One Last Straw

If you have experienced an adrenaline rush, you know the feeling of exhaustion when it has passed. That’s what I feel right now. I’m run out of things to tinker with on the computer and on the net and I can’t think of anything else to occupy my time.

This morning though brought about a sudden rush of adrenaline. It appears that our ISP for the past 2 years did not inform us that the current facilities it has in place in our area could only provide half the bandwidth of what we were paying for. I’m hoping that this is just an issue of making the proper adjustments but so far, according to their tech personnel, upgrading of their infrastructure is what is needed.

That they have been providing consistent and reliable service is besides the point. We opted to use their services ONLY because of the bandwidth that was advertised. It should have been their responsibility to inform us if it was physically impossible to provide it, and we wouldn’t have gone through with the subscription.

Of course I have been monitoring our bandwidth these past few months, but then I attributed the less than expected speeds to other factors like congestion, distance from the relay station, cable noise... etc. I already accepted the fact that certain things would prevent us from reaching the promised “up to #MBPs” speed, but it was very clearly stated when we applied that our area was capable of reaching those speeds.

But it seems it wasn’t. Out of curiosity I just decided to call their hotline and inquire. A technical representative told me over the phone that the maximum bandwidth capable of being delivered to us in our area was just half of what we were paying for. That sent me into overdrive. If this was true, our application should never have been approved in the first place. If you look at it, it really seems that we were ripped off by paying for services that couldn’t be delivered.

I had to postpone all my plans for the day and immediately draft a letter of complaint and immediately went to our ISP’s nearest office. It was no use being hot headed at the branch since the person who attended to me was just a customer representative.

However the question “Why didn’t you complain about this earlier?” almost made me loose it. I held it down and simply said, “If this was a problem of software adjustments or having the wrong bandwidth cap applied I’d accept part of the responsibility. However, if it is true that the facilities to deliver the services wasn’t in place (and still isn’t) 2 years ago, the ISP should have never approved our application to subscribe in the first place.”

I’ll have to wait until next week for their findings and possible action.

I suddenly felt so tired and our internet speed suddenly feels very slow.