The Paper Shop

Friday, October 20, 2006

Sharp Practice by Internet Provider

The Paper Boy's current ADSL provider, Nildram, was taken over some time ago by Pipex - advertised heavily by David Hasselhoff. All has been as it was at Nildram before - fast network, total reliability.

Pipex management has decided that it needed to sneak in some changes to their network, completely without warning over the last few weeks. The result of these changes is small for the Paper Boy and strictly the changes are allowable within the Terms & Conditions of Nildram, so there is no legal redress available.

The question is raised in many minds - if they make this change and there is no challenge what will they do next? Start restricting people with green eyes? Start restricting people who have a username starting with a 'b'?

The Paper Boy and many others in the same boat feel that morally Nildram should have given notice, which would have been in line with how most people read the relevant clauses in the terms and conditions - certainly it's how the Clapham Omnibus test would see it.

Nildram was previously always rated in the top 3 on DSLZoneUK, but is now languishing somewhere around half-way down the list, going back a year or two Pipex were another always contending in the top 3, but no longer.

This fall from grace has taken no more than 3 days from a confirmation email being sent to a forum member by Nildram's support function - a miracle in itself recently when it's taken over 4 weeks not to get a reply from what used to be a near-instant support email address. Such is the depth of feeling amongst users that in excess of 30 users in that forum are quitting Nildram in protest mainly at the way in which the change was made rather than for the change itself, the Paper Boy amongst them.

Further investigation reveals tha Pipex have done similar things to other ISPs that they have taken over - Freedom2Surf being another - and of course they have made these changes to their own network too. So users of the former Cable & Wireless ADSL ISP Bulldog had better watch out. The Hoff is gonna start strangling your connection.

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