« A Message from Albia | Main | 'Everyone' election campaign »

April 15, 2005

Sometimes I wish . . .

… I was still in Tokyo. My Japanese ISP never let me down… . I have just been 24 hours without an internet connection, with no explanation or apology from my ISP.

I chose them because they were a small Scottish ISP in Dumfries listed by Scottish Enterprise. I hoped they would be responsive and easy to contact - big mistake! They were just a front.

The business, called by a variety of names, is in Surrey. They have a series of phone numbers - one that costs a pound a minute to call, one that costs 50p a minute, a ‘Gold Service’ with a flat monthly charge, plus a few other ordinary lines that aren’t answered much. (To be fair their website is quite good, but you need a connection to access it.)

Sometime ago I wrote to Scottish Enterprise suggesting they might stop recommending a service which was not in Scotland, but I never heard back from them. I didn’t really expect to… .

Does anyone know of an ISP in Scotland with a reasonable service, maybe even one where they actually answer the phone?

Posted by Simon Holledge at April 15, 2005 03:58 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.skakagrall.com/cgi-bin/MT/mt-tb.cgi/377

Comments

I've found that most ISPs occasionally have problems, but my experience has been that most I have dealt with work most of the time.

However, to answer your question, I deal with an ISP in Cromarty for one of the websites I am responsible for, and they do answer the telephone when (occasionally) problems occur. This is for a wine tasting society up here I am a member of (as well as being Treasurer and Webmaster). If you want contact info for the ISP, you are welcome to email me.

PS/ My blog is with Blogger (California) and my own main website is hosted by Bravenet (British Columbia) - both have their problems from time to time, but on balance they are OK. The joy of the internet is that it is just as easy to deal with a firm on the other side of the planet as locally.

Posted by: Bill (Scotland) at April 16, 2005 03:15 AM

Thanks Bill.

I agree about the joy of being able to use world-wide services. Two of my websites and my popmail server are in Japan, the other two websites are hosted in France. The companies I use are reliable and responsive. The French operation in particular (Haisoft) is very cheap as well as being professional.

Anyway I'll send you an email. I'd certainly like to know about your ISP in Cromarty.

Posted by: Simon Holledge at April 16, 2005 10:09 AM