Hotel Cablefornia

So there's another New Year on the horizon and it's time to make some resolutions that will hopefully last for at least a few weeks into January. But at the moment I can think only one: find a new Internet provider.

As previously documented in these pages, I really do try hard to deal with my business cable broadband provider. But they seem to try even harder to make it difficult. I guess the only saving grace is that, on average so far, I've only had to actually contact them once every four years.

The trials and tribulations of it taking four months to get my account set up initially are long forgotten (except as an anecdote for long winter evening when geeks gather around a hot router discussing technology). And even the seven weeks waiting for an upgrade that simply involved changing the modem to a different model (where I did most of the configuration myself) are gradually fading into distant memory.

Of course, I joked at the time that it would probably take another four months to get the invoicing right, though after intervention from the local office manager it seemed for a while that I was being unduly pessimistic. After only a month, I had a correct invoice for the upgraded package. Amazing.

What I didn't realize was that I was still being billed for the old package as well. It was only when I checked the welter of paperwork dropping through the letterbox in more detail that I discovered two invoices with the same number. That's when I found that an "upgrade" is really a "brand new customer".

Yep, despite the difficulties in actually getting a line installed at all, or a modem replaced, I am now the proud owner of two different accounts - and I get the privilege of paying for both. I'm confidently expecting to be told there is a charge to have the old account closed, and a waiting list of five weeks to do so. Perhaps they'll send an engineer round again to check if I have two cables coming into the house.

It makes me laugh when I hear people say they will never deal with our ex-monopoly British Telecom ISP because they are "a pain in the neck" and "useless". BT are my secondary supplier and I cannot fault their service, be it technical or paperwork-related. The only problem is that their promised roll-out of high-speed fibre seems to have stalled before it got as far as me. I'd switch over to them tomorrow if I could get more than 1.5 Mbs.

Though, based on experience, I'll probably have half a dozen Virgin Cable connections by the time BT find a bit of fibre long enough to reach the cabinet on our street. It seems it's rather like Hotel California. You can cancel, but you can never leave…

UPDATE: According to the BT website today, the availability of its "Infinity" high speed upgrade that was due last September, morphed into October, drifted quietly into November, and was finally promised to be definitely here in December, is now advertised as "between January and March". Yet they still keep phoning me to ask why I haven't yet signed up for their broadband TV package.