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Sparticus

20 July 2024, 20:38

  • 1 Review
  • GB

Verified

keep Connecting Britain reviews here.

While C-B have been flagging one star reviews to try ot have the removed this appears to have stopped. One may wonder if TP has "had a word" with them about this as 38% of their objections were found to be invalid. There are strong connections between this company and C-B and the new company the director(s) have set up LUMINATE WHOLESALE LTD (see entries at companies house). Other reviewers have made reference to C-B paying the debts of Halo Tech and other creditors may wish to investigate this further with the liquidator. LUMINATE WHOLESALE does not yet have a TP review page. There are interesting reviews and questions asked on google.

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Emporium Vapour

19 July 2024, 20:20

  • 1 Review
  • GB

Verified

They just want your money

So glad I found this page. CB have already threatened legal action on their Trustpilot page for my negative review. We were with Halo for 2 years from 2017. Mainly for their skill in dealing with Virgin. They then began to talk about their phone service. My son signed an"Order Form" in 21 which he was told was a mandate to negotiate with Virgin again and that the services listed could be changed at any time. When he tried to change those services he was hit with a £3k termination of "agreement" bill. Discussions ensued by telephone until 5 months later we began paying for a service for hosting of handsets we had now paid for upfront. Roll on through the transfer to CB and in August last year they added a security service and charged us for it. We cancelled and they confirmed that in writing. They have continued to charge us for it. In May 24 we got an invoice for June that was over 8 times our usual bill. When we queried this they stated that we were out of contract. They had lifted all of the services offered in the May 21 Order form and charged us for those. That included hardware that we never received. They had charged us for May again and June for OOC fees. We contested that we were out of contract and that they could not charge us for May twice. They said we had an implied OOC contract because we had paid it. It is a DD so there was no choice they just took the money. To cut a very long story short, which includes an 86 minute long call which they refused to send a copy of, and many emails, They are now saying that our complaint will take at minimum to the end of August to reply to. In the meantime they want over a thousand pounds to get out of their 90 day notice despite us arguing that we are still in contract and they continue to invoice us even though they cut off our service a week after telling them we were cancelling the DD. They seem to be deliberately ignoring everything. They tell you to contact another department and it is the same person responding. They simply ignore half of your email and concentrate on one part. They have to be sent their own emails and even then they want to further delay, Absolute mess. Looking forward to getting to Court with them.

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Joe Foster

11 June 2024, 17:25

  • 1 Review
  • GB

Verified

THIS COMPANY ARE APPALLING

In the strongest possible terms, do not consider taking out a contract with this company. Their business practices and behaviour toward our company have been disgusting. We are a micro-business with six staff members. When our office phone and broadband contract came up for renewal, we explored various providers. Halo Tech Group (now Connecting Britain) seemed perfect, with promises of improved service, an advanced phone system, faster broadband at a lower price, dedicated account management, and 5-star customer service. From the moment the contract was signed, Halo became a nightmare to deal with. We only needed six handsets, and that’s what we thought we had ordered. Halo arranged finance via a company called Armada. The finance contract issued was for 12 handsets. When we queried this, we were told there was no charge for the additional phones. This proved to be a lie when we received and queried the invoice; Armada confirmed we were paying for 12 handsets. To date, we have only received six phones, and one of those is now not working. Halo was supposed to install broadband services within 30 days of the contract (i.e, by 20/1/22). This never happened. On 1/9/22, after months of delays, Halo informed us they had novated our agreement to their new company, Connecting Britain. There was no consultation with us on this matter. We believe they wound Halo up to avoid legal action from customers. From information on Companies House, it appears that Halo Tech Ltd was originally called Datatel Solutions under Director Jonathan Peter Walker. Jonathan resigned from Halo Tech Ltd in 2022 and was Director of Connecting Britain and resigned again in 2024 to form another company called Luminate. We suspect that the moves to new companies could possibly have been motivated by a need to escape the numerous unhappy customers like us leaving anguished reviews on Trustpilot and possible legal action they may have faced. It’s difficult to know whether all their staff members realize what a potential sham this company is. However, Jonathan Peter Walker, Lee Henderson, Emi Pritchard, and the company director Garry Grant are culpable, among others. Our formal complaints have never been resolved. Our outstanding invoices for incentives on signing up have never been paid. Their customer service is non-existent: no callbacks, no account manager, minimal responses to our inquiries. After waiting over two years for installation, we suddenly got notice that Broadband would be installed in two days' time on 9/3/23. We were advised if we didn’t give the engineer access, we would incur a penalty charge of £200. We responded to say access would not be granted until our complaints were dealt with. They then invoiced us for ‘breach of contract’ and immediate payment of the contract in full, i.e., 60 monthly charges of £52 plus VAT, total £3120. We engaged with the CEDR to pressure Connecting Britain to resolve the situation with the missing phones and the demand for payment of the contract we hadn’t cancelled. Connecting Britain engaged with the process until the eve of a ruling, which was clearly going in our favour. They then cynically issued a small court claim against us, knowing CEDR could not proceed to give a judgment on a case with a legal dispute. The claim they filed had zero merit and was contradictory, obviously a tactic to avoid liability with CEDR. We eventually defended the claim successfully in court. Connecting Britain didn’t show up for the hearing despite pursuing us to the door of the court. They then filed an appeal against the judgment, further delaying tactics until the second court date, at which point they withdrew their case on the day. We strongly suspect it was their intention all along to rip us off on the phones and to wrongly accuse us of breach of contract to extort further payment. £3120 plus VAT is a lot of money for a small business, as is the £4750 we have paid for six phones that we never needed (nor ordered) nor received. Their practices are predatory, their lack of accountability and disregard for customer satisfaction is appalling. Looking at the negative reviews for Halo and Connecting Britain, it is clear they have taken advantage of many small businesses like ours. We strongly suspect that some of the positive "reviews" on this website may not be legitimate. Their responses to negative reviews show premeditation combined with a defensive, copy-and-paste approach. One final note: Where are the £4750 worth of phones that we paid for but you have not given to us? Why did you file a claim against us and not show up to court to defend it?

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Eric Slade

19 July 2023, 19:15

  • 1 Review
  • GB

Verified

PERSONALLY WOULD NOT USE THIS COMPANY

PERSONALLY - WOULD NOT USE THIS COMPANY. As with previous reviews, we took out an upgrade only to find that Halo had not repaid the previous finance agreement and trying to get hold of anyone to sort this out is impossible. The contract has now been taken over by ConnectBritain and the managing director of this company is the old sales director of Halo.

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Paul

03 May 2023, 16:08

  • 1 Review
  • GB

Verified

Avoid at all costs

Avoid at all costs. Take forever to reply to emails. They were supposed to settle the old contract, nothing was done. Apparantly I had to issue an invoice to them, for them to pay me to settle with the old finnace company directly. Contract taken out in August 2022, was still getting charged from the old finance company which I didnt see until November 2022. Started the process to reclaim the money. It's now May 2023 and despite several emails, invoices to Halo Tach and customer service saying they will chase it up with the finance team I have now been told that the claim to repay the finance should have been done within 60 days as per T & C's. Just to add to this the telephone system has several floors that take forever to sort out.

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AUTOMATICA LTD

24 March 2023, 20:25

  • 1 Review
  • GB

Verified

Customer for several years

Customer for several years , our phones now down, Halo website gone , 0333 support number not recognised Having a major impact on our business , should anyone from Halo be available please contact us automatica uk Ltd

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Sean M

17 March 2023, 00:30

  • 1 Review
  • GB

Verified

Professional Install

Install was carried out very methodically with good instruction of system. Nice fella

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Marc Harris

04 January 2023, 17:37

  • 1 Review
  • GB

Verified

Loss of Service

No phones or internet since the 29th December. No answer on the head office number, the number on the website is not in service and nobody is responding to any callback requests or emails to any email address listed. Their complaints email diverts straight through to Connecting Britain LTD. As others have said, avoid this company at all costs - everything about them is crook.

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Mr Melvin

12 December 2022, 19:26

  • 1 Review
  • GB

Verified

Ali was very helpful and polite

Ali was very helpful and polite thanks

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Sue D

08 December 2022, 03:52

  • 1 Review
  • GB

Verified

What connects Halo and Connecting Britain?

While we have been posting as Sue D’Nym the Trustees have decided we should tell this community that we are a small church in suburban London. While we can not agree with the assertion made on this site that the positive reviews of C-B are written by employees (as we have not seen any evidence of this) it does appear that C-B is Halo Tech Group under a different name. C-B will undoubtedly argue that they are different companies and indeed that is legally true. What is also true is that Mr Walker, the solo director listed on Companies House for C-B, appears to be the same Mr Walker who was until recently a director of Halo Tech group although his name is spelt differently for the two entries at Companies House. This has been previously pointed out to C-B within a review on this site but as of 07/12/22 15.30hrs had not been corrected. Also of interest is the fact that a previously listed director of Halo tech group Gary Andrew GRANT appears to be GARRY Andrew GRANT who is shown at Companies house to have a large share-holding in C-B however again note that there is a slightly different spelling of the name so it is possible that they are two different individuals. One may also speculate why C-B’s website has been updated to remove details of the senior management team and now only lists middle management. Within their website there is a link (icon at bottom of page) to linked-in. Following this takes one eventually to the page of one Lee Henderson who describes himself on his linked-in page as Head of Sales for Halo Tech group September 2017 to September 2022 and from October 2022 as Sales Director of C-B. Companies House does not show he is a director of C-B but does show he was a director of Halo Tech Group from May 2021 to October 2022. On C-B’s linked-in page it states (QUOTE) We're Connecting Britain Ltd a telecoms company based in Preston with over 30 years experience within the telecoms industry between our directors. (END QUOTE) As stated above the sole director of C-B is a Mr Walker with a date of birth of July 1983 On a positive note our phone and internet appear to be working as expected so the technology works but one may wish to ask oneself what reasons a company would have for trying to conceal its previous incarnation and not reveal who is running it?