BT Anytime... Except now
Hoorah! (incidentally there's lots of swearing in this as I get gradually more and more pissed off as I write :D Just a warning ;) )
As I am writing this I cannot connect to the net, the house ISP is BT through their Anytime package which famously became "sometime" a while back when they decided that people who had paid them for a flat rate unlimited access service weren't actually entitled to use it for unlimited access. I chose BT for a number of reasons. The first being you can't beat the phone company: Its a fundamental rule of our society, there is no way to beat them through customer service or even legal means - they have diplomatic immunity practically so ultimately they were going to fuck with my internet connection any way I looked at it, either through charging me in some roundabout way for using the competition or through cutting my bandwidth.
The second being that it wasn't too bad a deal when I started. £15 for a month of unlimited access isn't that bad and the speeds are comparable to all other Dial-up ISPS. However after constant service outages and other things I hate BT with a passion. One of the primary reasons for hating BT was their handling of Broadband (First stalling, then only selectively installing, then overcharging to a truly extortionate degree and finally stalling the competition like a m*********er) meant that if you want to buy a broadband access from BT, you first have to pay for "installation" that means some guy has to look at your exchange box and re-arrange some wires - this mutha costs £60 apparently! Then you have to buy the modem, thats right, you have to fork out cash for a frikkin piece of junk that BT is pimping on all its customers.
Anyhow it was this hatred of BT which led me to go with One.tel for my broadband and guess what? They screwed me over too! They just secured billing for the next 3 months in one payment from my direct debit just before I was about to cancel their service -3 frikkin' months worth of payment!!- the result? My bank account just choked majorly and I am now over my interest free overdraft facility
The only good thing to come out of this is that I happen to have my modem still from One.tel but I have to head to the flat and cancel my account because I don't have the apparatus to do it here (namely my account number) in Colchester, so I actually have to get on a train down to London to cancel this thing, naturally that's another £15 I can't afford and in addition to this I won't be making that trip if that's all I'm doing because my computer is still there, the computer I desperately want to bring down here because my Grandmother is going to break it soon.
Every f**** time I see the old bat she tells me "Oh you don't need your computer do you Johnlouis?" Which is granny speak for "I'm going to pack it away but because I'm about 4 feet tall and 70 with the strength of half a 6 year old I'll fucking drop it and crack your ridiculously expensive LCD display. Why? Because I need to busy myself with something so that I don't think about how badly I've fucked everyone over!" Arrgh!!
Anyhow next year I'll be cable broad-banding (those who played Magic the Gathering 'back in the day' will realize the play-on-words there) with my mates in the flat we go to so my expenses will be less and I might be able to fetch some money for my modem online. After all its better than paying BT £60 for something which is provided for FREE in every single other fucking country when you sign up for broadband!
Right Flame off :)
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at June 16, 2003 03:39 PM