Of course, it’s never that simple. The Pipex business model, like that of most letting agents, revolves around *surprising* you out of a few quid at the tail end of your contract.
Here’s how it works. When you sign the Pipex contract, you agree to give 30 days notice. Those 30 days begin on the day when you **receive** the MAC code. So when I received my MAC code on the 26th November, they scheduled my account to close on the 26th December.
So even though they ceased to provide me with a service on the 13th December (when the changeover took place) they were going to keep charging me for the next two weeks. Okay, I’m not entirely happy about it, but it’s what’s in the contract, so other than appealing to their good nature, there’s not much I can do.
But Pipex have one last trick up their sleeve. When my billing date came around (19th December) they weren’t going to just take payment for the remaining week of my contract. Oh no. They were going to take a month’s payment, and I was then permitted to request a pro-rata refund for the unused period (ie 26th December to 19th January). Unsurprisingly, this refund has not yet materialised, despite my best efforts.
So the one piece of advice that I would offer to anyone planning to leave Pipex is to request your MAC code 5 working days ((Pipex are obliged, by law, to give you the MAC code within 5 working days)) before your billing date (rather than a week after) and then, if you wish to minimise “overlap”, set the changeover date to be as late as possible. In my case, I should have requested the MAC code around the 12th of the month so that my contract came to an end just before my billing date, rather than a week after.
Pipex are ruthless bastards, and will use all the tricks at their disposal to wring every last penny out of you. Don’t expect any mercy from them.
4 replies on “How To Leave Pipex: Part 4”
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That’s interesting. When I cancelled my Pipex account, the cancellation date they gave me was not 30 days from requesting the MAC, but 30 days from receiving it (it came the maximum 5 working days plus a Saturday and Sunday after the request).
Three weeks after starting with another ISP (I recommend Zen Internet) I had to pay a month’s subscription to Pipex to cover a single day, as the cancellation date happened to fall (must have been a coincidence, I am sure) one day after my monthly billing date. I am now requesting a refund for the following 29 days.
So, if this is the normal practice, you need to request the MAC 5 working days before your next billing date.
Well done for alerting others to this practice by Pipex. Anyone would think that they do it to penalise you for leaving and because they are desparate to get as much as they can from all the people leaving them for other ISP’s.
Which I am sure is not the case.
Hello and welcome to the site.
Upon consulting my notes, I see that you are right. I actually requested my MAC on the 23rd November (a Friday), and received it on the following Monday, which was the 26th. So the 30 days did start on the day that I received it.
I’ve updated the entry to reflect this.
Keep chasing that refund – mine arrived eventually.