Toucan apologises to pensioner following telephone service bill ordeal (From York Press)

Toucan apologises to Haxby pensioner June Croft following telephone service bill ordeal

10:47am Wednesday 30th September 2009 in Sorted By Mike Laycock, Chief reporter

A PENSIONER who received a series of letters demanding the settlement of a bill she had paid more than six months previously hopes her ordeal is finally over – thanks to The Press.

The newspaper reported last week how June Croft, 72, of Little Meadows, Haxby, said she had gone to her local bank branch in February to make a final cash payment of £56.56 to her telephone service supplier, Toucan, after switching to BT.

But days later, she received a letter from phone services provider Pipex home call, which had recently taken over Toucan, saying she had an outstanding balance to pay of £56.56, and warning if the sum was not paid, it might be necessary to place a temporary bar on her outgoing calls, meaning she would only be able to phone 999 for emergency services.

Further such letters kept arriving over the coming months, despite her efforts to persuade Pipex that she had paid the bill, and she said she found the situation very upsetting, adding: “I am never late paying my bills.”

But within days of the article in The Press being published, she received another letter, this time from a Nicholas Piere, a “high-level complaints executive” at Tiscali, which owns Pipex home call.

He said: “I would like to apologise for the frustration and inconvenience caused regarding the poor administration of your account.

“I understand there were technical admin problems when we transferred your details from Toucan billing system.

“I would like to assure you that I will be feeding this incident back into our continuous improvement team, to ensure that the incident is not repeated.”

He said he had “waived the outstanding balance” on her account, and said should not receive any further communications.

Mrs Croft said she was concerned by the reference to the outstanding balance being waived. “How can it be waived when I’ve already paid it?” she asked.

“It does appear that the problem has been resolved, though, and I’m delighted. I was getting very fed up with it; it was really upsetting me. There’s no doubt that power of The Press has achieved this, so thank you very much.”