Had Demon sent a letter saying that I had exceeded their FUP limits, so under the circumstances I would have to upgrade to their truly unlimited, un-FUP controlled business service, I would probably have upgraded and stayed with them. After all, I am now paying that kind of money for a limited service from another supplier.
Mind you, I would still have demanded proof that I had stepped over their invisible wire, I would still have raised merry Hell over their breach of contract and I would have still written this blog; oh, and I would still have sued their asses off, but at least they would have been able to mitigate their losses. This is the stupid thing about Demon - they don't know how to deal with people.
It appears, however, they don't know how to look after an Internet service either. My service is still restricted to 1.2 Mbps, 24 hours a day. I was better off when they restricted the service, at least I got 8 Mbps for 11 hours. Not only are they thieves, but incompetent thieves at that.
As an aside, I received the Notice of Issue today. Demon have until March 7th to either:
- Pay the total claim.
- File an acknowledgement of service. This will allow the defendant 28 days from the date of service of my particulars of claim to file a defence or contest the court's jurisdiction.
- Dispute the whole claim. I will receive a copy of the defence.
- Admit that all the money is owed. The defendant will send me a copy of the reply form and ask the court to enter judgement.
- Admit that only part of your claim is owed. The court will send me a copy of the reply form and I will have to decide what to do next.
- Not reply at all. I may ask the court to enter judgement.
3 comments:
Once upon a time, there was a group called CUT. They Campaigned for Unmetered Telecoms. Because the telcos (those who provide telecommunications) have played the scarcity game for almost a century, charging by second, or inch, or byte. For many this was unacceptable - the Internet should be accessible and affordable to all - and so CUT fought to change it. They won. FRIACO was introduced and this meant that everyone on dial up across the whole of Europe paid a flat rate to use as much bandwidth as they were able to. That particular profit bubble had been well and truly burst for the telcos.
Then, technology finally moved on. To broadband, instead of just dial up and ISDN. Sadly though, not to where it had been envisaged back in 1984 when broadband was 2Mbps (or more) up and down, but to a poxy, contended (shared), asymmetrical service which the telcos redefined at 'anything over 128kbps download, and who knows what upload'. This suited the telcos mucho. Back to the scarcity model again. And so, whilst no-one was looking, they re-introduced usage based services in the guise of Fair Use Policies etc. Some may remember sites like ntlhell - you are by a long, long way not the first person to have been clobbered by FUPs.In fact, you are around 5 years after the first members of the broadband FUP-wronged.
If you want as much broadband as you can eat, someone needs to get the CUT guys back together (or support the Access to Broadband Campaign which was formed by ex-CUT members) and get FRIACO applied to what we in this country have been conned into believing is broadband - that is, ADSL.
And then, when the wheel has been re-invented, you can join the fight for symmetrical, uncontended, decent bandwidth (or capacity, call it what you will) as so many others have, just to bring us in line with the other nations who have had it almost as long as we have been complaining about FUPs on UK's definition of broadband.
And PhilT will be in here in moments disputing all of this, but broadband has to do what it says on the tin - upload and download voice, video and data AT THE SAME TIME. Not over a matter of days, and without arguments about 'bandwidth costs money' because broadband is an enabling technology that lets people DO things, not get deeply frustrated whilst the telcos bank their money and offer a substandard service.
A very well known guy who used to work for Thus publicly stated in a DTI conference that bandwidth costs are now approaching zero and that was two years ago, so they are probably much much closer to zero now than then.
Scrap the scarcity crap, get decent symmetrical connections, stop pretending ADSL is broadband and put fibre closer to the home, and give this country half a chance to compete in the global knowledge economy. Or at least MMPOG properly. Or upload our home videos to youtube in under a day. Or allow our kids to video conference seamlessly with their mates in Denmark and Holland who are on FTTH. Stop backing the incumbent who were given an entire network for free and who need to get off their arses and stop bleating about how much it will cost them to sort out the problem they have caused by failing to use their assets wisely over the last 20 years.
And remember, whoever you buy ADSL from, it is 90% likely to be BT's wholesale product they are reselling unless you are lucky enough to live on an exchange that has been LLUd. And even then, it's probably pretty much the same technology that BT use. So, same stuff, nothing new, nothing special, same 'competitive prices', same FUPs, same aha scarcity. Right. Or you can JFDI, dig where you live, talk to Branson or someone with vision, break the mould, and get on with the real thing. There's a slice of the pie for everyone really. You will probably use BT's network somewhere in the equation, just not quite as profitably as they are currently managing to do so by screwing pretty much every telco consumer in the country with their obsolete copper and scarcity arguments. Only so much bandwidth to go round? Yeah right.
And if that's the case, then consumers should go out of their way to break the network by uploading and downloading as much as possible at one particular time, and prove that the entire set up is not fit for purpose in the 21st century. Let's pick a date......
Same old tired crap. "upload and download voice, video and data AT THE SAME TIME" - amazingly I can do that right now and it happens all the time with 3 PCs on the go and a wireless internet radio. Shock horror probe. I'll assume the rest of your "argument" is as crap as this bit.
I'm just going down to Aldi for a Gigabit optical switch and a fibre CPE (special offer, 5 quid the pair) and then get the free civil engineering contractor to trench me in some free fibre to a PoP 45 miles away where I'll be allowed to connect for free. "Bandwidth is free" is a fuckwit argument, it is the case for transmitting data over an existing link, but who pays for the link and how is its cost recovered. I'm still looking behind the wallpaper for the GigE socket someone must have covered up.
Why don't you JFDI then instead of writing about how wrong everyone else is. Come on Lins, get your free bandwidth from Thus (they have a PoP in Carlisle) get all the other free bits you need to fill the gap and actually FDI rather than FWritingAboutIt
I think we are all starting to realise that what passes for broadband in Ukplc is not really broadband, it is just BT reaping massive profits from an obsolete copper technology instead of lighting the fibre that will bring high speed access and real broadband to the masses. We shouldn't have to JFDI ourselves, the govt should make the telcos do it, and we should pay for it like we do for water, electric, gas and all the other utilities we need. What we have to get out of is the mindset we have been indoctrinated with by the massive advertising campaigns for 'free' broadband or £9.99 broadband. These don't actually exist unless you only expect to use them for a few minutes download a day... and the small print is mindboggling.
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