I talked to the DSL people who said I cannot use DSL without Windows XP and sent me a shipping label by email instead of buying me a new computer or upgrading mine like I asked if they would. I did so ask! I kept the BellSouth unlimited long distance plan ($19.99/mo with no extras) and cancelled everything else. Bright House will be here next Tuesday (my next day off) to install Roadrunner, which will work with Windows 98. Kathy, I was so disappointed I almost cried but yelled instead. After reading about JJ's experience, I'm glad I refused the cell phone. JJ, they didn't say anything about qualifying for cell calls. Glad I missed that bullet.

I've never spoken with a person who did the bundle thing without problems. I'm going to steer clear of this.

Not only that...(here I go again) but they screwed up my "SPAM" stuff so badly that after a long, long, period of using them, all of a sudden I couldn't get emails from my closest of co-workers (like Dotsie) or many others. When I called to find out why, BellSouth said, "Oh, we changed the way it does it...you'll have to either trust us (that'll be a cold day in Hades) or change your settings and go in and check the SPAM folder yourself all the time."

I was dumbfounded. I said, "Uh, 'cuse me...but you have a job because of ME and people like ME. You couldn't send us an email and inform us that you were changing things? I've spent the last three days trying to figure out why my mail system wasn't working!" I was furious. They said, "we didn't think we needed to..." Well duh?

So I chose Option #2...I did my own settings and go in and check and delete SPAM.

I'm telling ya...if a company comes along that REALLY listens to their cutomers, I'm sooooooooooo there!

I've been reading this topic with interest. We have DSL through a local ISP that's a woman-owned business. I have been with this ISP for years and love them. My business web stuff is also through them. When they messed up once they gave me two months free because it was their error. Our local phone co is Qwest - don't like them much as we always have trouble getting through to them and getting things fixed. But we have long distance through Working Assets. I like them because they give a percentage of every bill to charities, and once a year we get to vote on the charities to get money for the next year. We can 'round up' our bill if we choose so that extra money goes to the charities. They also have cell phone plans, but we haven't signed up for that yet.

Cable internet access is not necessarily better than DSL because you're actually sharing a line with your neighbors who also have cable internet access, so the speeds can be quite slow if everyone's online at the same time. DSL is a dedicated line for only your household. I was surprised to learn this in my tech class as I always thought cable would be faster.