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Comment by daleharvey | Hacker News Reader

yup, aol charged me for around 16 months after cancelling my account 3 times, and stupidly not paying attention thereafter, they did very reluctantly refund around a third, although they probably kept me sitting arguing for long enough on their premium phone number to get that back.

bt have also tried to charge me ~200 to install a phone line I didnt agree to (I had already got the line installed by virgin, for free).

My experiences with telcos are the lowest of the low, I dont understand how some company hasnt gone into the market, treated their customers fairly, and wiped the floor with the competition.

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I dont understand how some company hasnt gone into the market, treated their customers fairly, and wiped the floor with the competition.

Any small company will be priced out of business by the big telco companies. It's a pseudo-monopoly, where a small group of huge organizations have an implicit agreement which maximizes profit for all of them, and keeps everyone else out of the running... (Actually, it kind of reminds me of the two-party political system in the US)

Here in England, we have fast.co.uk doing exactly that for DSL. You call them up and a real human being answers the phone. This person is physically located in the country, speaks English, and can actually perform the tasks you ask of him.

It's amazing. You ask about some obscure technical issue, and he digs in and fixes it. On the spot. The guy who answered the phone!

They charge about 5 pounds a month more than the big guys, which is more than worth it. I hope that more companies like this will start springing up in other areas.

heh this was in england, however looking at their site its £17 a month for 5GB bandwidth?

I have to say I have little to complain about when I went with virgin, which was ~£15 for unlimited downloads. the difference between 20GB and unlimited is quite a lot for me, even if I almost never used 20GB.

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