Chess Telecom review

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December 17, 2014

Outrageous, this morning we received an email from our Telecom provider Chess Telecommunications, warning us about telecom fraud. There is a link on their email which takes you through to their website, and on which they state :

“Most people will be able to relate to the experience of opening a phone bill that drew a sharp intake of breath.”

Funny they should say that, because I can relate to this every time I receive one of their bills.

We had been with them for approximately four years, and were migrated to them by our previous telecom provider Clarus Communications (which incidentally were even more of a nightmare than this lot). Anyway, at the end of the 3 year contract and well into the fourth year of using their services (when your contract runs out they put you on a one month rolling contract – beware their T’s & C’s) I decided to drop one of the broadband lines I had at home, and also lose a fax line which I hadn’t used for months. I also renegotiated a one year contract giving us more data (they were charging us a fortune every month for exceeding their 3Gb data limit). The chap I spoke to was very helpful, and I thought all was well.

Shortly after, I received an email informing me to the effect that they would be charging me for terminating the home line, and that the charge they were about to make might dissuade me not drop this line. (not verbatim but close)

Flabergasted, I thought that maybe Tony Soprano had written the email, and this was the first time they mentioned a termination charge, and I had already contacted Sky for them to take over the line with one of their TV/Phone packages. Consequently I called Chess and was put through to someone that kept repeating their T’s & C’s. Getting more and more frustrated with this chap, I asked if this is how they treated all their long term customers, and how can they expect people to stay with them (don’t forget I hadn’t left them) if this is the way they treated their customers? The response was to the effect : Your contract is for 12 months only and there is no value in that, so we will be implementing the charge.

I have since received the odd call from them trying to push some of their other services (mobile phone contracts etc) and have subsequently asked them why they have bothered to waste their time talking to me, as I have now been officially branded a worthless Chess Telecom customer. They are always apologetic and surprised, but that won’t refund me the £108.99 admin fee plus the £37.57 early termination fee (don’t forget I had been with them for 4 years).

Furthermore, they didn’t drop the fax line as agreed, so they charge me £12.99 plus £2.50 call divert plus £1.99 line assurance per month plus vat.

I work that out to be a total of £427.58 inc vat over the duration of 12 months that they have over/unfairly charged me, and no doubt this will rise when I attempt to leave them at the end of 12 months.

I notice there are similar complaints on Trustpilot, and when I mentioned this to the T’s & C’s man at Chess he proudly told me that they had one of the highest scores for a Telecom Company on there. Well I must admit the bad reviews seem to be followed quite quickly by a number of 5 star reviews which push the bad reviews well down the list, so this is why I’m doing my review on here.

Meanwhile, check out the reviews for yourselves, just go onto Trustpilot chess telecom, wade through the short 5 star reviews and see what you find. If you can’t be bothered to wade through the “5 star” reviews, just go onto complaintsboard.com, which also makes interesting reading.

Someone has even gone to the trouble of making a youtube complaints video.

When/if you speak to them as a prospective customer, you would find it very hard to believe the bad reviews, but my advice would be to WALK AWAY.

I will be attempting to change Telecom suppliers as soon as possible, so if anyone out there has any recommendations I would be pleased to hear them.