Euro1net executives have taken all the money and run

[prehensile]

here is the letter I have just written to someone online, following information from my service provider (that was recommended to me on this forum lol) that they are running into the hills with limited liability and they have spent a whole week prevaricating so that they can hide the information of whatever fraud they have been conducting for the last six months.

Any advice about such situations appreciated

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I just received a letter from Euro1net.
they say that they have just sacked all their staff and they are going to try to shun their financial obligations.

I paid them Gbp260 in advance -quite stupidly- for two years supply of ADSL, they were giving away 1 MB deals half price.

So I have had about six months of 1 MB for gbp260 and then they have sent some concerned letters and dissolved the company.

your average Joe would not be aware when contracting the company that they were using BT wholesale and therefore compared to other companies there was no way they could be viable in the long term, and I think the police should jump on their offices before they lose all their papers saying where all the money has gone to.

Because it is a limited company it has limited liability to repay any of its debts so the chances are that the executives have half a million in their pocket.but the fact remains that they have a written contract with their customers and the funds are available because the company still has all our money and has not given the most of it to BT.

Also Ofcom should have been alerted of this company being not viable while it was operating for all this time, and should have taken steps to protect the general public.

In the last week they have made promises,possibly as a way of prevaricating their offices from being raided by a fraud investigation-so they have had more time to lose information

Here is the bemused letter from the ISP, it has grammar errors in the middle.
Important Customer Notice:


Advanced Data Services has ceased trading.


Dear Customers,

Despite our communications with a number of ISP's who were interested in taking our users and or our company as a going concern, it is with great regret and sadness that we have to report that our talks have proved fruitless.

The recent actions of BT disconnecting the majority of our customers on the 21st August 2006 with no notification that they were going to do so on that date and the frenzied inaccurate media reporting which quickly followed, have had a dramatic impact on our business.

As a direct consequence of the media speculation and negative publicity, other suppliers and service providers including our bank have all now withdrawn their services. This means that our current financial obligations can no longer be met.

As we are now unable to meet our financial obligations we have had no alternative but to make the difficult decision to make our very loyal staff redundant.

Since BT disconnected our users, we have been working tirelessly under difficult circumstances to try and reconnect all our customers to alternative suppliers. However, as we were prevented by BT from generating Migration Authorisation Codes (MAC's) which not only meant our customers would be without service for longer, but also meant that any possible reconnections with an alternative supplier would have cost around 300% more to connect each customer as a new connection, than they would have done as a migration.

These additional costs proved too much to bear for us and the potential buyers of our company who would have needed to pay BT Wholesale an additional £160,000 in connection fees.

We would like to apologise to all our customers and would like to thank them for the support that has been offered during this difficult period.

As we have ceased trading and can no longer provide a service to our customers, all customers will be free to connect with another provider of their choice. If in doubt, please contact BT for information on whether your line is clear of our service.

We shall be making a formal complaint to Ofcom concerning the way BT conducted the termination of our customers' service, the impact that this in turn had on our customers and our company as a whole. We look forward to their findings.


From the staff at Euro1Net

[Tobeman]

One glaring mistake there..

As we are now unable to meet our financial obligations we have had no alternative but to make the difficult decision to make our very loyal staff redundant.

followed by

From the staff at Euro1Net

What staff?

[Paranoid2000]

Any advice about such situations appreciated

The ADSLGuide Euro1net forum has more details and discussion for those affected. At this stage, the best advice is to contact the credit card company (if you used one) to obtain a refund of the unused months. Those who paid using a Visa debit card may also be able to get a refund via a chargeback against Euro1net's bank (see BBC Working Lunch: Visa debit card refunds for details). Those who paid by cheque/Switch/Maestro have no protection at all unless their card provides insurance for faulty purchases (and even then this may be stretching it, but probably worth a try).

Unfortunately there is risk in dealing with any company (though arguably greater with the cheapest) and I was of those affected also. However it seems to be Euro1net's Talk and Surf customers that are in the most difficult position since their lines were unbundled (so they cannot just re-activate with another ISP) and their phone service is affected also.

Paying by credit card (good practice generally though for monthly payments Direct Debit is better), keeping copies of online receipts and using other companies for website hosting and email will help minimise problems if an ISP does go under, but dialup is certainly hell when you're used to broadband.

[geezerone]

Very bad situation and hindsight is a wonderful thing but I do get a bit peeved when people go wild over how brilliant a new ISP is after just starting out (including some rags on newsagent shelves).

Hope you get your money back and that you find reliable and honest ISPs. I use Plusnet who have been going for years and have little to complain about overall if that is any help?

[eloquence]

The problem with the Euronet service was that the figures didn't really add up properly. It wasn't the first ISP to have an up-front model that could only sink after a while. They got the pricing right in that it wasn't cheap enough to make everyone say 'that's impossible', but just cheap enough to be cheaper than any viable option, so people would be tempted but not too suspicious.

There are now some other very cheap or free broadband offerings whose figures add up simply because it's an actively subsidised service that's paid for by taking out something else with the same company - e.g. Sky Broadband and Orange Broadband. They hopefully represent a better deal than Euronet to some of the affected customers (especially Sky's offerings if you're already a Sky customer), so if they can get their money back and switch to one of these services, then at least a few customers may be better off in the end. Comiserations to anyone that paid by Switch or the like, though.