Not quite hell yet but here's the story.

I used to do my landline calls through Toucan though line rental remained with BT. Thank goodness. Recently I changed to BT "anytime" which better suits my current needs. Toucan don't seem to have recognised that I have left them and phoned me to say they couldn't collect the last invoice and that the contract hadn't been cancelled. I paid the last valid invoice and then made sure that the DD was cancelled. I've just got yet another invoice. I'm sure they'll be phoning me again soon....

I've emailed them twice but had no sensible response. I'm certainly not phoning them on their 0871 number andI haven't found a sensible route through the menus on their 0800 numbers. Anyway, I think it's better put in writing now.

Toucan are now owned by TISCALI. It's not Toucan hell, it's TISCALI HELL, a form of punishment that our friends over the pond would call cruel and unusual.

When I joined Toucan a fe years ago they were a small company. Since then they have been bought and sold a few times ending with Tiscali. A warning: If you were thinking of joining Toucan DON'T.

Don't touch Pipex with a bargepole! But most of you knew that anyway. After receiving various threats and finally writing to them in strong terms I received a written apology a few days ago. I can't say I was too surprised to receive a threat of legal action from debt collectors today. i have faxed a suitably scathing letter to the debt collectors informing them that Pipex are wasting their time and money.

Cor, doesn't the line of takeovers and mergers trundle on..

My first ISP was "North West Net".  Small local company with at one point less than a dozen dial-up lines (on the local cable system, so free off-peak calls to them! Woo!) and 250 customers, with us all paying at least a tenner a month.  I was even on first name terms with their technical guru.  They merged with "Telinco" a telephone company, at whihc pont the rot set in (they discovered 0845 numbers). They were bought by World Online, whom were then bought by Tiscali...  I ditched them as an ISP a long time back, but that first  email address is still going strong, and my personal website is still there after over ten years of being ignored.. I wish I could get back in to update it...