I must have been mad paying Demon for their broadband a year in advance.
Not only have they been completely useless in fixing a fault, now having
cancelled the service and been promised a refund of advance payments it
seems they can't even get that right.

Now they tell me that any money they owe can't be paid back until the
service has ceased. So while the service has passed its cancellation
date and I was promised a refund five weeks ago I am still waiting.
Because Demon haven't yet pulled the plug their accounts dept say they
can't refund any money.

On asking to speak to someone in a senior position I'm told "we don't
have a single person in charge". So obviously a management structure
doesn't exist there.

Anyone know the name of the debt collection company that Demon use?
Maybe a taste of their own medicine is called for.

--
Norm

Ask to speak to Bill Allan.

In <MPG.2052c6892ddd1043989da2@news.individual.net> Colin Wilson said
Any clues to who Bill Allan might be and where he's found?

--
Norm

Google "bill allan thus"

Guess who owns Demon

In <MPG.20537878bda515a4989da5@news.individual.net> Colin Wilson said
Ah yes, wasn't he trying to get rid of it. Wonder if he's had any offers
yet.

--
Norm

Greetings!

Yes -- completely barking if you ask me! I was a subscriber to Demon
back in the "old days" and they were reasonably crap then - but it was
only a tenner a month on a dialup 14k4. They are professionally
incompetent at billing... tech support (!) is a joke - so don't expect
anything and you won't be disappointed. My line has been going from
bad to worse, spoke to Demon about 10 times and gave up - BT wholesale
won't talk to me, they want to hear from the ISP.

On the billing front they 'forgot' to charge me for a few months and
then slapped a direct debit for 4 months on me, leaving me with a
nasty bank charge and a letter demanding payment with menaces...
otherwise they'd cancel my service. I didn't pay - they didn't cancel,
they just resumed charging me monthly. Since then my requests to
cancel the bloody thing so I can move on to a better (read: ANY OTHER)
ISP have been politely refused!

Aha - advance payments. Trust me - if they can forget to charge for
it, they can "lose" a refund too. Good luck getting them to plug the
(any?) plug :-|

Regards,

Jamin

On 4 Mar, in article
<1173050147.742591.287600@c51g2000cwc.googlegroups .com>
jweb@ghost.merseine.nu "jaminja" wrote:

Might be cheaper and easier to get a second phone line and get that
enabled with broadband from another ISP!

Then cancel the old BT line and renumber the lines.

--
Paul Carpenter | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/> PC Services
<http://www.gnuh8.org.uk/> GNU H8 & mailing list info
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/> For those web sites you hate

I'm quite stunned that anyone is still using them. The killer for me
was when they lost some business-critical emails back in September
1994 and tried to fob me off with: "Email is not reliable enough for
business purposes."

Muir is still posting the same unmitigated rubbish as well.

We missed our chance with the Lawrence Godfrey business. When we met
up for the first time in person outside Court 13 to hear Demon's
solicitor read their statement, Godfrey's barrister said: "God, I
thought you were all geeks. If I'd known you were like this, I'd have
advised continuing with the proceedings." I don't think he was
expecting suits, polished shoes and haircuts.

In message <1173712498.745214.33720@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups. com>, Phil
Payne <phil@isham-research.co.uk> writes

But Demon aren't alone these days. I suspect it's mainly because of BT
Wholesale's business model. They charge ISPs at a rate depending on the
amount of data that the individual ISP's collective customers download
each month.

So the bean-counters who seem to be in charge of many of today's ISPs
have worked it out that by restricting the amount of data that each
customer downloads, they can cut their costs. Most seem to be doing this
by "traffic management" and "traffic shaping". Implemented of course by
throttling during "peak hours" and often also in "off-peak hours".
They've also identified that the heavy downloaders are those accessing
binary news, so they do some port-blocking on NNTP in addition.

In their business model, these strategies persuade the heavy downloaders
to leave, leaving them (hopefully) with those who do a little web
surfing and emailing.

Interestingly, those ISPs at the top of the heap at DSL Zone, are top
because they're up front and sell packages each with a defined permitted
maximum download in peak, and another maximum during off-peak hours. And
they state up-front that they do not use traffic management nor traffic
shaping. Many of these top ISPs don't provide news (or maybe only offer
text-only news server), since many (most?) of the heavy binary
downloaders subscribe to Giganews or Easynews.

The ISPs at the bottom of DSL Zone's list commonly blow smoke, citing
contention and the characteristics of ADSL Max for their customer's
dissatisfaction with the standard of services they deliver.

To put it another way, they're trying to cherry-pick those customers who
only do a little surfing and send/receive a few emails.

--
Tony Morgan

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:44:24 +0000, in uk.telecom.broadband ,
clavox@btinternet.com wrote:

FWIW I had many trouble-free years with Demon, prior to moving to a
cabled area. But then some people aren't happy except when they're
complaining.

--
Mark McIntyre

Mark McIntyre <markmcintyre@spamcop.net> wrote:

And also for what it's worth, after several good years on dialup, I've
now had several good years on ADSL. And when I move, soon, I'm staying
with Demon.

And of course they're the ones that post here.
--
Peter

In message <r94bv2hiqci35e1fslicck2d268mk0ftik@4ax.com>,
clavox@btinternet.com writes
I'm very surprised that you say that. What ISPs were trading prior to
TAM (with the notable exception of Pipex) ?

I took out a £300 per annum subscription with Pipex in 1991 because they
were the only company that offered Internet access to the public. At
that time that was a hell of a lot of money. There was very little Web
content, no search engines, and most Internet access was through FTP and
Telnet, with Archie and Gopher allowing you to find information on
various connected servers (mostly at US Universities). There was no
Usenet as we know it now - the nearest equivalent then was BBS. The
first web client available to the public IIRC was a DOS version of
Mosaic (based on TBL's offering).

Cliff Stanford brought the Internet to the public with his TAM at a time
when access was via a 2400bps modem - the cheapest modem at that time
was more than £100 - again a lot of money at that time.

Since there was nothing to compare TAM with at the time (except of
course Pipex), how can you suggest that Demon was bad at that time?
Demon offered facilities that Pipex didn't offer, e.g. their FTP service
with mirrors for much software. They also provided access through
local-rate telephone numbers to keep costs down.

--
Tony Morgan

<clavox@btinternet.com> wrote:

And that of course is not true.

Of course there *were* times when others were complaining of loss of
various bits of the service and my setup was working okay- and I'd say
so. But that was their problem, not mine. If I said it was working for
me, it bloody well was.
--
Peter

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:21:32 +0000, in uk.telecom.broadband ,
clavox@btinternet.com wrote:

He never said that. You made it up because your world view precludes
anyone getting good service.

And apparently you're one of the people I mentioned above.

--
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:09:51 +0000, in uk.telecom.broadband , Tony
Morgan <Tony@rhylonline.com> wrote:

Who ran Delphi? I used them back in the early 90s, shortly after I
left academia and the benefits of Janet.
--
Mark McIntyre

Peter Ceresole <peter@cara.demon.co.uk> wrote:
(apart from a year when I moved to NTL). There have been a few glitches
- slowdown when the ADSL lines were upgraded to 2MBit, and again when
upgraded to RADSL - but overall I have found the service very good, and
unless that changes, I'll stick with Demon.

On 12 Mar 2007, Tony Morgan <Tony@rhylonline.com> wrote:

Glad you included the word "commonly". Must say that my 14.99 account
does me fine, despite having a "Fair Use" policy in place for my off-
peak usage (18 hours a day). OK, the account is meant to be lowest
priority but seems to me the heaviest users and speed-freaks left
over the past year or more (comments on DSL Zone UK have been of
a negative or whining state during that time, AFAIK). Makes a
"joke" of comments found on websites and in newsgroups since it
is not uncommon to find the majority of comments are negative!!!

In message <X2vHRXD$Va9FFwG2@axxc27.dsl.pipex.com>, Tony Morgan
<Tony@rhylonline.com> writes
None AFAIk in 91

Gopher?
Archie?

And UK Universities and a few other places.


You mean Fido? AFAIR Usenet was alive and well in 1991. I used it.


interface for the net

Very true. fortunately I had a good a free moden but actually bought a
14.4 modem for 400 GBP and they a 56K modem for 50 GBP a few years
later...

Demon was a very good deal, I would say the best deal for many years.
Depending what you want they are not exactly uncompetitive now.

--
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

In message <pEbQdTSMdH+FFA7k@phaedsys.demon.co.uk>, Chris Hills
<chris@phaedsys.org> writes:
Usenet was very definitely around then. However, I have no idea if
finding a server at the time would have been very easy if you weren't at
a University, or friendly with a sysadmin at one, or something.

(I'm not saying it wouldn't be possible - I have no idea.)

--
James Coupe
PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR.
EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING.
13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

On 2007-03-14, Chris Hills <chris@phaedsys.org> wrote:
I used it in 1981 or 1982, on a machine connected to utzoo in the historical
map shown here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#History

It was already a few years old then. It was delivered via UUCP, though;
I don't think I saw a machine which supported TCP/IP until 1983.

Dennis Ferguson