ISP Reseller Account Closure Delays

Last week marked the end of my reseller account with the ISP I haven't named yet. Whoopee!!! The date that the account was due for renewal fell on the Saturday, and I couldn't wait to cancel it. But it seemed that my ISP (identity to be revealed later, folks) had other ideas.

Several days after my cancellation request they wrote that I had to apply for a special cancellation form. This took me over the threshold of another year (the account is billed annually) and another £450 + VAT, which I'm not going to pay, obviously. Then I got a phone call from the accounts department saying that they had received notification that I wished to cancel my reseller account, but that I had several resold accounts still active. This was after I had carefully deleted all of them several days before.

That their system did not pick up on
the deletions did not surprise me. Anyway, I deleted them again while the representative was on the phone. I then mentioned that I had asked for the cancellation forms for my reseller account a few days before, but had not received them. By the end of that working day I had received no fewer than five emails with the cancellation forms as attachments (sounds like the different departments aren't communication properly with each other, eh? Again, this did not surprise me.)

Today I completed and signed the cancellation form and tried to fax it to their fax number. My fax machine just kept on going on auto fax but their number was busy for several hours continuously. I emailed them to ask them to either free up the fax machine or provide another number. They did not reply.

Mid afternoon one of the many fail reports I was getting caused a paper jam. I was getting nowhere. I checked the fax number they had written on the cancellation form and found that it was different to the fax number on their emails. They had sent me the wrong fax number!

I used the new fax number. It was engaged. It was engaged a further three hours. I eventually managed to get the cancellation form faxed through to them at a quarter to six in the evening.

But probably the fax will get "lost" as nobody was there during office hours to receive it, and they will bill me a further year's account charge.

Over my dead body.

This story, unfortunately, will continue.