08004u MD coughs up to poor service

The MD of Scottish-based ISP 08004u -- which offers unmetered 24/7 access to the Net in return for a flat fee of £49.99 -- has admitted that his service is "absolutely appalling" but has promised that things will improve in the future. "I am not happy with the service," said David Banks. "At the moment, it's absolutely appalling... I'm not proud of it. "But we are about to upgrade the service in the next two weeks and once those changes are made we'll be able to offer a good service at a good price," he said. Unfortunately, Banks' frank and honest public admission about a service that has been dogged by a constant stream of criticism will be of little comfort to those who have paid up front for 0800 access to the Net but have received little or no service. One London-based Register reader, who asked not to be named, said that he'd been unable to access the Net via 08004u at all since he signed up last month, and his attempts to contact the ISP to rectify the situation had proved fruitless. To make matters worse, he found his credit card had been debited $80 from a company called CCBill.com. After contacting CCBill.com to query the transaction, he found that the online billing company had been contracted by 08004u to collect revenue from subscribers. To add insult to injury, his first correspondence from CCbill.com seemed to suggest that he had been billed $80 because he had subscribed to a pornographic Web site -- not because he'd subscribed to an ISP. "CCBill does billing for Web sites, most of them are adult sites with monthly memberships," explained CCBill. The disgruntled user maintains he was never told about the change in billing procedure or that it would be made in a foreign currency. What's more, he's livid that he's been charged for something that he has not been able to use and has reported the company to Trading Standards officers in Dundee. ®