Juno is standing here with a jar of Vaseline, so I'm prob'ly outta here...

The BBQ Pit
1

Well, fuck. Charles Ardai, you and your pathetic ISP wannabe have just moved a little bit further up my personal shit list. This morning we received this e-mail:

Asshole. There was nothing at all about this when we subscribed last November, nothing along the lines of, “now, then, folks, if you use this Internet access a lot, we’re gonna have to raise your price.” It’s just because of the dotcom meltdown, they’re in money troubles, so they think they’ll see who out there is stupid enough to fall for this. Think again, miserable purveyor of substandard Internet service, with its many disconnections, its lack of local access numbers, and most of all, its “Let’s All Help With Juno’s Virtual Supercomputer!” program. Farewell, and good riddance to bad rubbish.

Whatever. Twerp.

[sub]my billing date is May 21, so if I’m reading this right, I’ve got till May 21 to cancel, so I’ll still be around here for a while.

But I am still REALLY pissed
And please, spare me the smug “welcome to the real world” lecture, I’m not in the mood

:mad:

and there is no way either me or the Better Half is willing to pay 30 bucks a month for Internet access[/sub]

2

You’re gonna hate me for this. But why get mad at a company because it acts out of self-preservation? And another thing: are they the only ISP you can use? Surely not.

3

There’s a thread around here somewhere that was started within the last 2 days on free internet access and which providers were still available. I’ll see if I can dig it up…

And that SUCKS. :frowning:

4

Harry fucking Potter! (I’ve replaced Jesus H. Christ because I suspect Harry’s bigger these days).

I was going (despite your ban on ‘smug “welcome to the real world”’ stuff) to ask what was the biggie in finding an extra 5 bucks a month if you were already paying 25, then reread and realised what you really said. An overnight increase of 500% is unbe-fucking-lievable.

IANITUSA (I Am Not In The USA - why the hell do we bother doing this?) but aren’t there other cheap ISPs around?

5

ummmm, phone service costs, cable TV costs, so why shouldn’t internet access cost? <prepare for blasphemy> It’s not like you NEED to be on line…

Yeah, rising prices suck swampwater, but where is it written that someone in business is obligated to provide anything for free? or for cheap? Such is the price of capitalism.

6

If I’m reading it right, you have until May 20 to cancel…if you wait till the 21[sup]st[/sup], they’re gonna bend you over the computer table, and unpleasantness will follow! Cancel before the 21[sup]st[/sup]!

7

Hey! If I weren’t online I’d have to shudder go out and get a REAL life! shudder

8

Does not compute.

Sua

9

Well, they were charging. $5 bucks a month isn’t much, but Juno sucks ass. Now they want to jack up the price %500 while still sucking ass??? Sounds a little unreasonable. I mean, if you have to pay, pay for something worthwhile.
FUCK JUNO!!! You should have realized that customers only chose you because you were cheap.

10

Um, some of us DO need the internet, quite literally. If I didn’t have my internet, I would be unable to freelance, i.e. work.

11

I also used to have Juno. Hated 'em. Signed up for AOL and likewise hate them (even more than Juno, if that’s possible). So, now I’ve got their cheap plan (3 bucks and some change/mo for 3 hrs/mo… I have reasons to keep the aol acct alive) and I do at&t’s 7 cents/min ld and 7 bucks/mo isp. Works out pretty well.

12

Let me be contrarian for a minute but I read that letter not as a company trolling for more money but as a company wanting you to go away.

I think, given that they mention your cancelling your account in the first sentence, they think you’re a burden to their system for some reason and wish you to cancel.

I’ve written a god awful number of marketing pieces and customer letters and I’ve never written one yet (that was designed to generate revenue) in which I led with the possibility that the customer could cancel their account. Normally I wouldn’t even mention the possibility that such a calamitous event could occur.

Just my take on it.

13

I concur. Goosey - I’m afraid that you have become one of the Undesirables.

Cool.

pan

14

I think that Jonathon Chance and kabbes have hit on it. You should, of course, spend every possible second between now and when you cancel on May 20 online taxing their server.

15

We just got you back!

:frowning:
So let’s dig up another free or cheap ISP for you to use. And I agree with the above sentiment. Stay online as much as possible until the 20th. :wink:

16

DDG, you are in central IL, yes? If Spiffeld is a local call for you, I can help you out as far as internet access goes. I’m an admin for an ISP here and can get you connected if you want.

My email is in my profile.

–tygre

17

I signed up with Juno a few weeks ago, for their free ISP service.

After just two days, I couldn’t get online. Why? Because we’re heavy users here, and they decided to limit my time to after 4 am. HELLO. If you know I’m a heavy user, you should know that I’m NEVER ON at that hour.

Now I’ve got Prodigy, through Ameritech. It doesn’t suck too badly, although actually having to open Internet Explorer to do anything was a change. AOL doesn’t make you do that. But it’s cheaper than AOL, and faster. And in the two weeks or so since I’ve gotten it, I’ve been booted precisely once. AOL used to boot me approximately once every, oh, ten minutes or so.

I’m not anti-AOL, though. It’s great for people like me, who use the Net alot but still have no clue about computers themselves.

DDG-$29.95? Good Goddess, nobody charges that much for service, not even AOL. They top out at $26.95, if you have your monthly fee taken from your checking account. Oy vey!

18

Ducky, you’re dead on. Fuck Juno, and fuck the jerks who are telling you to lighten up and see it from Juno’s perspective. I don’t think I ever would have used their services anyway, but I most assuredly will not now.

And I also agree that Jonathan is right–they’re trying to dump you with a rude email and an exhorbitant price increase. Good luck finding a new ISP (I swear by locals, personally), and don’t look back.

19

Concurring on the muckiness, here’s the thread that I believe, to which, Falcon is referring:

http://board.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=67032

If you have the ability in your area, AT&T is also five dollars a month, which I what I use now, it just has the little bar at the top, and then an ad DOES appear, but you can click it off.

Good luck.

20

Spiffield? :confused: Telephone service here is very strange. A call to a town 2 miles north is local; a call to a town 2 miles south is long distance. A local call for me is (217) and either 877, 875, 422, 421, 429, 423. Which hardly anybody has, hence the heavy reliance on the kindness of strange Juno.

I spent the afternoon chugging through Freewebusa’s list of free ISPs. Bottom line–the glory days (such as they were) :rolleyes: of free ISPs are over, folks. At least, if you live in the boonies and have an obscure need for local access numbers. If you live in an actual big city, it’s no problem.

I also spent some time working my way through thelist.internet.com. Got about halfway through the first page (argh) and got tired of being sent to websites like “Clifford’s Internet Service”, last updated March of 1997. :rolleyes:

The going rate for (serious) Internet access seems to be holding steady at about $20 a month. So I dunno where Juno gets off, charging 30. The last couple of days have been really sucky, many many disconnections. I think Juno Corporate is in some kind of April 15 tax deadline boardroom fight and chose this way to–well, we don’t know what, kick people out and lower their overhead? Generate some on-paper-only cash flow to impress the pointy-haired boss? “Look, we announced this humongous rate hike and 90% of our Juno Gold customers didn’t cancel immediately, so we can count that 90% times 25 dollars as income…” Who knows?

Yes, thank you, I caught the point about May 20, will make big Post-It note to myself on monitor.

Way I see it is, it’s like at one of those “all you can eat for $10.95” smorgasbord places. The manager’s got no right to whine if you’re one of those people who can eat three platefuls of fried chicken. It’s “lose it on the apples, make it up on the bananas”. So I don’t think Juno’s got a beef if I’m an Internet hog. The weird thing is, why in the world would any company want to have customers cancel? I’m totally baffled, but that sure does seem to be the message they’re sending and that I’m getting.

As if the “Help out with the Juno Virtual Supercomputer” thing wasn’t a big enough hint that Charles doesn’t really love me anymore…

Do they get some kind of tax break for being a dotcom going bellyup or something?