Saturday, October 28, 2006

Take Your Fair Use Policy, And Stick It Where The Sun Don't Shine

Guess what? A couple of days ago, I received my third and final email from my ISP regarding my allegedly excessive internet usage. This in spite of the fact that they don't actually say what constitutes 'excessive' anywhere. As a result, they have taken it upon themselves to throttle my access, with everything going along at a crawl, if I could connect at all. Time for a call to Customer Services, methinks. So, I spent over an hour on the phone to a call centre in India (actually, I was on hold for most of the time). Despite ranting furiously at the poor sap on the other end of the line, I got precisely nowhere.

I told them that I'd had a final email from them regarding their so-called "Fair Use Policy" (hah!), and the email also said that I could request a MAC code (the code which would allow me to take my custom to another provider). Surprise, surprise, the guy couldn't find any trace of this email, and it was obviously more than his life - let alone his job - was worth, to dish out a MAC code without proof. Not only that, he couldn't even see any evidence of me having exceeded their limits. Grrrrr.

Anyway. He gave me an email address to write to. So I did. I sent a somewhat caustic email demanding a MAC code, so I could get the hell away from this bunch of shysters as quickly as humanly possible. Much to my surprise, they complied.

So, I've now signed up to a new ISP, with no download limits, so no need to worry about that in future. And a helpful customer service department for a change. It'll take about a week for the migration to take effect, and it's a bit more expensive than the other lot, but I guess you get what you pay for. Pay peanuts, get monkeys, as they say.

Funny thing though. Even though I'm still with the old ISP for another week or so, the speed has gone back up. In fact, it seems faster than ever. How peculiar!

No comments: