Bulldog broadband woes and hooray for BT (kinda)

Ok so I finally gave my pain-in-the-ass ISP (Bulldog) the boot a few weeks ago. Actually, I didn't, but they thought I had (I had called about a billing issue - one of several - and while I did threaten cancellation, I didn't actually go through with it), and I certainly didn't argue. Until they decided to charge me for the rest of the year because I was still under contract. So of course I refused to pay, since (a) they owed me a fair sum by way of several credits that had been "applied" but never turned up (b) THEY cancelled the connection, not me (I later found out the request was indeed put thru by one of their departments - because of a resolved billing issue) (c) I hadn't received the service I was promised anyway (my connection only worked for about half the period), (d) I shouldn't have been under a fresh 12-month contract since I had only moved home and wasn't a new customer.

So anyway, after a while I managed placed an order with BT to move my line back from Bulldog. The nice man at BT seemed shocked that I didn't care if I kept my phone number or not. What can I say... I wouldn't even know it if I didn't need to identify my line when I called my (ex) ISP. They accepted my order and gave me a date by which this should be completed. Needless to say, this didn't happen, and I got a call from BT to say that my line hadn't been released by Bulldog and I couldn't do anything but pay for a new physical line to be installed. I was surprised with this and tried to argue that I had a perfectly good length of copper from my living room to the exchange. No point. Hang up in despair. I called BT later that evening to place an order for a new line (this is several weeks into the whole issue, and I was getting tired of "borrowing" ;-) wireless from neighbours and using my phone to connect up.) - anyway just as I was about to give them my bank details, my phone lost signal and the call disappeared. Oh great. I was almost home at that point and couldn't muster the energy for another session so I left it be until the next day.

Mid-morning, my phone rings and lo and behold, a call from BT provisioning... very proactive I thought, calling me since my call dropped. But then again, they want to make the sale, right? Well that's what I thought until I was told that this call pertained to my original order, not the dropped call one. Eh? What's that? I thought that order was cancelled and couldn't be put through. Rubbish, said the BT man (well not quite), the order was alive and well. They were having trouble getting Bulldog to release the line so in line with regulations, they had given them 10 working days (or some such) to release the line before grabbing it from them. 1 June was the latest activation date, and I was given my new phone number (they seemed surprised Woo hoo I say. Excellent. So I don't have to suffer the pain (& cost) of seeing someone install a second phone line at home! And whaddya know? True to their word, 1 June saw a brand new phone number operational in number 19!

Next choice was broadband ISP and I went for the one obvious consumer ISP - Sky. Since we've got Sky digital, the broadband deal is pretty good and I had actually heard quite a lot of good things about Sky (despite having had BAD experiences in the very early days). So, juicy 16mb broadband ordered, sit back and wait...

And hope never to have to have the displeasure or misfortune of hearing from Bulldog again.

Next month I migrate my last still-on-Bulldog client away and hopefully that should be that.