I have seen a lot of commercials advertising Netscape's accelerated internet surfing at a dial-up price with fast, reliable connections lately on TV. They claim it is Free for the first month! That was interesting enought for me to check them out on the web. I have always used dial-up and not had a problem. I thought that it would be nice to pay $9.95 a month instead of what I pay now, so I signed up for the 1 month FREE trial.
I was disappointed to find that connections were slower, as a matter of fact, painfully slow. I was also booted off a lot, at least as much, if not more than I'm used to. So much for the fast, reliable connections. And I don't have a clue what they mean by "Now with Free Web Accelerator".
Less than a week after signing up, I noticed that my credit card had been billed. That irritated me, but I figured that was pretty common practice and probably the second month they don't bill. I continued to use my original company and I figured I would keep Netscape in case something went wrong with my usual provider, after all, I'd already paid for it.
Before I knew it, a month had passed and I was checking out the history on my credit card and realized I'd been charged a second time in the 5 weeks since I'd first signed on with them. I know it's just $12 bucks I'm out, but why should I even keep them on as back up, I only lost connection for a couple of days which was remedied by reinstallation of the other provider's software.
Today, I called to cancel service with Netscape. I chose the option "To dicontinue service press...". I was on hold for 20 minutes from the time I got bored and started keeping track, which means it was more than that. I was wondering the whole time "How many people are wanting to cancel services?" I didn't want to try later because I'd already put in so much time waiting and didn't want to waste time all over again. The woman on the recording sounded foreign, I couldn't help but notice since I must have listened to her a hundred times asking to continue holding. I was surprised when I finally got a gentleman on the line who had the exact same accent.
The call was as could be expected, he tried to get me to change my settings so that the browser would work better. I finally told him that I was very satisfied with the company I had and I just wanted to discontinue my account with Netscape, and I also commented that I didn't appreciate being charged for my FREE month. He informed me that I was not signed up for the 1st month free offer because I signed up over the internet. I told him that I certainly was, because I would not have even tried them out without the offer and that it plainly stated that anyone could sign up to get the 1st month free on the website I downloaded it from, check it out for yourself at http://www.netscape.com/. His second excuse was that the "1st month free offer" is random. Random? So you sign up for it and wait to see if you were the lucky one? This honestly is the first time I have ever heard of such a deal.
He had no idea at all that I had spent only about 5 hours on Netscape trying it out. That surprised me, since the other company knows exactly how many minutes I'm signed on. You'd think it would be a warning sign to Netscape if a customer hadn't really used their services. I told him it was well worth the extra money I pay for the provider I have, I certainly appreciate them more now.
I know I will not get my money back, but be careful, I want everyone to know that their offer is "random".
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