So long, Erdeesh!

After about two and a half years, I really have to let my ISP go…

They don’t give a rat’s ass about the contract. They never did, and although it’s just my guessing, they never will. Are you a home user, not a company? Then you can shut the fuck up and choke on it. This is their policy. In a normal world/country, this would drive them out of business, but this is Wacko-land, so they probably even thrive. I suspect that even their B2B relations aren’t going all that smoothly, but I don’t have any hard evidence.

In the beginning, everything seemed fine. Although I had purchased the most expensive offer for home users, the speed wasn’t great, but overall it worked. They continually bumped features up a notch (first by increasing the monthly free traffic limit then making all traffic free but capping transfer rates after exceeding it). They’d thrown in free IP phone, and kept increasing the duration of free calls. I rarely used more than the free minutes, as I was using it mainly for long distance calls to my parents or my in-laws.

Then a salesman of the company came to our door one evening, offering free IP phone to all the cable subscribers (they are also a cable company). I’m not sure it was all that hard for them to check if by any chance I already have it before bothering me, but let’s move on. The guy was genuinely puzzled by the fact I already had both internet connection and phone from them, but managed to save the situation stating that the offer is cumulative. So they only needed my signature on the contract to add this offer’s free minutes to my existing ones. OK then, bring it on!

Of course, he forgot to mention that the offer was targeted to cable TV customers, so the cable and internet and phone contracts had to bear the same name. This was not our case. The cable TV contract was a lot older so it was in my wife’s maiden name, the internet and phone contracts were in my name. No problem, they just went on and changed the internet and phone contracts to my wife’s maiden name, and also slipped in a small fee for the “name processing”. He “forgot” to mention the fee too.

You can probably imagine my surprise the following month in front of the clerk that was trying to convince me I can’t pay for my internet connection, because there’s no contract in my name. I let it slide with just a frown and some well thought out words about their mothers.

A few months down the line, they switched their servers configuration from static IPs to DHCP, also changing my assigned IP in the process. They didn’t bother letting me know about the IP change, they only sent a short note with new configuration instructions by e-mail. I spent the whole day at the office wondering why the hell I can’t connect to any of the computers at home, and hoping it’s just a temporary outage. Later that night I finally learned the truth and just went crazy, thinking this is a kiss good-bye to my privately operated web server (amongst other servers, but let’s not get into too many details [imagine wide devilish grin here]). The support call center operators were misinformed at best, or plain stupid at worst. With each call I was getting a different answer. Some said my IP will be different after each disconnection (it didn’t happen very often, but it did happen; mostly because of power outage, sometimes because of “network maintenance”), some said it won’t. Only by testing I was able to determine that my IP was still static, they were just serving me the same IP every time, but through DHCP. All good, I let it slide. Though their mothers must have thought there’s unusual sun activity all that day.

And for the final touch, less than a month ago they “upgraded” my connection from cable to fiber, doubling the external data rate to 2Mbps and bragging about a metropolitan data rate of 10Mbps. Of course, the actual data rate was nowhere near those figures. There was no point asking them about it, they were keep repeating I’m connected to a busy node, everybody else has heavy transfers, I have no guaranteed transfer rate as a home user, so go whine somewhere else, sucker. Heavy transfers with a constant speed at any hour of day and night, my ass…

But they also changed the connection type to PPoE, which from my limited experience behaves a lot like dial-up, it just doesn’t involve a modem and a telephone line. Windows was even trying to disconnect me after a while, saying my dial-up connection has gone idle (in the middle of heavy transfers, of course — way to go, Microsoft dick-heads). And of course, this time they implemented true DHCP, so my IP was changing with each connection.

I have wasted a lot of time and brain cells talking to various representatives of the company, both from the tech department and the sales department. I had my copy of the contract in one hand and the phone in the other. I kept reading them various points in the contract stating that I should have a static IP and that any change in the contract should be notified by snail mail with at least 30 days in advance so I get a chance to review and approve or reject it. I was invariably told I have to upgrade to a business type subscription if I want my static IP back. But the best answer was from a mother fucker in the sales department that simply called me a liar:

“I don’t believe it, there’s no way that could be written in your contract. The company retains the right to modify the contracts with home users at it’s discretion, without any obligation of notification whatsoever”.

That really flipped me over. So I asked what was the point in the contract stating that. And he went on:

“I don’t know, I don’t remember”.

Well, shit-head, you gotta give me better than that. Go get a copy of the contract then!

“I can’t do that, I have no copy of the contract here”.

I have a copy of the contract in my hand, and I want to talk to somebody that also speaks about hard contract facts, not about their wet dreams. So I ask him to transfer me to someone who has a copy of the fucking contract so we can talk business instead of comparing dick sizes.

“I have no way of transferring your call to someone else, you’ll have to call in again”.

That was really too much for me — I asked his fucking name, so I can file a complaint. And, believe it or not, although an automated message at the beginning says they are recording all calls to “improve the user experience“, the shit-faced refused to give me his name!

This, the now dynamic IP and the fact that my new and expensive wireless router refused to connect to their servers through PPoE were more than enough to terminate the damn contract.

To my shame, and I haven’t done it yet although I should have done it right away. I suspect I will have to drag my wife to their headquarters to terminate the contract which is now in her name, regardless of her medical condition. This is typical for this damn country, so I would be really surprised to be wrong about it.

Anyway, there’s been a week now since I went to another ISP. They give me “only” 1Mbps / 10Mbps, but it works a lot faster than the old connection! And it is cheaper too!

So RDS, eat shit and die!

P.S.: Oh, your mothers too!