Anytime??

[Cetti]

We chose an 'Anytime' account because we were led to believe thats exactly what it meant, until an e-mail from our ISP informed us that we had until the end of May to reduce our hours to under 150 hours - or our account would be terminated!! Now , we know this is another ploy to get us to change to Broadband, and also many others have received this letter - but is this bully-boy approach really above board? I am a bit worried, so I really would appreciate any thoughts or help.

[rekstout]

Are we talking about 150 hours per month or less being their idea of reasonbale use? I would say that anything more then about 10 hours per day might be construed as unreasonable - particularly if there is no activity - i.e. just logged on but 150 hours per month seems fine to me. We use about that with One Tel without problems. Is there a "reasonable use" clause in your contract?

[Stav]

We had BT anytime in our house of three students. Between the three of us, mainly using Kazaa, it was pretty much on all the time, left overnight quite often. We had several emails going to the BT account that no one checked, and I think eventually they cut us off, or were just about to, before someone noticed the emails and we dialled it down a bit. I do think there is a clause in the contract about keeping it below 150hrs, but the main reason that we had problems was long periods of inactivity, when kazaa had finished and it was just doing nothing. We had it setup to redial instantly after the 2hr cut off. Eventually we said 'sod off' to them and we are with OneTel broadband now. If you are using the internet for 150hrs +, then i definately recommend upgrading to broadband. Sooo much faster, dials instantly, and this definately can be left on all the time. No regrets.

[Worker]

I think you could do a lot worse than use ntl. I've been with them for years with very few problems. It costs �15/month, but this also includes the first �15-worth of phone calls, so if you use the phone to the extent of paying this much a month, the internet is free - 24/7. The only fly in the ointment is that they disconnect every two hours, but I've a small program which reconnects automatically so in downloading you can safely go to bed and forget all about it.

[Worker]

Sorry, I should've added that you need a BT line to use it and if you decide to register, I can let you have all the info and gear.

[Cetti]

Many thanks for all your replies - you've certainly given us a lot of good ideas to consider - and points to ponder!

[xyzzy@bok]

I thing it disgusting Cetti. Anytime means anytime not kicking and screaming about it. I try to stay online as much as possible on a Onetel anytime account. Their service used to be brilliant but last six weeks it's gone downhill a bit with busy signals. disconnects aren't too bad except for so called kiddy flood 'homework time' And I think if you pay for 24 hour access that's what it should be, not pennypinching. They should get bigger computers if they can't cope they sure got plenty of money to fulfil their obligations. :-)

[Cetti]

It really is xyzzy - I don't think that an average of 5 hours a day for 3 adults is an abuse of the system, and that more or less is what we're being accused of - I'm wondering if this complies with the Trade Descriptions Act, but as it's such a massive company we wouldn't stand a chance - still, it's good to have support - thanks :-)

[sft42]

That's the one good thing about AOL you can be on 24/7 and no complaints.....i'm on (soon to be was going to broadband) a dial up and have been in the past connected for as long as 10 days solid and even then i would put the dropped call at BT's door. In case anyone is interested i'm going to Gio Broadband 18.95 a month for 512k broadband....can't be bad at that?

[tracymort]

was it not in the terms and conditions when u signed up? i'm with fireflyuk and they are great, best customer service i've ever seen from an ISP! was with freeserve until they changed payment method and would only take credit cards instead of switch. they failed to let us know and cancelled our account!