Goodbye ya.com, and good riddance

My saga with my ISP ya.com is drawing to a close.

After six months of trying to change plans they still have failed to do so. Today was the last straw, when they finally informed me (weeks after receiving my letter of complaint) that they had no intention of refunding me any money. Great business model: charge a customer for something they don’t want, ignore any requests to change to something they do want, and blame technical problems ("the system’s giving me an error") for your failure to do so. During this time ya.com has effectively been ripping me off for 30€ per month, charging me 2004 prices for something that in 2006 is 6 times as fast and about one fifth the cost. That’s 180€ I’m out of pocket, plus the time and money wasted calling them up, writing them letters each month, paying for printing, photocopying and certified postage, plus six months of inflated landline charges paid to the incumbent government-backed former monopolist, Telefónica (the plan I was trying to switch to included landline access).

So bye bye, ya.com. I’ve had enough. I’m switching and you’ll never hear from me again. My new provider is Jazztel; no doubt their service is probably almost as bad as Ya.com’s but at least their price is right.

In my last post on this subject I quoted from the three letters of complaint I’d sent ya.com so far and remarked on their gradually increasing irateness. In today’s final letter (in which I inform them of my decision to cancel my account and again demand a partial refund) I didn’t hold back at all.

Here’s a rough translation into English:

Who is responsible for the functioning of ya.com’s systems if not ya.com itself? If the system doesn’t work properly then it’s up to ya.com to fix it. I don’t know whether to suspect that ya.com is a bunch of incompetent, pathetic clowns, or a gang of barefaced, calculating con-artists.

Well, my 180€ are probably gone forever but at least the issue has finally reached its culmination; ya.com won’t be getting another cent out of me from this point on and I encourage anyone who might be in the market for an ADSL connection to steer well clear of them.