How do I deal with free internet?

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MrDv8r

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So.. Since around March of 2015, I have been subscribed to a 2mbps Uncapped Premium service with one of the lesser known ISP's in South Africa. In this time, I have not received one bill from them, nor have they deducted funds from my account. My line has also not been disconnected. Yet, they send me regular usage reports, but apparently they don't care that I don't pay...

For the first few months I felt like I had hit the jackpot... All my life I had dreamed of free internet.

But now I'm faced with a bit of a dilemma. Do I keep using the free internet?

I am afraid that one day I wil receive a lawyer on my doorstep with a bill for 12months.

So, I eventually decided that I want to cancel the service, but then I realized that quite possibly my cancellation might alert their system to the anomaly, also resulting in a bill for 12months.

Now I'm caught up in this weird situation where I don't even want free internet anymore, but I can't get of rid of it.

Can someone please provide me with a suggestion? Maybe a legal point of view about whether they are allowed to send me a bill for services rendered when I was never notified or asked to pay?

Any help would be appreciated.

Until then I'm making full use of this gift and acsribing it to karma balancing out years of dealing with Telkom.
 
MrDv8r said:
So.. Since around March of 2015, I have been subscribed to a 2mbps Uncapped Premium service with one of the lesser known ISP's in South Africa. In this time, I have not received one bill from them, nor have they deducted funds from my account. My line has also not been disconnected. Yet, they send me regular usage reports, but apparently they don't care that I don't pay...

For the first few months I felt like I had hit the jackpot... All my life I had dreamed of free internet.

But now I'm faced with a bit of a dilemma. Do I keep using the free internet?

I am afraid that one day I wil receive a lawyer on my doorstep with a bill for 12months.

So, I eventually decided that I want to cancel the service, but then I realized that quite possibly my cancellation might alert their system to the anomaly, also resulting in a bill for 12months.

Now I'm caught up in this weird situation where I don't even want free internet anymore, but I can't get of rid of it.

Can someone please provide me with a suggestion? Maybe a legal point of view about whether they are allowed to send me a bill for services rendered when I was never notified or asked to pay?

Any help would be appreciated.

Until then I'm making full use of this gift and acsribing it to karma balancing out years of dealing with Telkom.
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What is the ISP's name? I want a piece of this!
 
I would pop them a mail and advise them of the issue. You may not be the only one in this situation and by notifying them of the problem you could save them.

Do the right thing and be honest about it, they will probably thank you for it.
 
I was a student when I signed up for it, so it was truly a blessing, but yeah, I really just want to stop using it.

For a while I thought I was paying Telkom for it since my bill was very high. But, it turns out, I was only paying Telkom for the landline and the DSL line. Which is strange, since I signed up for an internet plus DSL bundle at the ISP.

I think I will just send them a mail explaining the situation and then hope for the best.
 
Then your best options is probably to Stop using the account. And change the password, write it down (without the username), put it in a bottle and throw it into the ocean. If they eventually charge you for the unpaid data, too bad. But at least you don't steal some more
 
If it were Crystal Web as the ISP we'd come to an agreement with you once informed (if you informed us). If we were to discover it later down the line by our own accord we'd be far less inclined to find a middle ground as it's not something one does as an oversight for months on end.

We are in the process of doing major clean ups and audits of this nature already and have discovered that some mail providers have been incorrectly classifying the invoice mails. This doesn't however mean that the internet is free by any means.

What I will say is that your account no matter who the ISP is, is being paid for by someone. Either the business or you. If the business, and you knowingly avoid the requirement to pay, the business will in all likelihood come down rather hard on you. This is not a trivial matter to those whose livings are derived from the payment of your voluntary and legally contractual subscription, especially where the business incurs the associated costs...
 
You legally owe them the money...so this is more a glitch in the paperwork than free anything.

I'd start by scratching together enough money to cover the bill if it comes down to that. Then contact the ISP (ideally a rep here on mybb) and try to shoot for a compromise.
 
DJ... said:
have discovered that some mail providers have been incorrectly classifying the invoice mails. This doesn't however mean that the internet is free by any means.
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I've taken a look through the last few months worth of invoices from you and your spam scores are sitting in the negatives.
 
Jade @ ZA Domains said:
I've taken a look through the last few months worth of invoices from you and your spam scores are sitting in the negatives.
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We quite simply don't spam. We even avoid genuinely legit marketing on occasion if we feel it's too spammy. However Gmail for example still pushes our invoices in to Promotions tab for many customers and individuals have in the past had to report it misclassified and manually change it. Our transactional mail server on Mandrill has had 2 reports in its history, both for legit mails sent, but to disgruntled people who felt reporting as spam would somehow penalise us. Fortunately that's not how it necessarily works and both were disregarded. We're currently developing our own systems for sending the invoices, which are also available in the customer portal btw, and our updated portal has more functionality to be released this month...
 
Jade @ ZA Domains said:
I've taken a look through the last few months worth of invoices from you and your spam scores are sitting in the negatives.
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And you've decided to post this here, why exactly?

This seems like it should be a private matter if you want to remain professional.
 
DJ... said:
If it were Crystal Web as the ISP we'd come to an agreement with you once informed (if you informed us). If we were to discover it later down the line by our own accord we'd be far less inclined to find a middle ground as it's not something one does as an oversight for months on end.

We are in the process of doing major clean ups and audits of this nature already and have discovered that some mail providers have been incorrectly classifying the invoice mails. This doesn't however mean that the internet is free by any means.

What I will say is that your account no matter who the ISP is, is being paid for by someone. Either the business or you. If the business, and you knowingly avoid the requirement to pay, the business will in all likelihood come down rather hard on you. This is not a trivial matter to those whose livings are derived from the payment of your voluntary and legally contractual subscription, especially where the business incurs the associated costs...
Click to expand...

That condition of payment surely involved the ISP cutting someone off for non payment?

Let's say it's a case of the invoices going to junk mail, surely the business has an obligation to discard all usage and claims for payment after say 3 months worth of invoices as a failure of their own to stop providing the service?
 
SauRoNZA said:
That condition of payment surely involved the ISP cutting someone off for non payment?

Let's say it's a case of the invoices going to junk mail, surely the business has an obligation to discard all usage and claims for payment after say 3 months worth of invoices as a failure of their own to stop providing the service?
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I'm not aware of any such law, nor term in our Ts and Cs. Failure to render payment and the resultant actions are governed by our terms of use. I'm not following the logic that extending goodwill or not enforcing punitive measures, renders payment fulfillment requirements null and void nor mitigates against them. As is evident by this thread, the onus for payment remains perfectly understood by the OP and he/she acknowledges that they're receiving service for which payment should be due, so it hasn't rendered an alternate interpretation of the obligations in any manner. If the OP is a Crystal Web customer, they're in breach of contract already. It may be an oversight on our part, in which case it's something we'd come to the party on. It may be an initial failed debit order that is removed from processing thereafter by the debit order provider, and it's been missed. It may be EFT payment in which case the OP has a lot of explaining to do as sign up requires some rather serious acknowledgements to be made in this respect which were fraudulent. However there's no knowing if it's a Crystal Web customer or not, nor the circumstances. However as mentioned, it's one where voluntary contact would bode far better than being highlighted in the audit processes now running. I imagine the same would apply to any business. Numerous customers have been in touch with us before about such issues and none were penalised in any way, and many we've made arrangements to suit their affordability. Either way we'll be paid, either by the customer or by legal channels to enforce payment. In such a case, to avoid costs to both parties, it's always best to sort out asap rather than assuming it's free and the business has no recourse.

As Crystal Web, we've beefed up our billing staff, which unlike other ISPs is not simply manned by support staff who forward queries on. It's a team of actual credit and debit controllers reporting to our finance director. With our new systems and staff, we'll be a little more strict on payments than we have been in the past, but if we enforced our terms afforded to us with respect to strictness on payments for everyone, we'd have a lot of people permanently connecting and disconnecting. In this day and age of personal financial struggles, it's important as a business to acknowledge this and to allow it to inform how we operate. We do so I believe very fairly, but it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the pie, and the OP's example is a very good one as to why some businesses are absolute stickers for enforcement of terms and conditions. We like to believe that where it may be punitive in nature to the client, we tend to extend leniency unless (and at our discretion) none is deserved...
 
Nah I didn't really mean it in the context of the OP.

Just a general question that if say a customer didn't receive their invoices at all and therefore never paid would t the onus be on you as the provider to cut them off knowing they have outstanding accounts?

Like if I bought a car and then didn't pay my installments the bank comes and takes the car away from me.

Surely for continued non-payment the ISP should just cut off the customer then?

It shouldn't become a prolonged or 12-month long problem.

So even with the OP knowing about it, surely the ISP should have stopped providing the service to mitigate their risk and can't just keep piling it on?
 
SauRoNZA said:
Nah I didn't really mean it in the context of the OP.

Just a general question that if say a customer didn't receive their invoices at all and therefore never paid would t the onus be on you as the provider to cut them off knowing they have outstanding accounts?

Like if I bought a car and then didn't pay my installments the bank comes and takes the car away from me.

Surely for continued non-payment the ISP should just cut off the customer then?

It shouldn't become a prolonged or 12-month long problem.

So even with the OP knowing about it, surely the ISP should have stopped providing the service to mitigate their risk and can't just keep piling it on?
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Not sure we're piling anything on. The recipient is choosing to receive the benefit. To say we're piling it on is to absolve the end user. We'll bill in accordance with the contract which dictates how, why, and when monies become due. Obligation for payment is due based upon acceptance of the terms.

As an update, the OP is a Crystal Web customer and this was our error. Accordingly, I've been in touch with the OP and we'll make a suitable plan and won't place any undue financial pressures on the OP in any way. IMO this is the right way to address this sort of thing. We could very easily enforce our terms and demand full payment (which we are entitled to) but we made an error here, and although the OP must take some responsibility to in future pay for goods where the provider has perhaps made an error, in this case it would be ridiculous to demand 7 months of internet in one fell-swoop from a student, from anyone in fact (unless they have chosen not to pay by their own accord), and it would be equally ridiculous to cut a student off mid-month.

So considering the context, we will make a suitable plan for the OP as a once-off thing, acknowledging our part in the error as well (we've already fixed this issue - happened about 8 months ago). Had this been left, the OP's account was already on the audit list so in about a month's time this same course of action would have ensued, only initiated from our side, and it no doubt would have been a far more complex affair. It needn't be, so I'd encourage anyone in this position to contact your service provider and to talk to them about it. We're not all big, money-hungry capitalists looking for the next person to prey on. ( Where's et'tubrute on the forum these days? :D )
 
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