When my mum died in January we switched her account with Shell Energy phone and broadband over to my dad. This part of the process was slightly cocked up by them spelling his name wrong on the direct debit instruction, but did get resolved in the end. Service had been mediocre at best before we switched the account to his name, but we didn't want the hassle of switching to someone else while we were grieving and trying to sort out loads of paperwork, almost all of which needed to be done online. After we switched, the broadband and phone line quality deteriorated further and we weren't able to use the Smart TV at all for about a month or more, and the wifi was regularly dropping out. Sometimes several times a day. We reported the fault several times and asked for a new modem, as we felt that this was where the fault lay, but were refused a new modem on the basis that "We don't send out new modems". In the end, we had them send a (BT) engineer out who very tactfully told us what equipment to buy to set up a wired connection. He didn't confirm explicitly that the modem was the problem, but his advice suggested strongly that it was. We took his advice and were able to connect the TV up again, though the wifi continued to be crap and phone line quiet and crackly. After being charged over £100 by Shell for the BT engineers visit, we decided to switch providers. My dad had never received any bills from Shell and had just seen random amounts disappearing out of his account each month, with no explanation, so the £100 plus bill was the final straw. Because my mum had been in contract with them, and we either inherited it or they set up a new contract with my dad (it's not clear which...) we were then hit up for penalty charges for switching. We were told by letter that it would be £184.71 plus the final bill, and that if we cancelled the direct debit before this had gone out, they'd impose another penalty charge on top of that. They sent the letter out in my dead mothers name, despite having switched the account to my dad's name back in January, and he has just been charged over £300 with no explanation whatsoever from them. Needless to say, we are much happier with our new provider.
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