Since I know how annoying it is to have broken links on a site and nobody tell you about them, I also filed a support ticket with Pipex yesterday for the page not found error when trying to access their network status page from their number 1 most common question: “Are there any service issues?”

The response I received today was this:

Dear Mr. Gordon,

Thank you for your email dated the 1st of September 2009, the contents of which have been noted.

Due to data protection I am unable to act upon your account with the details provided. We would require that you provide us with three of the following details.

– Your Customer account number

– Your full name

– Your address and your postal code

– Your contact telephone number or email address

As they appear on the account

Unfortunately, your original correspondence does not contain three of the above pieces of information. Please note that we will be unable to act upon your enquiry until we are in receipt of this required information.

Once we have these details a member of our Customer Relations Team will endeavour to respond. Rest assured that we will be in contact with you as soon as we can. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

If you are unable to confirm the above information, or you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Care Team on the number below.

Kind regards,

Paul Branley
Pipex Customer Relations

Pipex Communications UK Limited, a Tiscali UK company, 20 Broadwick Street, London W1F 8HT. For Customer Service queries, please call 0871 663 3300. Calls are charged at 5p per minute from a Pipex line or 10p per minute from a BT line. Calls from mobiles and other providers may vary. Lines are open 8am-9pm 7 days a week.

So, apparently they need my address in order to fix a broken link on their site. No wonder the portal is so broken if it is this hard to try to help them out with information about minor problems in their site. Everybody has broken links (especially in FAQ text which tends to be overlooked when site updates happen). Smart companies thank people for the reports and get them fixed. Pipex chooses to make it difficult for customers to talk to them, even when the benefit is all theirs.

Oh, and I should point out that my “email” was in fact not an email at all, but the result of me filling in the web form on their support portal where I had to sign in not once, but twice (single sign on is also beyond Pipex’s web team it seems). Since I was signed in to my account, why do I need to provide all those extra details anyway – the ticket is attached to my account. And I know that for sure since I can log in again and pull up a list of all my tickets.