A while ago I reported that I decided to switch over my home phone & internet ISP to one provider as they were giving me a deal (read the post here.) Well, I’m happy to report that it was a complete and utter disaster.

The internet service has been wiggy and intermittent, supposedly because I am too far away from the “switching station”. The same switching station that has been providing me with perfectly fine service with three previous ISPs. My synch rate was apparently too low, which is why I’m having problems. Considering this ISP is just reselling a service, and therefore using all the same wires n’ such, you would think that I would have the same good service. Well, you were wrong.

While waiting to get this resolved, I called up my old home phone provider to get some information for the ISP people. And did I ever get an ear-full from them! Sure, they were trying to get me to switch back, but they filled me in on a few things that made total sense. One of the reasons I was having problems was because the new phone people didn’t actually get the home phone switched over…they signed me up for VOIP, which you can’t have without an internet connection. But since I am using DSL (that is, internet over phone lines), I need either a connected phone line or a dry loop on the line. Apparently I have half of the former option, because my previous home phone provider still hasn’t fully released the line. (I know, this is all very confusing.)  Plus then the “all inclusive” price apparently isn’t an all inclusive price, so I may end up spending more in the long run anyways (the main reason I switched was to save money, not that I was getting bad service). In the end, my old provider is giving me over $250 in credits for both home phone and internet access, which means I won’t have to actually pay for anything for the next 4 or 5 months. Yes!

It all boils down to this: in the 30 days it’ll take for the new ISP to cancel my account, I will have switched over the phone service back to my previous provider, and also signed up for internet access from them. BUT, since you can only have one DSL account on your phone line at a time, I’ve got to deal with the annoying new people for the next 30 days. The only good thing is that switching back to my old phone provider may potentially solve my new ISP problems, so it won’t be much of a hassle in the end.

So beware of the “deals” out there. They may not be deals after all.

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