Tuesday, February 07, 2006
No free lunch
Free offer. Free trial offer. Ever heard this before?
I tried Bell Sympatico's free trial offer for three months beginning in October. I thought it was cheaper than the ISP I've had for years, Pathway. Of course, using Sympatico seemed to interfere with Pathway, but that's par for the course with computer software - it's not just that different programmes are incompatible with each other, they seem to have secret code guaranteed to fuck each other up. Having said that, Sympatico did seem to connect to the Internet more quickly and reliably.
But free? Ha!
What was this charge of $18.42 per month on my Mastercard statement? Oh, that. That would be virus protection, plus some other bullshit I didn't realize I was being charged for and didn't need, like a pop-up blocker. I have a pop-up blocker, which does a great job of blocking pop-ups and causing monster conflicts with the rest of my system.
By December, I decided to stick with Pathway. In fact, I upgraded to high-speed. Well, medium high speed. I cancelled Sympatico.
So, what was this charge of $42.85 on my January statement? Well, there was a 30-day cancellation policy. So yes, it's free - aside from the hidden charges - but once you cancel your "trial", you get charged for one month.
Bell, of course, now faces competition from various companies with respect to all of its services. That's why they've become so consumer friendly. I won't recount my conversation with the customer service agent this morning. Basically, her response was that I agreed to these charges. Who knows, maybe I did. Was I warned of them? Of course not.
Let the buyer beware, n'est-ce pas? (Caveat emptor, to those who like a little Latin in their diet.) And I say, Hang the rich.
I tried Bell Sympatico's free trial offer for three months beginning in October. I thought it was cheaper than the ISP I've had for years, Pathway. Of course, using Sympatico seemed to interfere with Pathway, but that's par for the course with computer software - it's not just that different programmes are incompatible with each other, they seem to have secret code guaranteed to fuck each other up. Having said that, Sympatico did seem to connect to the Internet more quickly and reliably.
But free? Ha!
What was this charge of $18.42 per month on my Mastercard statement? Oh, that. That would be virus protection, plus some other bullshit I didn't realize I was being charged for and didn't need, like a pop-up blocker. I have a pop-up blocker, which does a great job of blocking pop-ups and causing monster conflicts with the rest of my system.
By December, I decided to stick with Pathway. In fact, I upgraded to high-speed. Well, medium high speed. I cancelled Sympatico.
So, what was this charge of $42.85 on my January statement? Well, there was a 30-day cancellation policy. So yes, it's free - aside from the hidden charges - but once you cancel your "trial", you get charged for one month.
Bell, of course, now faces competition from various companies with respect to all of its services. That's why they've become so consumer friendly. I won't recount my conversation with the customer service agent this morning. Basically, her response was that I agreed to these charges. Who knows, maybe I did. Was I warned of them? Of course not.
Let the buyer beware, n'est-ce pas? (Caveat emptor, to those who like a little Latin in their diet.) And I say, Hang the rich.
# posted by Stephen @ 11:20 a.m. 
