Zen Internet loses unfair dismissal appeal case with former CEO

UK ISP Zen Internet has lost an appeal against a ruling that it unfairly dismissed former CEO Paul Stobart. According to Zen, Stobart retired from the business at the end of March 2023. Founder and former CEO Richard Tang took over. However, Stobart claimed that he was unfairly dismissed. In 2024, a Manchester tribunal agreed …

[lglethal]

See kiddies look how much money would have been saved if they had just followed procedure. No lawyers bills, no compensation payout.

But No, there's always some muppet at the top who things the rules don't apply to them...

[that one in the corner]

Be wary of assigning malice when carelessness and incompetence could accomplish the same result.

Not that that looks much better for the people at the top.

[lglethal]

Since we're talking about CEO's and Board Chairs, can we not have both Malice and Incompetence in play?

Malicious Incompetence? Or Incompetent Maliciousness...

[Captain Tinkleberry]

Malicious incompetence reads like you are trying to be incompetent to cause harm, where as Incompetent Malciousness just reads like you're not very good at it ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Carelessness and Incompetence IS a definition of meaning the rules don’t apply to you.

[tiggity]

Pointless growth attempt

That level of growth was just not going to happen, so a pointless approach & hire.

Would have needed a big ad spend & deep discounts to get appreciable numbers of new customers - a costly gamble given small profits.

.. as a Zen customer I would also add that the customer service levels are not as good as they were (& that is not just my experience, a quick online search showed others mentioning it) so maybe improve that first before going for growth* & at least word of mouth recommendations may improve (I no longer recommend them like I used to).

Not following your own procedures is just stupid - they are there for a reason, to protect both sides in cases like this. It would have been a longer process, but would have been more "water tight" - an especially bad move when you are a company with low profits & it is an extra expense. As an aside yet more proof that a new CEO is not a magic bullet (& just sort out the basics before getting grandiose ideas)

* Yes, I'm unfortunately aware that growth often goes hand in hand with worse customer service, but to get away with that approach you really need to be one of the big players in the field to start with & able to afford the incentive of cheap prices to compensate for poor service (& Zen are not).

[Mr Tinkle]

Re: Pointless growth attempt

".....I no longer recommend them like I used to....."

I do still recommend them. Zen are my go to service provider for phone, broadband and webhosting, and have been for along time. I hear plenty others mentioning issues with their service providers such as Talk Talk and Virgin and their relentless drive to increase the products their customers take, or them putting up the cost of the ones they already provide. You just don't get that from Zen.

Example: A friend had a Virgin package costing £59/year not that long ago. She was recently fighting to get it down from £104, it having been increased by them unexpectedly. After a bit of convincing to ignore the slightly higher headline price of Zen's offering she's swapped over to them and has not looked back. No more haggling on the phone with mercenary suppliers. And far more stable pricing.

Yesterday we had a fault with the phone line external to the property. It's been so long since this happened I mistakenly rang BT first. This is what I got:

The BT phone system is very biased towards selling you new product. So much so it's harder to figure out which option to use for faults.

First I got through to somebody with a foreign accent and I couldn't discern what they were saying. On the second attempt I got through to somebody else with a more easily understood accent. They said I needed to phone Zen.

Then 4 text messages followed to my mobile from BT. They hadn't done anything, but took the opportunity to spam me, there was no opt out.

I phoned Zen in Rochdale. I got a very helpful lady called Aaliyah on the phone who very patiently waited while I found the account number. And by the time I'd found it she'd already diagnosed what the problem was and that somebody would fix it within 2 days. That was 15:25 yesterday. At 08:45 this morning the problem had gone.

No spam texts, just 1 update saying the job was in progress.

Not bad for a deal we have them where the broadband price is fixed for life.

When I've had the odd issue with the website hosting I've been able to speak directly to technical people in the relevant department and they have genuinely sounded like they wanted to investigate the issue, and have done so effectively. Even calling back unexpectedly the following day to make sure everything was okay.

I've been a customer of both Talk Talk and Virgin before and I despise them for many different reasons after problems with them. Talk Talk's practises are despicable.

I have no affiliation with Zen other than being a happy customer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Pointless growth attempt

“First I got through to somebody with a foreign accent and I couldn't discern what they were saying. On the second attempt I got through to somebody else with a more easily understood accent. They said I needed to phone Zen.”

https://www.bt.com/help/customer-service-performance#:~:text=We're%20now%20answering%20100,local%20service%20to%20our%20customers.

As - to their credit BT reshored Customer Service back to UK - you must have got some nasty non Little Englander foreigner in their support centre that’s in Thurso.

[Blue Shirt Guy]

Re: Pointless growth attempt

Zen are pretty good at the internet stuff but I would never recommend them to anyone that still needs a landline after they cut off my 80 year old mother leaving her without a phone line for several days by moving her to digital voice without any notice or authorisation, something that could have caused the worst outcome imaginable.

I'd like to have put that down as a one off but not only has it happened to other family members but they also then did it to me! Even worse they don't have any option for battery backup or any way at all to provide their phone service if you use your own router, the one thing that was their actual USP as an ISP. So I seem to have had my landline number of many years killed by them (yes I could probably port it out but that risks killing the broadband as there is no option for fibre here) despite the fact I'm still paying for it!

[hoola]

Re: Pointless growth attempt

I am also a Zen customer and had a similar excellent experience when the connection became intermittent.

The next day OpenReach arrived, checked the termination, disappeared to the exchange and fixed it. The old phone line had been left connected somewhere and it had developed a fault. This was impacting the FTTC line.

Been rock solid again since.

I also like the decent AVM Fritz.Box they supply.

I have used one for years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Pointless growth attempt

Zen were the preferred ISP of techies and gamers in the early/mid 2000s, right up until the point they introduced usage limits.

They failed to understand that the heavy users, the ones connected all day and all night, might have used a large amount of resources compared to other users, but they were also the ones who recommended which ISP their granny used, and she connected to the internet once per month, they were the ones giving ISP advice to people down the pub, they were active in various online communities and would make recommendations. All of a sudden the conversation shifted from "use Zen, they're the best ISP" to "Avoid Zen, they have usage limits".

They backtracked on this eventually, but the damage was done. I remember at the time there was a massive backlash. BE internet had just launched offering faster connections and were truly unlimited (no limits, no throttling, no traffic shaping). If you could get BE, you almost certainly shifted from Zen to BE. BE later got bought out and became the O2 ISP, which eventually became the Sky ISP.

I honestly believe that was their sliding doors moment.

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: Pointless growth attempt

Pretty much exactly the route I took. Various dialups, then Zetnet (no longer exists) for ISDN dialup, moved to Zen as they were cheaper for a better service, stayed on an unlimited 512Kb/s ADSL service for a *long* time rather than move to a faster limited service, eventually shifted to ADSL MAX and Be, then taken over by Sky, got fed up with them and moved to A&A.

A&A are expensive and they have usage limits on some of the tarrifs, but at 1TB a month I rarely get even vaguely close to them, and you get IPV6 that works[1] plus decent support.

[1] When I finally get around to setting up a redundant IPV6 connection.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Pointless growth attempt

Zen's customer service took a big fall in the last few years, but recent experience shows that they've learned and are basically back to how they were before that. A noticeable improvement compared to even 6 months ago.

Note that even at their worst, they weren't as bad as BT

[WolfFan]

Re: Pointless growth attempt

Nothing in the UK is as bad as BT. And outside the UK only Cable&Wireless, by whatever name they’re hiding behind, are worse. Yes, Cable&WIreless and BT are worse than Comlast and Always Totally Terrible, hard though that may be to believe; Comlast is, after all, the reigning #1 worst ISP in the US, having tried very hard to achieve that lofty status. Always Totally Terrible is #2, mostly because Comlast tries so hard to hold onto the top spot, and despite strong competition from Verizscum.

[AlbertH]

Re: Pointless growth attempt

I had the misfortune to have the good ISP I used for years (Cable Camden) subsumed into Virgin. In the early days, Cable Camden were the fastest option, looked after their gear and had reasonable pricing. After the various mergers and buy-outs, I ended up with Virgin. They were abysmal, and - like everyone else in the neighbourhood - cast around for other options. I moved - successfully - to BE for a couple of years, and then to Zen. I've been with them for a very long time now, and have had virtually no problems at all.

On the few occasions I've had occasion to call their Customer Service, I've received assistance from genuinely knowledgable and extremely helpful staff. We migrated to FTTP (via City Fibre) a couple of years ago, and the data rates have always exceeded their claimed rates, and the prices have remained the same. The only (minor) gripe I have is that their phonecall prices are relatively expensive, but since I have a mobile phone contract with unlimited calling, and very good mobile service here, it's really not a significant issue.

TBH their boardroom shenanegegins are of no interest to me, just as long as they don't impinge on my "user experience". I'm another happy Zen customer, and have recommended them to some of my neighbours.

[teebie]

Re: Pointless growth attempt

"I had the misfortune to have the good ISP I used for years (Cable Camden) subsumed into Virgin"

I am sorry for your loss.

[breakfast]

Bad at capitalism

I'm evidently a massive failure when it comes to the very essence of capitalism because I'd rather a company did their job well, paid their people fairly, and made a little profit than that they make a massive profit at the expense of their employees and customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bad at capitalism

The killer is the capitalist assumption that a company has to grow to be successful. If you had £10,000,000 profits one year, and £10,000,000 the next, then you failed! Time to cut costs!

Taking that to its logical conclusion, most companies will fail, whilst some will be massive employers of low wage workers and high salaried CEOs... Just like what we are seeing happen in our modern American dystopia.

[GlenP]

Re: Bad at capitalism

a company has to grow to be successful

That happened with a former employer around 30 years ago. One of the American corporate's subsidiaries had a 97% market share of a common consumable in the US, which basically meant that within reason they could name their own price so it was profitable business however there was a serious proposal to sell it off as, "They're not contributing to shareholder growth!"

Wiser heads did prevail and they started looking to grow in international markets instead but it was close.

[Roland6]

Re: Bad at capitalism

There is also the illusion of growth: increase prices in line with inflation and all things being equal the profits will rise in line with inflation. However, as this will be a monetary increase on the previous year, everyone will celebrate profits are up and take a bigger bonus…

[TJ1]

Re: Bad at capitalism

From the small amount of information and the revenue targets in the article it sounds like Tang (Founder, chairperson, [ Owner - 100%]) wants/wanted to cash out or IPO to realise some of the value in his shareholding - with the relatively low profits there won't be much in the way of dividends.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not surprised

Reading that PDF, Richard is very hands on and does things his own way in some areas. Staff haven't had any above inflation or even close to matching inflation rises in years either yet emails are sent about investment in people despite the recent performance review pay uplifts being cut .25%

[Anonymous Coward]

From reading the PDF, Richard was very hands on and painted the picture of everything being fine while secretly being unhappy with performance. Good luck to Paul in his future endeavours.

[Anonymous Coward]

All this from a B-Corp

So rather than accept they acted illegally in the way they treated their old CEO Zen decided to again fight it and lose! They should have done the decent thing and apologised to Paul and paid rather than continue to fight him.

How does this align with their B-Corp status and specifically the “fair work” part of B-Corp requirements? Looking at it B-Corp should be looking at this case and investigating Zen with a view to stripping them of their status. Unlike James Watt at BrewDog after the toxic workplace revelations I don’t think Richard Tang will do the correct and decent thing here and surrender his B-Corp status in light of this.

I also know from personal experience this is not an isolated incident of treating an employee badly, hence anon on this post.

[Will Godfrey]

Disappointing

I've been a Zen customer for a long time, and have also notices the service is deteriorating. However, Overall I think it's still the best for me... just.