Demon slapped by ADSL climb down

People power rules, KO

By Tim Richardson • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 26th June 2000 14:12 GMT

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Demon has caved in to pressure from its ADSL trialists and agreed to honour its offer of three months' free time online.

The move - announced today - is an embarrassing U-turn by the ISP which has been slammed for the way it has handled the completion of its broadband trial.

Last week it issued an ultimatum to its 500 trialists informing them that they could only get the three months free if they signed up to a full year of broadband access at cost of more than £1200.

If trialists failed to take up the offer by last Friday their service would be disconnected at the end of this week, the ISP said.

Now, the trialists appear to have won their battle and have been given three months free broadband access with no obligation to sign up to a service at the end of September.

Although Demon's trialists are chuffed to bits by this change of heart, many will be questioning why they had to pressure the ISP in the first place, when the freebie offer was one of the conditions of taking part in the trial.

Lucy Robb, a spokeswoman for Demon, denied the ISP had backed down and said: "We want to keep our customers happy." ®