the corner office

What a week. Started out with a cold and a cough from hell, not good timing! We're finally in the new flat, thankfully, and now I can let my creaking bones and joints rest for a bit.

A casualty of the move is our ADSL line. BT were brilliant in switching the phone line over, in the morning the phone was working in the old flat, and in the evening, we plugged the phone in at the new flat, and it just worked.

As for ADSL, not so lucky. We'd chosen Namesco in December, and I knew they had a £60 cancellation fee if you cancel your line in the first year. What I didn't realise, is that if you move to a new home, you have to effectively cancel your line, pay the cancellation fee, and sign up again. And you'll pay the cancellation fee yet again if you move home or change ISPs within a year.

This is just not clever customer relations - neither charging a full cancellation fee nor positioning a move as a cancel and re-join transaction. The customer support person was quick to point out that this is all in their terms and conditions. I don't doubt that it is, and it's my fault for not reading the fine print about moving premises, but I still feel a bit shafted.

I wouldn't have had a problem paying some sort of transfer fee, and I'd have gladly stuck with Namesco for the next year, and probably indefinitely. Now, instead of keeping an otherwise loyal customer, they've instead succeeded in ensuring that they have an annoyed customer who feels short-changed, and since I have to pay the full cancellation fee anyway, I may as well move to another ISP, just on principle.

Until that's sorted out, we'll be back on dial-up. Yaaaay.

Update: in fairness, BT don't deserve much credit either, because it seems a large part of the cost (around £40) goes to them, and their cease/re-open mechanism is just plain stupid as well. That doesn't change the fact that Namesco could do things a little differently. I also changed the post a bit because I referred to the support person in a way that was a bit snotty and uncalled for, and I don't need the bad karma.