Which? leads decrepit email service behind barn, single shot rings out over valley Consumer group Which? is to terminate its 20-plus-year-old email service, giving long-standing users two months to switch accounts. Which.net was set up in the mid-90s as a benefit to members between 1997 and 2004, after which it was closed to new signups but remained active. The group has now decided to set a cut-off date as …
...are people like me.
I was shocked to get the email from them last week because I haven't used the address for a very, very long time. I must have set a forwarding address when I moved to BT (frying pans and fires - I know). The modem buzz is still ringing in my ears.
"The sort of people who have a which.co.uk account are the sort of people who are probably least able to understand why they shouldn't have had one in the first place."
No new since ups since 2004? That's a long sunset period. They should probably have announced a winding up period a long time ago. Maybe they were hoping the attrition rate would have been higher. I have to agree with the users though, 2 months is a tight time frame to move an account that might have been in use for 20 years.
I think the date of transfer tells you everything. If they transfer it are they still liable under the GDPR because they are the original owner? I would say yes, so passing it to another company is not an option. In other words the cost of transfer and related security makes it prohibitive.
Good point. I was thinking more of a deal with a GDPR-compliant mail provider, who will host the addresses on their existing set-up. Ideally several months ago they e-mail clients about the transfer, with clear guidance on downloading and saving old e-mail (but I bet most of them are running Outlook Express on XP anyway), and then the active customers start with a clean slate on the new supplier, but keeping their lovely old address. Inactive ones are dropped before GDPR deadline.
Why not set it up as an email forwarding service for 12 months? Explain to people how to set up (insert favourite freemail provider here) accounts to automatically identify inbound email as having been sent to which.net so they can send a change of address notice. Perhaps a novel idea, but postal services have been doing this for decades...
GDPR requirements suddenly become much less onerous, the email service cost plummets and the punters get 12 months (rather than 2!) to migrate off the system.
I'll take a vulturecentral.com address also please.
I briefly took out a subscription a few years ago. Dreadful - just constant shallow reviews of latest washing machines, dishwashers, irons and mobile phones. Only interesting bit was reading the comments under the reviews of how bad the item being reviewed had proven to be.
There are more reliable reviews on Amazon and I'm sure someone will be along shortly to recommend something else.
That said, there legal department are supposed to be good if you do need assistance. The subscription could be seen as just extra insurance.
I looked at a Which subscription many years ago; then I read the T&Cs for their Direct Debit mandate.
For a consumer first organisation, it read like a Trump company contract; "unspecified amounts at unspecified times".
Basically, you were signing over your bank account to them.
Personally they're far too non-technical and generic these days.
They should be flagging the sellers and manufacturers who are dishonestly portraying their products as shiny and new when they're old and crap.
When the fake capacitor scandal hit Britain, they said nothing. When modern TVs started faking 10bit panels, they just ignored it.
There is just too much fake stuff on the market for them to keep quiet on it.
What other consumer magazine can I go to, to complain about Which taking additional subscriptions after cancelling?
We only signed up to get money off something else. I was very unimpressed with the magazine, a combination of blinding obvious consumer advice, almost completely content free reviews, and dumbed down ratings tables that didn't in anyway justify the overall scores given.
"TIP: If you have a direct debit with a company, make sure they know it's been cancelled. A phone call to their Support department will be recorded."
If you tell your bank you're cancelling a Direct Debit, the company it's with are informed. Within minutes. I can assure you of this, having done it to a company I had a grievance against (charging me for a phone which never arrived) and I gave them more than adequate time to resolve the situation.
I phoned the bank. I asked to cancel. They said "Are you sure?". I said yes. They are legally obliged to honour that, and because it was a "recent" DD and I said it was disputed, they refunded all the payments (three months worth, I think) immediately.
When I put down the phone, the company in question phoned to ask why I'd done it, so I explained to them: "For the reasons I told you that I would. Check your records."
They were literally unable to take any more payments from me from that point on (I had asked them nicely not to several times earlier, but they continued to do so).
But the bank didn't even care. They just clicked "Undo" and all the DD agreement and past payments were magically history and I got my money back in my account.
Sure, it's nice to TELL the company, but you don't need to.
(P.S. They threatened me with court, which I offered to initiate for them, not having supplied me with the goods they had promised for the monthly payment they were taking. And, I mean, we're talking about a PHONE that they supplied... if they genuinely thought I was using it without payment, they could block the IMEI. Strangely, like every other company that's ever made that threat to me, no court case ever happened).
"Strangely, like every other company that's ever made that threat to me, no court case ever happened"
Isn't it always the case tho? If you've got to the state where you need recourse to the courts, verbal threats are pointless. You start with a letter (paper is magic), which is the first point in most legal processes, since it's often considered the first "official" communication.
Even if what you're requesting or reporting is batshit crazy* a letter forces action. Emails, phonecalls and even face to face meetings don't have quite the same power, for whatever reason.
* I got to talk to the head of Risk and Compliance as a loopy family member wrote them a letter saying I was part of a satanic cult**. To their credit they did start by emphasizing their religious and personal belief tolerance, and as long as I wasn't actively recruiting at work it would have been OK.
** as if. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn and all that
TIP: If you have a direct debit with a company, make sure they know it's been cancelled. A phone call to their Support department will be recorded.
Conversely, and more importantly, if you have a DD with a company and you have ended your contract with them, make sure you cancel it with your bank, rather than relying on them not to take any more payments. I have heard of plenty of cases of unscrupulous / uncaring utilities companies continuing to bill ex-customers.
"I have heard of plenty of cases of unscrupulous / uncaring utilities companies continuing to bill ex-customers"
For me it was NPower who told me leave the DD so we can refund you, gits charged me at the same time as refunding. Much flaming at the droid on helldesk (Because I no longer lived at the address they billed me for) and realising the person on the end of the phone didn't give a shit, I cancelled the DD forcing them to send me a cheque.
So anyone leaving such a leech, cancel the DD and get them to send you a cheque.
The silly thing is that Which? has done some good things and could again. But two months notice when GDPR has been known about since April 2016 !!
I do not think the CEO likes the Internet and people moaning about the £4m plus he has been paid over the last 14 years. CEO has been there since 2004 which about says it all on why the service was closed to new subscribers and allowed to wither. He also closed the original forums that had existed alongside which.net - smart smart move when the internet was growing like topsy.
When I first joined Which? it gave good reports and a pretty good email service plus there were the Forums. All have disappeared really, the first to go was the Forums which were replaced by controlled boards and they also removed the Which Local where users could recommend local companies, now it's the paid for by the business service.
I have been disenchanted with the quality of Which reports for some time now and this closure of the email service has taken me days to sort out what with all the sites where I login using my which.net email address, some of which can't change. Fortunately I have an encrypted list of contacts so most I've been able to do but there has already been two that I missed and only found out because I swapped my which.net emails to arrive at a laptop instead so are easily spotable. I have cancelled my magazine subscription and will cancel the mail one in May once the diverted mail wouldn't work anyway. This has been too short a notice period and is a travesty from a supposed consumer rights company.
Not that I'm condoning anything, but I have always thought it strange that people rely on free services for something as important as email is.
I have heard various complaints over the years about free email services shutting down, changing, and generally being terrible. The most recent prior to this was my dad whinging about Hotmail's switch to OWA (IIRC).
"If you don't like it, go somewhere else" was my reply.
"But then I'd loose my email address".
So, what if Hotmail was shut down? You're not paying for it, and you'd have no recourse. For personal stuff, fair enough: It's a pain in the arse, but doable. But I know of many businesses using these. What happens when your customers suddenly get bounce backs from the emails they are sending you?
Sorry, I know I'm ranting a bit with no obvious direction. The point is, though: Don't rely on a free service if it is important to you.
Hello Dr Mouse.
To be strictly correct this was not a free service but was included with magazine subscriptions. I took up the deal partly because of the internet service they provided and partly because the magazine which back then was very informative IMHO. They split the subscriptions some time ago and my magazine rate was some £20 a quarter and my email is £4.75 a month. I think the subscription to Which Legal Services is part of that £4.75 so email it's still part of a deal AFAICS. Certainly if I had stopped both payments the email service would have gone too.
Because of crap management thats' why.
Unfortunately corporate capture is not restricted to the US and a few years ago what is ostensibly a consumers charity designed to educate and inform and lobby for consumers was being run apparently by its subsidiary commercial off-spring Which? Ltd and its businessmen who apart from originating some very expensive expansion ideas of a commercial nature decided that four of the top executives should share in an LTIP which eventualy paid out an additional £2.24m to them.
The chairman of Which? ltd at the time was multi-millionaire Mike Clasper of P&G, BAA, HMRC, and now Coats. You may wonder who co-opted him, and the two folk from HMRC, the two from Unilever, the Barclays banker, etc. I have always worried that business folk may not view a consumer fronting charity in the same way as most folk.
The expansions - a consumer organ in India - shutdown after losing nearly £13m , a mortgage service which after seven years is meant to be reaching profitability but has required £22.5m of support and this despite having taken over £10m income from mortgage providers and referral fees. The refurishment of the HQ in central London with the addition odf another storey and a roof garden has also not gone down well with the few members who are aware of it - but then at only £16m it is a snip.
The new Council of the Consumers' Association have been handed a problem but they have been in place a couuple of years so they have handled it very badly. Apparently one subscriber at least is severely handicapped and has been using his Which address for two decades sorting out helpers and all manner of things and has written very angrily as for him it takes great effort to use the computer.
Council's problem may be the entrenched senior management I think who certainly should have flagged this up for immediate preparatory action if GDPR was a future problem 20 months ago.
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