Cancelling a Wanadoo contract

[Fumanzoku]

Has anyone done this ? It's left deliberately obscure on the website which should be criminal in my opinion. I asked them by email and they just pasted links back to the website without answering how to cancel.

In France I've previously had Free and AOL. AOL were no problem but Free was still charging me three months after I cancelled.

So how does one go about cancelling Wanadoo ?

[orion]

Hi F

I had problems cancelling my contract. First I understand you must send the 'resiliation' by registered letter with advice of reception 'avis avec accuse de recommande' (AR) or something like that - this is normal for most or all notice of termination of a contract in France.

Beware of the call from them asking why you are leaving, I had one of these. I said I had gone elswhere for the ADSL. Q. Why? A. Cheaper etc. Q. If we can do it cheaper would you stay with Wanadoo?  A. Maybe - let me see the details in writing of your offer. The details were promised. Nothing happened at all.

Later I  found out that  the Direct Debit continued and money was taken after the 1 month notice period. I phoned Wanadoo (via France Telecom customer service) and queried why. Wanadoo said because I had agreed to the new offer.  I had not.

I then said I want to finish come what may - OK they said but why? I said I just want to finsh - the lady said I can't pass you to the resiliation department who must deak with this unless you give me a reason. I said I had a contract for ADSL with Cegetel now and I didn't need Wanadoo dial up. I was passed to the resiliation department and asked all the same questions again - I gave the same reply. OK they said it will be sorted.

Then a Direct Debit taken for 2nd month. I phoned Wanadoo again and queried why. They asked for a 2nd resiliation by AR I refused saying I had already sent one. At this stage I started to lose the will to live. I had the same conversation and  questions. I asked to speak to a supervisor and at last I found someone who grasped the fact that I had given notice and I wanted a refund of money taken and future DDs stopped. She promised action in 3 weeks.I am not holding my breath.

Do note that this Sevice Client line is 34c per minute and it seems to me they deliberately string out the calls. I have spent some 90 minutes on the phone during these calls - none are fast.

I can offer one piece of advice to avoid the 34c charge - go to the France Telecom freephone service - there is one in English as well. They can give all the details of the Wanadoo account without fuss. In fact they told me that the AR was receievd and that I had accepted the special promo offer and later that the account was closed even though they were still taking money - he could see the money being taken from my account as well. He also informed me that ironically the promo offer I supposedly accepted was 2 months without cost  making wWandado wrong either way  After this I was tranferred to the Wandoo number all at no charge. I can say for sure that knowing the exact position of my account before I phoned Wanadoo saved a lot of time and at least made me sure of the basics of what was happening.

After this fiasco I would take some persuasion to Wannado again.

Good luck

Orion

[Baz]

I know that there is a charge for  cancelling a Direct Debit with a French bank, but surely this is worth any further aggravation with Wanadoo. At least they cannot take any further money from your account.

Baz

[derf]

I think someone posted the following link on this Forum, sorry I don't know who, but it should help with your cancellation.

http://www.ariase.com/fr/espace_membres/resiliation.html

[Fumanzoku]

Orion, I went throught the same with Free, I cannot understand why this is not criminal. It's a systematic policy on the part of ISPs and we should be protected against it. After a year exchanging legal letters my lawyer told me to give in ! So I ended up paying them the extra months, the DD cancellation fee and the lawyer.

I'll send a AR letter to them and cancel the payments, though mine are through the credit card.

I'm already on my third attempt at getting an answer online, two returned providing links back to the website and the third is advertising a new product.

 

[Fumanzoku]

Thanks Les that's just what I needed. I suggest that link goes on the permenant links section.

[Miggimeggi]

[quote user="orion"]

I can offer one piece of advice to avoid the 34c charge - go to the France Telecom freephone service - there is one in English as well.

[/quote]

Could you tell me how to find the freephone service in English please.  I have managed to find English speakers on Wanadoo but only after they have strung me out for as much as around 40 minutes each time.

We used AOL for the past 3 years but when we moved house we asked them to transfer the account to the new 'phone number.  They said OK but after three weeks were unable to establish an ADSL connection.  They said it was their fault but that it would take another 3 - 4 weeks - or did I wish to cancel the order.  I was really miffed as, in addition to the subscription, they were charging me 1.20 euros an hour for a classic connection so like an idiot I said 'yes, cancel'.  I went then to France Telecom in Libourne and subscribed to Wanadoo and the real nightmare began.  They also could not make an ADSL connection but were telling me that it must be my computer, the 'phone lines in the house, anything but Wanadoo.  Eventually I thought it may be a faulty Livebox so back to Libourne with it and they changed it for a Sagem 800.  Still no connection so I phoned Wanadoo again who told me that AOL had constructed my line and that the easiest thing I could was to write to Wanadoo, cancel the contract and  to simply log  on to AOL and stay with them. This is what I did and true enough, there I was connected to ADSL via AOL.

Unfortunately, after about three weeks Wanadoo 'phoned and told me that I had a years contract and that I could not cancel.  But, I told them, you were not able to connect me and it was your technician who told me to cancel.  Not so, he said.  The fault is with AOL for not cancelling in the first place and nothing to do with Wanadoo.  Then he asked about the Livebox and did I have a document to prove that I had returned it.  I told him that I had seen the thing put on the computer as returned by France Telecom.  He said we have no record of the return and if I cannot produce a document proving that I had returned it I would be charged 200.00 euros for it in addition to the subscriptions for 12 months and the 3 euros a month rental for 12 months.   He did however agree that they were charging me on two accounts, not just one and said that I would be refunded the overcharge by cheque.

I went back to France Telecom who told me to write again to Wanadoo and to state that they must cancel the contract as they had not constructed the line.  They also showed me the return of the Livebox on their computer.  I wrote the letter as dictated by the person at France Telecom just about a week ago and had hoped that it was now all over.  Then I looked at my bank account online today and see that Wanadoo have again debited two separate monthly subscriptions on two account numbers at just under 30 euros each. I also have just about lost the will to live.

Anne

[Deimos]

[quote user="Miggimeggi"]

Could you tell me how to find the freephone service in English please.

Anne[/quote]

http://www.francetelecom.fr/en/tools/others/contactus.html

 

English speaking service  0800 364

775 (in France)

 

However, they are totally useless. 

The best thing about this line is that it is free.  Generally, with the Wanadoo commercial line

you can find somebody who can speak English pretty well.  Although the Wanadoo commercial line #(0892

699 114) is a premium rate number, at least you can get something done

(eventually).  With the English speaking

line  you just spend time and achieve

nothing (the best that can happen is that they pass a message to Wanadoo –

which as it did not come from you, Wanadoo will often ignore if it suits them).

Ian

[Deimos]

[quote

user="Miggimeggi"]

Unfortunately, after about three weeks Wanadoo 'phoned and told me that I

had a years contract and that I could not cancel.  But, I told them, you

were not able to connect me and it was your technician who told me to cancel.

...

[/quote]

With Wanadoo, providing a service and charging you for a service are two

totally separate and unrelated things.  They will continue to charge

happily when they cannot provide any service and you will find it very

difficult to get anything done about it. Sometimes the Wanadoo commercial line

might give you a free month, but only after you have spent more money on their

premium rate number than they are then giving you back.

Wanadoo do claim that you can send in your France Telecom bill with the premium

numbers highlighted and they will refund those call costs (e.g. when reporting

a problem that is not your fault, etc.), but it might take quite some time (and

probably more premium rate calls).

Despite being useless, the English speaking line can transfer you to Wanadoo

premium numbers free of charge (but, in my experience, you need to give them

"a bit of a hard time" to get them to do that).

Ian

[paw862]

We are just about to look for a Broadband provider and this all makes me nervous. Is there a French site like the UK ADSL guide which reviews providers etc?

PAW

[Val_2]

My friend has been trying to cancel her contract with another provider because basically she is not getting any service,they will not reply to any recorded letters or phone calls and are still taking her money and has to come to me to access the internet. She has discovered that her house insurance covers her for the use of a lawyer in the event of taking the providers to court and the general consensus here is that internet providers know how long legislation takes in France,they can do what they like meantime. For anyone else with problems like this,might be worth checking with your insurers to see if they cover you for judicial problems.

[Fumanzoku]

This is absurd, here I am a satisfied customer, I have used their product for a year or two and will now have to end the contract to move abroad. This should be a formality, instead I'm already on my 7th email just to get them to point me to the cancellation procedure and they simply won't tell me. The website is deliberately obscure, the word resiliation is not to be found. This cannot be legal, hell the EU is notorious for protecting us from every conceivable danger from products we buy (fences round the pool anyone), what about protecting us from systematic theft and the stress that comes with it, 'losing the will to live'. These companies should not only have to return the funds they've illegally deducted but should  be forced to compensate us for every hour spent dealing with them.

I will send Wanadoo the formal letter of resiliation as per above link and talk to my bank about stopping payment. from the middle of the following month, Feb in my case. As my payments are taken from the credit card will this be easier to deal with than direct debit, in case of stopping payments to named companies ?

Does anyone know the correct address to send a resiliation to letter for Wanadoo ?

 

[Deimos]

I would suspect that most ISPs are similar in their business

practices.

I’m afraid I do not know the address but you might try the

English speaking line (not because its English but because they seem to sit “between”

FT and Wanadoo and thus might know a bit more than e.g. 1014).

Ian

[orion]

Quote [Despite being useless, the English speaking line can transfer you to Wanadoo premium numbers free of charge (but, in my experience, you need to give them "a bit of a hard time" to get them to do that}

Ian and all concerned

I managed to get transferred I think 5 times in total ovet this. I was lucky enough to be offered the transfer to Wanadoo the first time after asking them if there was anything at all they could help me with. Subsequently I simply asked to be transferred again following the previous transfer where business was not concluded.

I think one real advantage of calling the FT help line is to get the factual postion of one's account before dealing with the Wanadoo gatekeepers. BTW this service can also give you the Wanadoo Service Client addreess for the resiliation. I might be able to lay my hand on it again in my haphazard filing system.

[Will]

[quote user="paw862"]We are just about to look for a Broadband provider and this all makes me nervous. Is there a French site like the UK ADSL guide which reviews providers etc?

PAW
[/quote]

I think the nearest French equivalent is probably www.lesproviders.com.

We had similar experiences with Wanadoo. We cancelled by recorded letter, after a very long search for, and a few phone calls about, the correct way to do things, because the performance and support was poor, and Wanadoo did not then offer an unlimited dialup service, which was available from a couple of competitors. This apparently was not a valid reason for cancelling.

We also cancelled the direct debit, so they sent bills, with interest added. Every time we got a bill we phoned. Mrs Conq, who speaks good French, which must help, eventually got a helpful person on the other end of the phone who not only cancelled the contract for us but also wiped out the charges, including interest, since our cancellation was received. So it pays to keep trying.

Cancelling any French contract is a nightmare, but Wanadoo must be one of the worst. It's ironic - as I have said before, in England I was on the admin team of one of those ISP user websites, which resulted in me going on BBC Watchdog. The main issue then was the impossibility of getting out of a contract; but it was nowhere near as bad as this.

 

[paw862]

Thanks Will I have had a look at that site it will take sometime to go through.

PAW

[Fumanzoku]

For all you NolongerWanadoos out there, I finally got some textual commitment from them, better save this somewhere:

Bonjour,

Dans votre Courriel du 16/12/2005, vous nous demandez quelle est la procédure de
résiliation.

Votre abonnement actuel est  une intégrale illimité sur lequel vous n'êtes pas
engagé.

Si vous souhaitez résilier, veuillez contacter notre assistance commerciale au
0892 699 114 ou envoyer un courrier à Wanadoo Service Client, pôle 27, 33734
BORDEAUX CEDEX 9 (régle du 20).

La régle du 20 (courrier uniquement) doit être la date de réception de ce
courrier. La résiliation intervient alors  à la fin du mois. Si cette date est
dépassée, la résiliation est reportée au mois suivant.

Nous espérons que ces précisions répondent à votre demande et vous souhaitons
une bonne navigation avec Wanadoo.

Le service client Wanadoo

As far as I'm concerned I will send letter with AR, and cancel payments after next months payment and that is the end of the matter, if they send anything after that it won't get answered or paid. I'm not making any calls at my cost. I suggest you all do the same.

[suein56]

Hi Fumanzoku

As I want to cancel Wanadoo in the New Year I have been following this thread with great interest. I have made a note of your comments and the email you received from Wanadoo and also noted the excellent site that Derf aka Les mentionned: ariase. Hopefully, armed with all this info, I might be able to cancel. 

Sue

[Miggimeggi]

[quote user="Miggimeggi"][quote user="orion"]

I can offer one piece of advice to avoid the 34c charge - go to the France Telecom freephone service - there is one in English as well.

[/quote]

Then I looked at my bank account online today and see that Wanadoo have again debited two separate monthly subscriptions on two account numbers at just under 30 euros each. I also have just about lost the will to live.

Anne

[/quote]

In the interests of 'fair is fair', I checked my bank account this morning and lo and behold, Wanadoo have, as promised,  refunded the amounts they debited against a duplicate subscription.  Still no acknowledgment of my latest attempts to cancel the subscription where they were unable to construct the line 'though.

Anne

[Marym2]

[quote user="Spg"]

Hi Fumanzoku

As I want to cancel Wanadoo in the New Year I have been following this thread with great interest. I have made a note of your comments and the email you received from Wanadoo and also noted the excellent site that Derf aka Les mentionned: ariase. Hopefully, armed with all this info, I might be able to cancel. 

Sue

[/quote]

HI, just a quick note, I cancelled in September, (UK not France) slow speeds etc, and did not have a problem. I asked when I should cancel and was advised to let them know the day before my direct debit renewal/payment, as if cancelled before I would lose the days up to the payment date. The problem now is that I cannot acess my old email address, through my new pay as you go provider. I have tried my other email addres with them and no probs, but my subscribers email address has gone (and I have logged on every 1/2 weeks) any ideas?

[Cassis]

Hi Mary

We had the same problem when we cancelled Wanadoo.  On the day your subscription expires they basically wipe your email records and account off their system and you're stuffed; if people mail you at the old Wanadoo address, any forwarding rules you may have had the foresight to set up to your new email address will not work - not exactly a good way to encourage people to return!

[Patf]

Earlier this year a new law came into force saying that with certain

types of contract eg insurance customers had to be alerted a month

before renewal date and given the option of cancelling. Not sure if it

applies to internet services or not. Come to think of it we haven't had

any letter about our insurances either. We pay for internet through our

mastercard and one time we changed the card and Wanadoo got very

anxious about this  ( how did they know?) sent emails and

obviously would have cancelled if we hadn't given the new number. Pat.

[Fumanzoku]

I pay WD through my credit card, how do you cancel payments by card ? Is there a fee as with a prelevement payment ?

[Fumanzoku]

Latest: I sent the AR letter based roughly on the content of the above link but specifying January as the last month. Today I got the following email confirmation from WD. I can't see how they could now continue to deduct money from my account. Therefore I won't cancel payments and save paying that fee.

Bonjour,

La demande de résiliation de votre abonnement a bien été enregistrée. Elle
prendra effet à compter du 31/01/2006.

Par ailleurs, nous vous informons qu'en cas de dépassement de forfait ou
d'achats en ligne (minitel, paiement w-HA,...), votre facture vous sera envoyée
par courrier à votre domicile et ne sera pas consultable à partir du site
wanadoo.fr.

A cet effet, un e-mail spécifique vous sera adressé conjointement.

Avec notre considération distinguée,

Le service client Wanadoo