Pipex is to beef up its customer helpdesk service after being inundated with calls concerning its broadband products.

It is in the process of recruiting an extra 30 staff to bring customer support numbers up to 90.

It is also planning to introduce other measures - such as phoning customers after they have hooked up to DSL - to ensure that the to help customers who have problems with their broadband service.

The ISP is currently under siege receiving around 4,000 calls a day from customers with problems, but is only able to process around 800.

The result is growing frustration among its customer base.

Said one customer who contacted The Register: "Please try to phone Pipex customer services. Basically, it sucks. The phone is almost permanently engaged. When you do get a successful connect (about one in 100 dials), there's then a 45-minute to one hour wait before an obviously overworked human being responds."

Another told us: "I haven't been able to talk to anyone, or even get in the phone queue for three days. All lines to all departments - even sales - are engaged all the time."

Said another frustrated punter: "I've been trying very hard to get some customer support from Pipex. I've e-mailed them repeatedly and tried several times to phone them. My e-mails disappear into a void and their customer support phone number is always busy. Of course, I've only tried to contact them about eight or nine times in the last few weeks, perhaps I'm not being persistent enough."

David Rickards, the MD of Pipex, accepts there is a problem and admits that there are customers out there are frustrated.

But he doesn't think that just "throwing people at the phones" will solve the problem.

Instead, he wants to get to the heart of the problems that are dogging the self-install ADSL service, he said.

Pipex has 34,000 broadband customers. ®