FAST 4 CONNECTION DIARY 2

alared

You can use F4 as much as you like within reason.
Some people were using auto dialing and were abusing the system by being continually connected when it was obvious that no one could possibly sat at a computer non stop for 20 hours a day.
I have been with F4 for three years and easily clock up 40 hours a week without any problems.
As for signing up and cancelling the same day,I just can`t see the point.
If you only need 10 hours a week for a month you might as well go with one of the free PAYG at a penny a minute off peak.

masonic

alared wrote:

If you only need 10 hours a week for a month you might as well go with one of the free PAYG at a penny a minute off peak.

Well that would be more expensive: 10 x 60 minutes x 2 weeks (1200 mins) @ 1ppm = £12 and that would be my minimum!

GeoThermal

masonic wrote:

Oh, I was going on what Martin said in his cheapest dialup article, here.


Is this information incorrect, then?

Edit: Also from F4's FAQ section "Am I tied into a specfic length of contract? Our dial-up service is provided with a no contract term. ADSL contracts are standard with one year. Cancellation for dial-up and ADSL accounts must allow 28 days notice and can only be done from within your customer members area."

So it seems I would have to give notice straight away, but should still get connectivity for the whole month, no? Any comments on usage restrictions?

They may have updated their T&C's. When I was a customer of theirs, it said on the front page and in the FAQ you weren't tied into a contract however in the T&Cs it said there was a three month minimum term before it changed to a monthly contract. This may have changed as it was misleading.

masonic

GeoThermal wrote:

They may have updated their T&C's.

I've just stepped into the signup process to get hold of the T&C's. They say that you can cancel at any time, so they must have been updated. There is also a clause in there saying that their usage limit is 168h/week. Quite how anyone can use it longer than that is beyond me. :rolleyes:

theloft

masonic - the last time I spoke to them they said that the min. contract for dial-up was 3 months and for BB - 1 year.
However you may be right and they have altered this to 1 month, why don't you phone them on their freephone sales line and ask them ? No. is 0800 089 0076.

masonic

theloft wrote:

why don't you phone them on their freephone sales line and ask them ? No. is 0800 089 0076.

I was almost at the point of doing this, but I've decided on the little more expensive, but hassle-free option of a MIP card, giving me 80 hours freephone access for £10 with no contract to wriggle out of.

For anyone else considering a 1 month contract (assuming it is possible), what I will say is be wary of the fact that F4 have explicitly written into the T&Cs that billing runs from the 1st of the month and part-months subscriptions are not refunded. That means if your 28 days notice runs into the next calendar month, you will be billed for the whole of that month, so if you don't time it right, you could end up paying for 2 months.

theloft

masonic - Interesting that their T & C's have altered account dates to 1st of the month, mine has fluctuated for reasons of creeping the date, see earlier posts, but stabilised on the 26th of each month. And, when I cancelled the account (see earlier post) it was processed the same day !! So make sure you clear with them exactly when your account will terminate. I must say that they have been very good with my cancellation, as now due to Primus dealy, I am re-instating for another month and again this is easy to do by using the members area. So its Fast4 again for the time being !!!

alared

I would be very wary of buying a MIP card.
There have been lots of complaints about them on these boards with people unable to connect and not being able to contact MIP.

tweeter

Hi peeps,
I used to use Mipcards until they changed their rates, and my cheaper rate card at a ha'penny a minute could only be used at the higher rate, so the card ran out sooner than expected.
No amount of emails got me anywhere with them, so now I'm on Firefly, soon to go over to Fast 4 thanks to theloft.
tweeter.

theloft

tweeter wrote:

Hi peeps,
I used to use Mipcards until they changed their rates, and my cheaper rate card at a ha'penny a minute could only be used at the higher rate, so the card ran out sooner than expected. No amount of emails got me anywhere with them, so now I'm on Firefly, soon to go over to Fast 4 thanks to theloft. tweeter.

Tweeter - Hope your experience with Fast 4 is a good one, Alared and the others who have been with Fast 4 for some time could tell you that there were some bad experiences is the early days, not being able to get logged on in peak periods etc. But for the past year it has been a good service with very few problems. I was a bit disconcerted to read that MSE Martin is now recommending them as the cheapest and that when he first did this there were a lot of delays in registration etc.
I'm sure you won't have any probs. Incidientally for all you other FAST 4 users, were you aware that they offer a
spam editing site, which you can log on to and stop crud
e-mails from coming through! This is located at:

http://speed-mail.co.uk/addrule.60569.cgi

However Gmail has it's own built in spam detector system, which seems to work well.