Bull****

Ok, I'm actually talking about Bulldog the telecommunications company that provide my adsl internet connection, but I believe they deserve the extra asterisk. On a purely technical level I have no problem with them. My connection has been rock solid since the day it was installed and I have not the slightest complaint on that front. Aside from that, though, they're nincompoops! Hand on my heart, I swear they have the worst customer service I've ever encountered.

I hold a litany of sins against them, some of which admittedly may have improved by now, but I'm not about to checked and see.

It once took me the better part of a week to get through to a human being on the telephone, and even then the person I managed to speak with was singularly unhelpful.

Emails were regularly ignored or weeks would pass by before I would be receive anything other than an automated response.

They stopped automatically debiting payments from my debit card and then informed me of this change in their policy six months later.

And most recently, they've just overcharged me for the third month running, despite assurances that the problem had been sorted and this months bill would be correct. The worst thing about this is that I'm most likely going to have to call them up to sort this out. See complaint number 1. Sigh.

Is a little bit of competence too much to ask for? I'd recommend against anyone considering Bulldog as an internet service provider, but such have been their travails over the last year that they've already stopped accepting new home accounts and their parent company is a looking to hive them off. It's truly a shame. I'd have recommended Bulldog unreservedly once, only a couple of years ago, but it seems they tried to grow to quickly and let numbers dictate their policy rather than customer needs.