How To Leave Pipex: Part 1

14 months ago, I moved house. Pipex don’t offer a “Move House” service, as such – you have to cancel your own account and start a new one. Pipex are one of the few ISPs who still enforce a 12 month minimum contract, and as a result, I found myself once again chained in. I wish that I had been thinking a bit more clearly that day.

My Pipex contract is “unlimited”. This means that I can download as much data as I want. Oh, but then there’s a Fair Use Policy, which means that if I’m downloading “too much”, where “too much” is calculated by some magic secret formula, they can put me on the slow pipe. Oh, and they cap peer-to-peer traffic to about 10KB/s in the evenings, which is exactly when I want to be using it. Nice.

Basically, they’re unable, or unwilling, to supply what they originally sold me. So I’ve found someone competent, and today I began the process of migrating.

Phone Pipex

Phone Pipex on 0845 072 2865. Press the relevant buttons to get through to the right department. Ask for your MAC code. They’ll ask you why you’re leaving, and you tell them why. Be as polite as possible – remember that the person that you are on the phone to has feelings too, and they are not personally responsible for the atrocity that is Pipex. They will tell you that they are sending your MAC code in an email, and it will take up to five working days. You ask them why it takes five days, and why they can’t just tell you the code over the phone. They reply “Ofcom allows us five days to send you a MAC code.” You may have noticed that this does not actually answer the question, but hey ho, so it goes.

For the next five days, watch your inbox, and Spam folder, like a hawk.

*Continues here*.