We joined PHS Wastetech in Aug 2006 as they were reasonably cheaper than many other companies providing similar service. We signed a contract for 12 months and not 36 months as their standard contract. prior to signing the contract I requested their sales manager for the London area to confirm via email that it would be a fixed price contract for the duration of the contract. Their sales manager confirmed this without any hesitation.
After about 2 months into the contract they started sending us the invoices much higher than the agreed price and at the same time their service was appalling, missing collections, charging for waste not collected, not answering calls at the depot and so on.......
To resolve this problem we decided to contact their customer services at Brighton only to learn that their staff are so rude as they are all trained like robots who are not willing to listen to your side of the problems but to point you to clauses in the contract. We repeatedly tried to tell them that we have a fixed price contract with them, they ignored this and kept telling us to refer to the clause where they are entitled to increase price and charge for extra waste if their driver say they have collected. At no stage they collected any extra waste yet they invoiced for this every time.
This problem dragged on for months without any success at which stage we wrote to terminate the contract giving them 1 months notice.
Unfortunately they would not accept out letter of cancellation as according to them it was not written according to the format demanded in their contract i.e 3 months notice prior to the anniversary date and it should be via fax and registered post. Even if you are a day short of the 3 months you have no choice but to roll over the contract to the next anniversary date depending on your length of the contract.
As we were unable to exchange dialog with their customer services and they were not willing to terminate the contract we had no alternative but to have our solicitors to communicate with them on our behalf. In July 2007 our solicitors wrote to them explaining the overcharges being made; requesting for the refund and contract to be canceled accordingly. Once again there was no reply to his letter and they continued their appalling service and overcharging on the invoices to the point when we suspended any further payments at which point they suspended their services but still kept sending invoices much over the agreed prices for service not provided.
Since they saw no payment forthcoming they are now pursuing this through the small claims court. We will fight them all the way as a matter of principal!!!!!
This is one of the worse company we have come across in our thirty years of trading!!!
