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Customer Service

One of the systems I am working on was connected to the internet by PeoplePC. This ISP charges very little per month (under $10) but it makes its money in other ways. Using your system and dinging your bank account. Randy L. Harrington writing over at American Chronicle has an excellent writeup of his experiences with this company: PART I: People PC and Complaints of Fraud, Deceitful Advertising, and Software Problems
PeoplePC was acquired by EarthLink in 2002 for about $14 million dollars according to the San Francisco Chronicle, and Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed by EarthLink. EarthLink has had a long history of allegations of consumer fraud, bait and switch advertising, and just general poor customer service. It would appear that PeoplePC was also a company in trouble before the 2002 acquisition. PeoplePC is sold as a cheap Internet Service Provider (ISP). There are complaints of consumer fraud, deceptive advertising practices, questionable business practices, and proprietary software that not only disables computers, but installs itself so as to take advantage of personal information on subscribers' computer systems.

BACKGROUND RESEARCH
As research, and background material before I wrote this article, and before I even contacted PeoplePC I checked out some of the consumer complaints on the various consumer protection internet sites. Freedomlist.com, RipOffReport.com, as well as the Better Business Bureau.

A large amount of negative consumer feedback had to do with unauthorized charges to consumer bank, and credit card accounts for services never received, and PeoplePC either not responding to complaints, and not making refunds to subscribers. Most of these charges were under $20, but some of them were between $300 and $500. A quick tally of these complaints indicated alleged unauthorized charges by PeoplePC and losses to consumers of about fifty thousand dollars. And it just gets better from there with outright lying by the tech support people, bad software and a generally poor customer experience. No sign of Part II yet but Part I is enough of an indictment for me not to ever recommend them to anyone. Posted by DaveH at December 8, 2006 2:13 PM