credit or debit card payments transferred over when Pipex customers were moved over to Opal – only direct debit customers were safe and we’re not a direct debit customer because they messed that up recently and so we had to pay via credit card instead.
As a result they had cut our internet off – except in a moment of sheer incompetence they haven’t actually cut us off, they just think they have – I can actually access the internet fine. If it wasn’t for the fact that I needed our IP address back I would have just ignored them as the fools they are.
He informed me that if I made a payment they could re-activate my account. But he couldn’t take that payment or put me through – I had to phone back on a different number. I then asked about the fact I couldn’t log in and he said I would need to speak to Pipex, providing a third separate number I would need to phone to get that sorted out.
Fun times.
We got in this morning to find that one of the server’s external connections was down. Upon further investigation I found that the internet was in fact working fine, we just had a different IP address which is why the network monitoring was reporting that the server wasn’t responding.
I phoned up Opal, a part of TalkTalk, who have apparently taken over from Pipex – they didn’t tell us or anything, I just headed over to the Pipex Business website and found it was now an Opal website. I tried logging in to see our customer details but it didn’t accept my username or password and I couldn’t reset my password because I didn’t have an Opal customer number.
I phoned them up and sat in a queue for 10 minutes before getting through to someone who told me I was through to the wrong department. She informed me our line had a block on it and then put me through to the “other” technical department at which point I sat in another phone queue for 10 minutes before finally getting through to the right person.
I asked about the block and he informed me that they had cut us off because we hadn’t paid. This is because none of the credit or debit card payments transferred over when Pipex customers were moved over to Opal – only direct debit customers were safe and we’re not a direct debit customer because they messed that up recently and so we had to pay via credit card instead.
As a result they had cut our internet off – except in a moment of sheer incompetence they haven’t actually cut us off, they just think they have – I can actually access the internet fine. If it wasn’t for the fact that I needed our IP address back I would have just ignored them as the fools they are.
He informed me that if I made a payment they could re-activate my account. But he couldn’t take that payment or put me through – I had to phone back on a different number. I then asked about the fact I couldn’t log in and he said I would need to speak to Pipex, providing a third separate number I would need to phone to get that sorted out.
Fun times.