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Comments:
dawson1, it does say on the invoices to pay 3 - 5 days before the due date so the money can clear, also anyone who doesnt read contracts before signing them is simply irresponsible.
I have been a customer with PB for over 2 years and would not recommend them to anyone. They constantly change their terms and condition, even going as far as to alter dates on a contract to try and get more money out of me. You can never get to speak to anyone as they are always "So Busy". If I ran my company in the same way as PB I wouldn't have a compnay. My advice is to shop around. There are better companys out there a good one is fp direct. AVOID AT ALL COSTS
Just a quick message for MissFranker, if PB's accounts department had the capacity to acknowledge when a bill had in fact been paid before it was due then the companies that deal with them wouldn't get angry when they received late charges that aren't even applicable to their account. Excuse me too if I don't waste valuable seconds of my life "befriending" a customer services rep. I've got enough friends thank you, what I want, and pay for, is efficiency.
just a quick message for all the people who have had a bad experience with the customer service department. if you paid your bill's on time you would not get late charges. if you read your contract before you sign it you would understand the meter reset charges and insurance waiver charges on leases. the best way to get a result is to be-friend one of the staff in customer service who you feel you can trust and who you think understand what they are doing and get thier personal email address, email them with your queries and fingers crossed they wil get it sorted.
hope this helps,good luck pb customer's
When we first took the contract out it took 12 weeks to get a logo. Then they re-set the software every so often and you are left calling at 0870 number for them to corrcet their problem.
Recently we had a messenge on the machine - Inspection Required - When we tried to continue it forced us to add postage - which we did not want to do. It them dials on 0845 number and failed so again no franking machine and only a 0870 number to contact. IF YOUR GETTING A FRANKING MACHINE
1) DO NOT USE A COMPANY WHO DEMANDS YOU CONTACT THEIR TECHNICAL SUPPORT ON 0870
2) GET IN WRITING THE INSTALLATION TIME (INCLUDING LOGOS)
Sorry Pitney Bowes I would not recommend you
I also have had a very bad experience with PB. In November 2007 we were offered a free trail with £20 free postage and our logo. Everything was fine, except our logo did not turn up, eventually after many 'phone calls and lots of "We will get the relevant person to 'phone you right back" we did get the logo up loaded. We should have been warned at this point about their awful customer relations dept. We decided to keep the machine after the trial at £9.00 plus vat per month. First month bill for £19.95 per month so I telephoned and said this was not the contract price I was offered and, again, eventually, we sorted out the correct price. Then the statement came in I had been charged Late Payment fee on the whole Invoice - so back on the phone, no luck. Then we were sent an ink cartridge ordered by someone who we have never heard of. So back on the phone and told them to get the thing uplifted, so the same thing happened, we will phone you back!. Then the invoice arrived £247.80 plus vat. So I phoned again, telling them I will not pay for things I have not ordered, wrong invoices and that they have not legal right to charge overdue payment fees on incorrect and in dispute invoices. Eventually after some time and countless phone calls I asked them to take the machine away. (this they did). The story gets worse! we were contacted and offered, you've guessed it a FREE TRIAL WITH £20 POSTAGE AND A LOGO. My colleague explained what had happened, by this time I had been very ill and become aphasic, so was unable to communicate with them. She was assured that nothing like that could possibly happen and let them show us how efficient they were. I did check the fax and having made a few alterations sent it back. The machine arrived and after the usual trouble of no logo gave it a trial. We decided not to keep the machine and asked for it to be returned this was the middle of August - we were told that as we had renewed the postage we had agreed to rent the machine at £62.85 plus VAT a quarter for 3 years! They faxed over a copy of the agreement which was signed by PB on August 30th long after I asked for it to be uplifted. The next month I received an invoice for £849.32 plus VAT for something even they cannot explain! So the upshot is we are being chased for money for stuff we did not order, did not want and have not agreed to, with their over limit fee (how can you have an over limit fee on something you have not had or asked for?) I will not pay and almost hope they take me to court as I have kept copies of all the correspondence that has taken place between us. I just don't know where to go next I am writing to BBC Watchdog and then asking trading standards. You could understand if they just once replied to a letter or email but it the worst company I have ever come across.
When I arrived in my current job, PB had a reputation in the office for being bloody minded and difficult. I had had some problens with them in a previous job. The latest instance beggars belief, after badgering one of my junior staff into ordering 6 ink cartridges when we only needed 2, we amended the order to 2 which they delivered. they then invoiced us for 6 ! We told them they had made an error and they said no problem credit note would be sent. No credit note, so then the penalty payments and interest charges started to appear. We ring, fax, write all to no avail, the occasional promise of a credit note, continued attempts to badger us to take 4 more ink cartridges. Then they stopped our franker working without notice.
I am sure persistence will eventually succeed.
Fortunately we had bought the franking machine some tme ago and our volumes are not huge, so we can stop using Pitney Bowes.
I cannot understand how they continue to retain such a monopoly. Perhaps Ofcom may be the people to contact ?
If they resolve the problem, I'll give them credit on this site, but I'm not holding my breath
I have never had a issue with pitney bowes, the only reason you people get late fees is because you dont pay your bills on time and im sure that the reason the MD hasnt replied to any of your letters is because he/she hasnt recieved them. You all need to grow up and READ your contracts before signing them.
ITS COMMEN SENSE
It's difficult to add much more to the earlier comments, but here is my experience.
If you open an account with this company you WILL have more hassle than you could possibly imagine.
You will get penalty charges, even if you pay on time, whilst you spend hours if not days trying to speak to someone at Pitney Bowes to resolve the problem you will be accruing interest and more charges. When they eventually remove the original charges they will pursue you for the other charges, on and on it will go.
I eventually got all my charges removed and, at my insistence, received a letter from the customer services manager, apologising and stating that all charges had now been removed from my account.
On my next statement, guess what, yes, more charges.
I sent a copy of the letter from the customer services manager to the account dept, completely ignored, wrote the the customer services manager again, completely ignored, wrote to the MD 5, yes FIVE times AND............ Completely ignored, every time.
Eventually I got an agreement from Pitney Bowes to close the account, so I cancelled the standing order for the rental of the machine.
Now Pitney Bowes Finance, who you rent the machines from are taking me to court for the outstanding rental.
When I told them the postage account had been closed by Pitney Bowes they said it was nothing to do with them, it is a separate company and I still had to pay for the rental of the machine for the remainder of the contract. When I pointed out the machine could not be used without a postage account they said, "not our problem".
Anybody reading these posts who haven’t dealt with Pitney Bowes would think this was exaggerated or made up. Believe me it is all true.
YOU REALLY COULD NOT MAKE THIS UP.
They are the very worst, by far, company i have ever had the misfortune to deal with - they are rude, don't respond to anything, overcharge you, it would be easier to name anything they did right.
When we moved office, they managed to set up two accounts for us (even though we had returned their machine and bought one of our own) and we almost got taken to court as they just would not believe that we did not have two accounts. It took 5 months to get them to send an updated rate card for the machine.
The latest is that they have raised the cost of resetting the meter from £6.52 to £14.88 - no warning,so if you only put in £30-40 of postage, you are paying almost half of that in charges. Total and utter exploitation of their monopoly. I know of no other company that imposes such huge increases without even the courtesy of a letter to inform you in advance.
No one at the company ever takes responsibility for sorting anything out. In the last two years I have probably sent around 50 letters faxes and numerous calls - none have ever been answered. I even wrote to their MD and he didn't do anything either.
They are the only company I deal with that seriously raises my blood pressure and leaves me fit to kill. I get so frustrated by them - they have a total monopoly on the ink and postage resetting and they are exploiting small companies who were misled hugely by PB and Royal Mail into thinking that franking machines would help their business. We are rural, miles from a post office, so we got it for convenience but the amount of admin time spent sorting out invoices and other service issues almost outweighs any benefit. I wish I could charge them £25 a letter like the banks for every letter I have had to write to them.
The staff at the call centres just don't care - I have never known worse call centre staff - they just take notes but nothing ever happens, they never ever reply - or do anything. Even when you get a named person to send things to it makes not the slightest difference, might as well be talking to one of my donkeys (they at least reply).
The only company whose incompetence matches PB is BT Broadband, but at least they don't have a monopoly. Unless you are happy to throw away the equipment and start again with Neopost, you still have to deal with PB to get the meters reset. When the deal with Neopost/Royal Mail/Pitney Bowes was set up they were duty bound to act fairly, reasonably etc. They have certainly not done that.
Anyone who can avoid this company like the plague, they could endanger your health.
the worst company we have ever had the misfortune to deal with, appalling staff who are rude and incompetent, if you have a problem with the person on the phone and then ask for their name, the phone is likely to be put down on you, or as happened to me yesterday, be told to f*** off (after informing them that we were terminating our contract with them) they are a terrible company, who love to extract money from you, but give no service in return.Avoid them at all costs.
I too cannot believe the behavior of this company.
I took a free trial; the machine arrived late.
It broke in the month trial, losing all our franking credit and my personalised stamp failed to arrive. Obviously I said no thank you!
Didnt stop the bills coming though! Nor the legal threats. Every month, for 9 months.
18 letters plus phone calls, all without response. After a while I said I was charging them for the time and legal fees incurred, plus storage. No response!
I wrote to the MD. She responded!!
Grateful, and hoping to resolve I replied; she didnt!!!!
Been 3 months now.
They now owe us £750! Also I told them that we reserved the right to dispose of their machine!
Its for sale now! :)
The price they charge for ink is far too high - liquid gold would be cheaper!
Once you buy their machine they are the only supplier of the ink so you have no choice - a fact they take advantage of to make a very high margin on what it must cost. They then add insult to injury by charging a very high rate for postage.
We too are disgusted with the service provided by Pitney Bowes. We have had unjustified charges added to our Purchase Power account for well over a year now which Pitney Bowes have admitted are incorrect - yet they still appear on our Purchase Power account and, what's more, they accrue interest whilst remaining outstanding. After many failed attempts at resolving this matter, including lengthy telephone calls, umpteen letters to managers, customer care officers (ha..ha) and accounts personnel, we finally cancelled our direct debit for the quarterly lease and returned our machine in the hope that this would prompt them into action. One year later and we are still waiting for our account to be credited and the matter to be resolved and, despite all their cock-ups, they still feel justified in charging us an 'early termination' fee - unbelievable! I cannot believe that companies of this size can get away with this kind of treatment.
I have never in my life dealt with such a confused company.
They refuse to post notes on the system and then you have to ask them to do the same things MORE THAN twice.
The sales rep services are abominable, our rep just disappeared off the face of the earth as soon as we signed his contract.
I have spoken to a guy just three days ago and now he doesn't exist, nobody's ever heard of him.
Abominable abominable abominable!!!!!
Worst company ever, I'd rather lick n stick my own bloody stamps than deal with them!
There are many problems I have come across with Pitney Bowes. I have never in my entire working life dealt with such a rude and awful customer service. We supply a large amount of business with Pitney Bowes. We have two large companies and hold 8 franking machines, so they get a lot of money out of us for rental and postage. They cannot deliver simple requests. When we first got with Pitney Bowes 3 years ago, they were a lot smaller company and were very customer focused and delivered a great service. As they have expanded and focused on sales they have lacked in their Customer Service and valuing customers. With my experience with Pitney Bowes I have experienced such bad services it has made me log complaints on more then 3 occassions of which non of them have ever been dealt with to my satisfaction. There call centre is awful, you are held up in a que for a long time and on occasions I have been in a que for 40 minutes or less and got through to a representative and been hung up on before I even get to start talking, then having to que again. I have been promised calls back on many different problems and never ever get a call back so I am having to chase them again. I have had new leases signed but no franking machines delivered and after great time spent on chasing them they have finally been delivered 2-3 weeks late! We have been double charged for a franking machine for 6 months, I have demanded a refund and it has taken 3 months to get money back. I have requested Direct Debit mandate forms on more then 3 occasions and have never recieved these and when I finally do and send it off it is ignored. I sent this recently with a cheque to pay our bill, the cheque was cashed but DD manadate form was not set up. I have also dealt with very rude staff, who cannot do their job properly and that also includes management. When ever I try to get names of staff so I can chase them back they have got either funny with me, given me the wrong name or are never available to take my call when I am chasing them because they have not done their job. Our accounts are messed up, we have too many accounts and too many direct debits set up. I have requested one account for all our machines to go on and one direct debit for all our rentals, you would think quite easy to do. It has taken 6 requests and two emailed complaints and it is still not sorted. The final straw for me was sending a very serious complaint to senior management two weeks ago and not getting a response! I have since sent another complaint and still no response. I have asked for our contracts to be terminated so we can leave this company who are incapable of delivering a very simple service to customers so we can go with a more reliable company, still no response.
I have never been so stressed and so frustrated with a company. I have finally lost my patience with them and find my day starting out very stressed and angry because of Pitney Bowes.
I have found this company to be very unreliable, too stressful, a real poor customer service, incredibly rude, unable to deliver a simple service, slow, very quick and good at setting leases up and taking money but very slow when asking for money back or dealing with a problem, untrusting and leaving you frustrated at all ends. I would advise anyone who is considering to sign leases with Pitney Bowes to re-consider and research into a more reliable company. You will have no end of trouble with this company and will find yourself also stressed and frustrated and being tied into an agreement for 12 months and having to stay with them leaving you more frustrated.
Add a comment about this blagger
Visitors to the site are reminded that the details contained within user comments are uncorroborated and as such should not be read as fact but as the opinion of the person who left the comment.
Comments:
hope this helps,good luck pb customer's
missfranker at 13th Nov 2008, 10:22PM
Recently we had a messenge on the machine - Inspection Required - When we tried to continue it forced us to add postage - which we did not want to do. It them dials on 0845 number and failed so again no franking machine and only a 0870 number to contact. IF YOUR GETTING A FRANKING MACHINE
1) DO NOT USE A COMPANY WHO DEMANDS YOU CONTACT THEIR TECHNICAL SUPPORT ON 0870
2) GET IN WRITING THE INSTALLATION TIME (INCLUDING LOGOS)
Sorry Pitney Bowes I would not recommend you
When I arrived in my current job, PB had a reputation in the office for being bloody minded and difficult. I had had some problens with them in a previous job. The latest instance beggars belief, after badgering one of my junior staff into ordering 6 ink cartridges when we only needed 2, we amended the order to 2 which they delivered. they then invoiced us for 6 ! We told them they had made an error and they said no problem credit note would be sent. No credit note, so then the penalty payments and interest charges started to appear. We ring, fax, write all to no avail, the occasional promise of a credit note, continued attempts to badger us to take 4 more ink cartridges. Then they stopped our franker working without notice.
I am sure persistence will eventually succeed.
Fortunately we had bought the franking machine some tme ago and our volumes are not huge, so we can stop using Pitney Bowes.
I cannot understand how they continue to retain such a monopoly. Perhaps Ofcom may be the people to contact ?
If they resolve the problem, I'll give them credit on this site, but I'm not holding my breath
ITS COMMEN SENSE
It's difficult to add much more to the earlier comments, but here is my experience.
If you open an account with this company you WILL have more hassle than you could possibly imagine.
You will get penalty charges, even if you pay on time, whilst you spend hours if not days trying to speak to someone at Pitney Bowes to resolve the problem you will be accruing interest and more charges. When they eventually remove the original charges they will pursue you for the other charges, on and on it will go.
I eventually got all my charges removed and, at my insistence, received a letter from the customer services manager, apologising and stating that all charges had now been removed from my account.
On my next statement, guess what, yes, more charges.
I sent a copy of the letter from the customer services manager to the account dept, completely ignored, wrote the the customer services manager again, completely ignored, wrote to the MD 5, yes FIVE times AND............ Completely ignored, every time.
Eventually I got an agreement from Pitney Bowes to close the account, so I cancelled the standing order for the rental of the machine.
Now Pitney Bowes Finance, who you rent the machines from are taking me to court for the outstanding rental.
When I told them the postage account had been closed by Pitney Bowes they said it was nothing to do with them, it is a separate company and I still had to pay for the rental of the machine for the remainder of the contract. When I pointed out the machine could not be used without a postage account they said, "not our problem".
Anybody reading these posts who haven’t dealt with Pitney Bowes would think this was exaggerated or made up. Believe me it is all true.
YOU REALLY COULD NOT MAKE THIS UP.
When we moved office, they managed to set up two accounts for us (even though we had returned their machine and bought one of our own) and we almost got taken to court as they just would not believe that we did not have two accounts. It took 5 months to get them to send an updated rate card for the machine.
The latest is that they have raised the cost of resetting the meter from £6.52 to £14.88 - no warning,so if you only put in £30-40 of postage, you are paying almost half of that in charges. Total and utter exploitation of their monopoly. I know of no other company that imposes such huge increases without even the courtesy of a letter to inform you in advance.
No one at the company ever takes responsibility for sorting anything out. In the last two years I have probably sent around 50 letters faxes and numerous calls - none have ever been answered. I even wrote to their MD and he didn't do anything either.
They are the only company I deal with that seriously raises my blood pressure and leaves me fit to kill. I get so frustrated by them - they have a total monopoly on the ink and postage resetting and they are exploiting small companies who were misled hugely by PB and Royal Mail into thinking that franking machines would help their business. We are rural, miles from a post office, so we got it for convenience but the amount of admin time spent sorting out invoices and other service issues almost outweighs any benefit. I wish I could charge them £25 a letter like the banks for every letter I have had to write to them.
The staff at the call centres just don't care - I have never known worse call centre staff - they just take notes but nothing ever happens, they never ever reply - or do anything. Even when you get a named person to send things to it makes not the slightest difference, might as well be talking to one of my donkeys (they at least reply).
The only company whose incompetence matches PB is BT Broadband, but at least they don't have a monopoly. Unless you are happy to throw away the equipment and start again with Neopost, you still have to deal with PB to get the meters reset. When the deal with Neopost/Royal Mail/Pitney Bowes was set up they were duty bound to act fairly, reasonably etc. They have certainly not done that.
Anyone who can avoid this company like the plague, they could endanger your health.
I took a free trial; the machine arrived late.
It broke in the month trial, losing all our franking credit and my personalised stamp failed to arrive. Obviously I said no thank you!
Didnt stop the bills coming though! Nor the legal threats. Every month, for 9 months.
18 letters plus phone calls, all without response. After a while I said I was charging them for the time and legal fees incurred, plus storage. No response!
I wrote to the MD. She responded!!
Grateful, and hoping to resolve I replied; she didnt!!!!
Been 3 months now.
They now owe us £750! Also I told them that we reserved the right to dispose of their machine!
Its for sale now! :)
Once you buy their machine they are the only supplier of the ink so you have no choice - a fact they take advantage of to make a very high margin on what it must cost. They then add insult to injury by charging a very high rate for postage.
Do not use Pitney Bowes
They refuse to post notes on the system and then you have to ask them to do the same things MORE THAN twice.
The sales rep services are abominable, our rep just disappeared off the face of the earth as soon as we signed his contract.
I have spoken to a guy just three days ago and now he doesn't exist, nobody's ever heard of him.
Abominable abominable abominable!!!!!
Worst company ever, I'd rather lick n stick my own bloody stamps than deal with them!
I have never been so stressed and so frustrated with a company. I have finally lost my patience with them and find my day starting out very stressed and angry because of Pitney Bowes.
I have found this company to be very unreliable, too stressful, a real poor customer service, incredibly rude, unable to deliver a simple service, slow, very quick and good at setting leases up and taking money but very slow when asking for money back or dealing with a problem, untrusting and leaving you frustrated at all ends. I would advise anyone who is considering to sign leases with Pitney Bowes to re-consider and research into a more reliable company. You will have no end of trouble with this company and will find yourself also stressed and frustrated and being tied into an agreement for 12 months and having to stay with them leaving you more frustrated.
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