THANKS TO FRANCHISE laws that prevent open competition, in my area there are basically three options to access the internet: 1. Telephone company
2. Cable company
3. Satellite dish
While in theory there is competition and in theory that should mean competitive pricing, in truth any claim of competition is a farce.
My Internet service is via the telephone company, an 800 pound gorilla.
To be fair, the service is, for the most part, reliable and it “pretty much” provides the service for which I pay.
My problem with the service is the all-too-frequent pop-up questionnaire that takes over the Internet site I am viewing.
If the questionnaire was small and offered a way to close it when it popped up, I probably would not complain. I might even honestly complete the questionnaire.
But it is not small; it fills the monitor’s screen and substitutes itself for the material I called up.
It’s a virus that my Avast anti-virus program apparently has no power to block. (Avast does a fine job blocking most invaders.)
What the questionnaire HAS accomplished is that I am now looking at alternatives, even those that cost as much as the phone company, even if the alternative only matches the phone company’s speed and promised reliability.
I had another phone company’s service when I lived elsewhere. No pop-up questionnaires. I had a cable company’s service in yet another location (I was a consultant), and again, no pop-ups.
I admit I don’t like the 800 pound gorilla, mostly because I feel it runs roughshod on its customers. Raise the rates? The government falls in line and, consumer be damned, the rates are raised. (This is one benefit for utility franchisers.)
I eliminated the phone company’s residential telephone service, replacing it with Consumer Cellular’s ZTE cellular-to-home phone converter. This accomplished two things, one good and one not so good:
- 1. I drastically lowered my monthly phone bill.
2. I lost my fax capability. (ZTE does not accommodate facsimile transmissions.)
Even with two cell phones and a former landline cordless phone arrangement connected to the ZTE device, the total bill is less than the bill for the same service from the phone company.
The 800 pound gorilla offers me a “reward” for taking time to respond to the pop-up questionnaire. The “rewards” are things I never would buy and certainly do not want.
It is patiently obvious to this scrivener that the phone company’s questionnaire software developer failed to write code that states “If this computer was queried within the last n days, do not query again..” Two days in a row I suffered the interruption of the phone company’s invasive questionnaire.
The only way I know to end the phone company’s unwanted invasions is to cancel all business with the company.
Inertia kept me with the phone company until now, but the questionnaire is forcing me to get off my posterior and re-examine my options.
If the links fail to work, see http://tinyurl.com/y82lye4d to learn how to find/access them. It's a Google problem.
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
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