Broadband F***ers


pubjoe

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A couple of weeks ago me, my girlfriend and my son all moved in with my Mum as we got ourselves into a little bit of shit with money. (not the most ideal situation I know)

Now... I used to be on freeserve broadband and my Mum is with tiscali.

So I looked through freeserve's (10 pages of!!!) smallprint and found it was impoossible to cancel the contract, I thought for some reason that there was some £50 get-out clause, but no. :angry:

I phoned freeserve and was recomended to send a letter by post explaining the whole situation and basically begging them to downgrade my account to a £7.99 anytime account. Which means I would still pay £7.99 a month for the next 7 months but at least it's better than £27.99).

But I asked if this would definately work and I was told "it might?" And I also may have to wait a long time for a response, all the while paying £27.99 a month.

Anyway, in the end I found a friend who said he'd want the remaining 6/7 months, so I'm going to pay a £25 change-of-address fee and pretend that I've moved to his flat. (gonna give him a month free too but it seems a lot less hassel this way.)

Anyway heres my point:

I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT FREESERVE'S CONTRACT IS EVEN LEGAL?!?

Here are some of the highlights of there small-print:

14.5 Freeserve reserve the right to vary the Charges at any time on giving you 28 days notice in writing. ...Err fine, yeah fix me to a twelve month contract with no fixed pricing and change it at your own will. Fuck it, why not raise the price up to £1k a month just after I sign up and really clear up?

16.2 After the Start Date this Agreement may be terminated as follows and the cancellation provisions of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 (the "Distance Selling Regulations") will not apply to the Service. ...Hang on, takeaway the bollocks and your left with: "the Consumer Protection Regulations 2000 will not apply to the Service." ...So whats the point of the consumer protection regulations then ??? :blink:

Rant over.
 
that is unbelievable! glad you found a way around it though, and there was me thinking freeserve were one of the better isp's....

Probably why many providers advertise "one month minimum contract" as a selling point. I have to admit I've never had a single problem with Zen ADSL
 
Harsh we're with freeserve to but it's my Dad thats gonna get in all the money shit not me :D. Hope your life gets better btw.
 
Cheers, I always thought freeserve were good too, I've recomended them to many new users. They're not the cheapest but they're probably the easiest.

These kind of regulations seem to apply to all the UK broadband companies not just freeserve. Americans have got it much easier, I'm sure I heard on the radio that Bush wants to make High-speed internet access free to all Americans now. (and their high-speed is about 10 times faster than ours!!)

Hope your life gets better btw.

Thanks, actually it's not that bad at my Mums, she's had a 3-bedroom house to herself and it's quite nice to feel like a big family again ...sometimes!
 
i dont think BT Broadband has this, but it might. Why do the americans have much faster internet than us?
 
You'll find that 90% of all ISPs have that policy. It's the same as, for example, a mobile phone contract. Bleieve me, companies like freeserve have legal teams which pour over those terms and conditions before they are made public. It would be legal, and its another reason to actually READ the T&Cs before signing up for anything. BT has the same thing. I'm withPipex, an they have a £58 get-out clause built in, which basically covers the set-up and connection charge with BT for ADSL. This is unusual though.

Read the small print :), if you ain't happy, don't sign up!
 
Pipex is awesome, I use it and never had a problem. Also a lot of students use it since you can (or I know you defintely used to) get 6 month contracts with them.
 
It's not better over here in Germany either. I had Telekom connection (now that's a big company!) and after they increased their prices without notifying me I tried to change my service to Arcor. Which would not work because Telekom has happily changed the whole contract to deny me the right to quit it without notifying me. They completely ignored me, until I stopped payment - which was a reason for them to threaten to sue me. Well, visiting them time and time and time did not help, until I visited them again, this time brandishing a really large sword, a complete leather body armour and batlle scars on my face (I was coming from theater practice - Macbeth rules). Now they agreed to stop my contract if I please left the store so not to sare other customers. Of yourse, the contract never changed again. We had to get a layer to tell them obvious things ("changing a running contract without notifying the other side is not nice"), now I am with Arcor and I never look back. Suckers.
 
i know how you can break the contract. simply break the law repeatedly with it. sooner or later you'll get caught and freeserve will have to cancel your account. go download some mainstream pop :D
 
Can anyone tell me whats going on with the whole p2p rules in the uk.. i've basically stopped using all p2p programs eg emule bittorrents etc... Should i be worried about using them again ?? or is everything ok in the uk still ??
 
As long as you dont share loads of pop u should be fine (kazaa is the most popular one so avoid it) I use Overnet and Bittorrent and I download over 2 gig a day and have done this for about a year now so its pretty safe.
 
You know I would have gone with Pipex, I knew they were the cheapest but Freeserve got me with that Free month trial thingy <_< . The trouble was it was around new year I was supposed to cancel and I kind of forgot/didn't want to.

Oh well, only got myself to blame but they're still cheeky gits though.

i know how you can break the contract. simply break the law repeatedly with it. sooner or later you'll get caught and freeserve will have to cancel your account. go download some mainstream pop
Hehe, is there any other use for broadband? :p
 
unlucky posted on Apr 9 2004 at 02:00 PM said:
Can anyone tell me whats going on with the whole p2p rules in the uk.. i've basically stopped using all p2p programs eg emule bittorrents etc... Should i be worried about using them again ?? or is everything ok in the uk still ??
Yeah, like Pinkspider said, don't worry too much. Out of all the millions of American users around 300 were asked to pay fines and last I heard around 180 paid up. I don't know what happened to the others but RIAA were claiming rediculous amounts of money could be claimed if they didn't settle.

After that I heard that the RIAA (or whoever) were going to start looking at Britain /Europe aswell.

For now just try to steer clear of Kazaa. Use Overnet, IRC, Bittorrent, Newsgroups (Even Kazaa light if you have to) All of which are better anyway.
 
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I was collared by the RIAA when I used Direct Connect ++ , turns out they saw that I was sharing some big name hollywood films and my ISP just told me to stop doing it :p So anyway, all I share these days is unlicensed anime which they can't do anything about.

So my advice is to download what you want but be careful what you allow others to upload off you - bittorrent and some others don't count because your unsername/ip are not visible to the uploaders
 
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