It’s only a few more sleeps now until Christmas Day! woo! This year seems mostly to have become about moving house, which is odd seeing as how we didn’t start that until my birthday. Most of the year before move (BM) has blurred into a globule. Apparenly lots of tradesmen are going to descend on the house en masse on the 14th of Jan to fix the outstanding issues. woo! The cats won’t like that though, as we will probably have to stuff them into one room. They don’t like being in one room, even though it’s a massive room and they have all they need in it. They are fussy cats.
Into my naughty list for this year goes Demon Internet. Now, I had been with Demon for a long time, from its TAM account on dial-up through to ADSL which I took from pretty much the moment of moving in to my old house to when I left, and, throughout that time, they were alright. They provided a pretty consistent service. So, it’s a bit of a shame that, on leaving, they’ve been utterly useless. I cancelled the account over the phone. At no point did the man suggest that an account fee would be payable, otherwise I would have paid it with him. So it was a bit surprising to get an “overdue account” letter a few weeks later - I should interject at this point that we had to cancel all our DDs when we moved ‘cos of having one of those all in one accounts - but, I thought, well fair enough maybe they’ve had to charge due to when I cancelled. So I rang the guy and he said “yes you actually owe us 12 pounds not 24 pounds” (it said 24 on the bill) so I paid him that money over the phone there and then, thinking that would be that. (At this point I asked for a letter to confirm. He wouldn’t send one. He gave me an “authorisation number”.)
Cut to later. Another letter comes through DEMANDING payment, because I “have not been in touch”. At this point I decide that enough is enough and write a letter to the head office about it all. Days pass. I get no response from Demon. I do, though, get ANOTHER letter DEMANDING payment saying that I have made no attempt to contact them and threatening to hand it over. I call customer services and speak to the useless assistant who says that yes, the account is clear and closed. I ask him for a printed letter. He evades and, when pressed, offers an email. I say “no, I want a printed letter on your headed paper”. He says “ok I’ll do that” and we end the call. He’s not done that. As yet I STILL do not have a letter.
After my ‘phone convo I followed up with my own email to their credit control centre, asking them for a letter etc.. They finally replied by email yesterday after a couple of days of doing naff all. SIGH.
So, to recap, I still have NO response to my original letter whatsoever.
I have NO letter from customer services despite my own letter, a phone call and an email asking for one.
I THINK that the account is clear, but have no real way of knowing what will happen, because their automated system only started sending demands AFTER I had already supposedly the account.
So, in short, feel free to join Demon Internet for your web service needs, as, it seems, you won’t have any problems just so long as you don’t ever want to leave.
We are now off work until the new year - though I have to do the 31st since I had ran out of holiday. oops.
Merry Christmas!
Also got a new hard disk recorder that supports digital freeview, so it can carry on working after the changover (yes, it’s in 4 years but never mind that). 
