A few weeks ago, our Internet Service Provider sent us a brand new router, boxed and ready to plug in. We did not order one and and we had no notice that their one would be arriving.
I do not trust our ISP and the only reason we maintain our subscription is because they are the least expensive on the market, and I trust people like BT Broadband even less.
Then I began to get messages saying that the router was free and part of an upgrade to super-fast fibre optic on our account. We would, they said, pay no more for the service, but I needed to plug it in as soon as possible in order to maintain an uninterrupted service.
We already have a perfectly good Belkin router and I have been reluctant to let our ISP take control by installing theirs. Their warnings about the urgency of its installation made me even more suspicious so I wrote them a letter (nothing else is as quick) asking how our service will be interrupted if I reconfigure our existing router using their numbers. I also mentioned that any disruption to our service by them would constitute a breach of contract and we would make us eligible for compensation. This is the reply I received:
'Dear Mr Stephenson,
Thanks for contacting us about your account.
We do acknowledge that you contacting us about your account, we will try our best to assist you with your query.
Upon investigating your account I can confirm that you are on the fast broadband on the discount of £23.95 for24 months your contract started on the 06/12/2019 and will end on the 06/12/2019.
However since you are contacting us about you receiving a new router, you will be responding to receiving a new router, cause you have been sent this router and you need to install it in order to get you free upgrade to fibre 35, Please kindly be advised that you do not need to recon to take this fibre upgrade. This router will not affect you services instead it will help to improve your download speed.
If you have questions about anything else, feel free to get back to us.
If you'd like more information, there's also a lot of detailed help in our Help Pages and our online Community. We're also here to help on Live Chat (click the tab on all our help pages).
Thank you,
Ncumisa Ntshwanti
Your Help Team'
I have copied this letter word for word, including punctuation and dates.
Not wanting to go through the 5 days of dark (literally) stressfulness that usually follows setting up a new router, I have decided to plug in theirs, and they have promised that an Open Reach engineer will configure it for me remotely. SO LONG AS I DO IT BY WEDNESDAY.
If I go quiet for a few days, you will know why.
I had a smile reading the letter. Hopefully you will not shortly disappear from the planet.
ReplyDeleteI've just connected it. It took a few minutes with no messing around with configuration.
DeleteI think we can assume that English was not his/her strong subject at school
ReplyDeleteJudging from the name alone.
DeleteMaybe English isn’t Ncumisa Ntshwanti’s first language ! Your contract wasn’t going to last very long !!!!!! Glad you weren’t gone too long. XXXX
ReplyDeleteI think not!
DeleteWe've been with BT forever, but changing would lose our email addresses and that would be tiresome and take ages to sort out. It's the price of being on the internet too soon - later people in the know set up gmail or hotmail accounts with automatic forwarding to whichever internet provider they last switched to.
ReplyDeleteIf you got your own domain name you can create an address which you can take anywhere. You only have to do it once and the host will charge a few quid a year to store it. You probably knew that.
DeleteYes, that's another way, and it gives clear email addresses. I joined btinternet around 1997/98 and set up good personal and business email addresses for myself and the rest of the family. Changing would be so difficult and no one wants to lose them.
DeleteYour account appears to be rather strange beginning and ending on the same day - it is a wonder that you have been managing so well since December 2019.
ReplyDeleteYes, I am rather amazed too.
DeleteInternet providers can be dicey. You wisely seem to be dealing with yours quite well. We'll stay tuned, as one never knows what's to come next.
ReplyDeleteI have decided that it is far easier to just crumple under the assault and accept the cookies, Ts & C's routers, etc, because they will only punish you if you don't, and until you fork out £400 on your own server, you are at their mercy. Not ideal, but pragmatic. I may get my own server.
DeleteI would use their router and pray you need not understand their instructions and directives to do so.
ReplyDeleteYes, I did. It was frighteningly simple.
DeleteAll I remember about our router was - NEVER EVER TURN IT OFF. They sport their own passwords and have a life of their own.
ReplyDeleteI used to turn off my router, then I couldn't be bothered. I think it's not recommended.
Delete