Doctorow Tears Up ISP Contract Over Net Neutrality

Burz writes "As a reaction to Virgin Media CEO's promise to violate the concept of net neutrality, Cory Doctorow is declaring his ISP contract void, canceling the service, and calling on other Virgin customers to do the same. He isn't alone. Charlie Stross counts the ways the gang that became Virgin Media is trashing Sir Richard's brand. Myself, I am thinking of stopping my Virgin Mobile service in protest."

Losing your Virginity...

feels great!

Options

Thats nice if there is more than 1 broadband option where you live.

Re:Options

This being the UK, you've got a choice of tens, if not hundreds of different ADSL providers available to you, some using BT, some with LLU setups.

Though to make use of them you would have to cancel all of your Virgin Media services (Internet, TV, Phone) and get a BT line instead.

Re:Options

In the UK, I don't think there's anywhere with only 1 (ADSL broadband, cable's a different deal)option, by virtue of the way in which BT is required to open its network. However, you still have to pay BT a line rental charge in addition to your Virgin (or whomever) account.

Resolving todays problem cost me £25 :(

I dont have a virgin phone service. A billing "discrepancy" from last year, an offer I bartered for, was fixed last month with Virgin claiming to shoulder the costs. What actually happened is they added the XL phone package to my discounted XL TV + XL Broadband offer. I have been a customer for 18 months, and I bartered for my previous deal of £41.50/pm only to have them add the Phone package without informing me, and charge me £70.

I rang to cancel and let them know I intended to move to sky and and was offered my old £41.50 offer at a no-contract rate of £49pm (I'm not sure where I'll be living in 3 months, so I can't get a contract). Problem fixed, or so I believe. The debt collection team phone me this morning to inform me my direct debit had bounced - and it would do if it was in excess of £50 as the account is for bills only, and is credited with a standing order for the appropriate amount each month.

It transpires (I guessed it instantly), that after billing me £70 and changing it back to the negotiated rate of £49, they discounted next months direct debit by £20, so that the net 2 month charge would be equal to my negotiated rate over 2 months.

But! That doesn't mean I can pay £70 in one month for a problem they have caused, because I subject to cash flow issues. To make things worst, I have been charged by my bank for the defaulting direct debit, wasted £15 on the phone last time I called, and £10 today.

Today was awful! I was called this morning by the debt collection team who would not let me pay £49 or change my direct debit, until I settled the £70 mistake, even tho it was obvious the real amount was £49 based on the remedied discount applied to the next bill. I'm forced to pay for their mistake!?! They told me there was nothing they could do, and that I had to phone them back and fixed the issue. I got through to India twice and was told the same thing, only that the team that called me was the team that dealt with it. In the end I gave up. I asked to be put through to the cancellation team.

The cancellation team were great. The credit was applied to this month, and my outstanding balance returned to what I should pay/can pay. I've praised VM in the past, and will continue to do so in the future - but only their cancellation team, as they're the only ones with the power to resolve your problems.

I am contemplating billing VM for the saga cost me £20 in phone calls (I have a mobile phone, and no one would phone me!), and the bounced direct debit penalty stemming from their inability to resolve the problem when I called them and they called me.

Matt

Cory who?

Why do I care? Am I supposed to be impressed that submitter is "considering stopping [his] Virgin Mobile service in protest"? On my way to work today, I considered pushing a fisherman off the bridge so that I could giggle whilst watching him splash about in the water -- it's a far cry from doing it.

Legal side - abuse of a dominant position?!

Article 82 - abuse of a dominant position.

        A82 is directly enforceable in the national courts. VM has a dominant position in the UK broadband market - this is an automatic presumption in the cable market as their share is 100%, and, based on the structure of the UK backbone-network, a reasonable and fair assumption regarding broadband in general.

        they are acting in a manor that can only be said to be taking unfair advantage of their position to the detriment of the broadband market in general - and they are doing this independently of us the consumer: ie: we get this crap and there is absolutely nothing we can do.

        whilst having a dominant market share, and being in a monopolist position is _not_ illegal - abusing this position is. VM are starting a consumer/isp war that the consumers cannot win. they are abusing the technological development of the UK's broadband system by prejudicing our use in a way we cannot avoid. an utterly artificial creation.

        as VM own the cable network, there is no cross elastic supply. the consumer is lacked into contracts which generally fall foul of elastic demand the moment they abuse their position. the good news is that no VM customer is bound to their unfair contracts that stifle the advancement of uk broadband - be it traffic shaping or whatnot.

        vote with your wallets - sign up to another ISP!

Re:Stuff that matters

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow [wikipedia.org]

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Trotskyist teachers, Doctorow was raised in an activist household, working in the nuclear disarmament movement and as a Greenpeace campaigner as a child. He later served on the board of directors for the Grindstone Island Co-operative on Big Rideau Lake in Ontario, helping to run a conference center devoted to peace and social justice education and activist training. He received his high school diploma from SEED School, a free school in Toronto, and dropped out of four universities without attaining a degree.

Doctorow moved to Los Angeles, California in mid-2006 from London, England, where he had worked as European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation for four years, helping to set up the Open Rights Group, before quitting to pursue writing full-time in January 2006. Upon his departure, Doctorow was named a Fellow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Doctorow spent the 2006-2007 academic year teaching as a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, despite not holding any academic degree. He then returned to London. He is a frequent public speaker on copyright issues.

Doctorow's daughter with Alice Taylor, Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow, was born on 3 February 2008.

Cory's parents have suggested that he is related to author E.L. Doctorow, but E.L. Doctorow himself could not confirm or deny the family connection.

----
Don't know, sounds like someone I'd care about...

Re:Stuff that matters

Meh. Can't hold a job. Can't get a degree. I may or may not be kidding about this.

Re:Stuff that matters

Doctorow's daughter with Alice Taylor, Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow, was born on 3 February 2008.

Is this a case of Wikipedia vandalism, or does his insatiable attention-whoring extend to ruining his poor daughter's life?

Re:Stuff that matters

Unfortunately, it's not vandalism. [boingboing.net] (sorry, posted this under the wrong comment earlier...then Slashdot wouldn't let me post a reply to your comment because the comment ID wasn't found...)

Re:Stuff that matters

It's not actually Branson's company, he just (foolishly) licensed the brand to NTL Telewest so they could use it.

Re:Good for you. Dump sir Richard.

These boycotts are always so effective.

That really is the issue here. You're never, ever going to get enough people to dump an individual ISP over this sort of thing to make their brass go, "Whoa! We'd better not do that!". The issue is simply too involved for the 'average' net user to really understand well enough to care about.

Some things require legislative solutions, and this is clearly one of those things. While I'm not saying that users of Virgin Media *shouldn't* change providers, it should be recognized that it's nothing but a symbolic step. If you really want to see this sort of nonsense avoided, contributing to the EFF might be a far better use of money.

Re:Good for you. Dump sir Richard.

Think for a moment how incredibly inefficient what you are proposing is. Every single time a company does something stupid that's detrimental to the rest of us we have to organize a boycott and start educating everyone else? No thanks.

We have government to make this process easier. It makes laws and it enforces them. We elect people run it for us. It collects taxes to finance itself. Perfect? Hell no. But government is certainly a of a lot better and reliable than having everybody trying to police everybody else. I don't know about you, but I prefer living in an advanced modern society instead of a cave.

So, now, go out and educate your law maker as to why they need to pass a net neutrality law and we won't have to revisit this issue again.

Re:Consumers Union

So... in addition to voting for politicians who promise to do what I want, I now should pay to become an anonymous member of a large group that promises to do what I want, so that group can in turn bribe the politicians I already voted for?

Pass.

Here's a solution for the legislation-hungry out there: pass some legislation to limit the efforts and effectiveness of professional lobbyist groups. Then maybe you and I would have a chance of getting heard when we wrote to our representatives.

Re:What a joke.

I doubt you have a contract with Boing Boing agreeing that they will not censor reader comments, and I doubt that you are paying them all that much.

Re:Ouch

Any financial issues Blockbuster have are most likely down to an evolving marketplace, and not getting rid of worthless customers.

Doctrow is a hack. A pretentious windbag who a certain element of people seem to think represents their beliefs.

I'm sure Virgin are quaking in their boots at this "threat" from someone who if there name was said to 99.999999% of people would say "Who?"

Re:Do we just become numb?

This is precisely right. It's also what gives them a huge kick in the ass when they go just a little too far, like Rogers Cable did over here about ten years ago. As what was usual, they added a pile of new channels that nobody really wanted and raised subscription prices accordingly. They also moved a number of popular channels further up the dial, where a vast number of older cable boxes couldn't functionally reach. Their only suggestion was to rent a new cable box, which was just adding insult to injury.

Now, there was an alternative: We could go to the cable company and ask to have the new channels removed. There was no way to do it over the phone, you had to find out where your local cable shop was, drive down there, and hassle the girl behind the counter. Rogers clearly assumed that since we'd swallowed their shit for so long, another mouthful would go down just as smoothly.

Hundreds of thousands of subscribers descended on their outlets, fuming mad, demanding their service be return to its previous state, or canceling cable outright. Rogers got the message, the CRTC got the message, and for once shit actually changed.

Re:Do we just become numb?

As what was usual, they added a pile of new channels that nobody really wanted and raised subscription prices accordingly.

While this is technically accurate, it leaves out an important detail - namely that these channels weren't added to available plans, but rather they were added to everyone's bill. Rogers went to all of their customers and gave them all the channels; when people complained after getting their bill, Rogers insisted that they should have called to cancel the channels if they didn't want them.

Unfortunately at the time, this practice wasn't illegal. Thanks to Rogers, it is now. Oh, and they lost so much goodwill in the area that they had to bail out, and swapped their BC holdings with Shaw's Ontario holdings. Now we have Shaw, and things are light years better than Rogers could ever manage.

Re:Who is Cory Doctorow?

He wears a red cape and blogs from a high-altitude balloon. [xkcd.com]

Re:Who is Cory Doctorow?

As an American who hasn't been extremely well-exposed to English pop culture, I cannot say with certainty what the term "wanker" means, but there's a feeling deep inside of me that Cory Doctorow is exactly the person the term was created to describe. He and several more or less pretentious bloggers run the Boing Boing blog, each with their own running obsession--Disney, Tibet, kitsch, Internet memes, etc. This is a spot-on parody of him. [ldopa.net]

Why is Cory Doctorow so famous among geeks?

Look, I don't want to piss you off or anything, and I'm sure Cory is smart, but... what exactly has he done to prove it? I'm really not trying to be facetious.

He dropped out of four universities. He's a blogger. He writes science fiction about as well as Alan Dean Foster. Which is to say, mediocre science fiction. He started Boing Boing. He occasionally writes non fiction articles.

Am I missing something? Cure for cancer, grand unified theory, anything?

I'm sure Cory is both nice and smart, but his importance to a certain set of geeks seems blown way out of proportion to his actual accomplishments.

Re:Why is Cory Doctorow so famous among geeks?

He started Boing Boing.

Doctorow didn't even start Boing Boing, Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair did. He wasn't even on board when it went from a 'zine to a web site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boing_Boing#History [wikipedia.org]

Re:But what is he _really_ doing?

Allow me to continue with your storefront analogy.
You pay rent on your storefront, and I have to ride the bus to get there. We both pay depending on what we want.
You want more people in your store at a time, you pay more rent.
I want to be able to get there faster, I hire a taxi instead.

Where the problem lies is that now the bus/taxi companies want to charge you, the store owner, for the bus/taxi to stop at your shop.
If you don't pay, your customers will have to walk the last 1/2 mile, despite the fact that your shop is on the main road, and all traffic goes right past you.

In fact, it's not a far stretch to imagine the taxi driver suggesting alternate destinations.

Me: Take me to the local grocery store.
Driver: You're going shopping? Why don't I drop you at Walmart, It's 20 minutes faster.
Me: No it isn't, walmart is in the next town.
Driver: Yeah, But we have a contract with them, we drive everyone there first.


This isn't capitalism anymore, it's extortion.

Re:But what is he _really_ doing?

Except that what Virgin wants isn't tiered pricing. I look at net neutrality analogously to UPS delivery. UPS doesn't care who you are, or who you're shipping to, or what (modulo hazardous materials) you're shipping. They care about basically two things and two things only: how big/heavy your package is, and how far you're shipping it. If you and I both go in to the same UPS office to ship the same package to two recipients in the same city, UPS will charge us both the same price. Sure I'll pay more if I pick overnight shipping and you pick standard ground, but if I pick the same shipping as you I won't get nicked for more.

What Virgin wants, though, isn't anything analogous. Suppose the situation is that I'm buying mail-order, and as the customer I've paid the shipping charge for overnight delivery. What Virgin wants is to go to the merchant and go "We know your customer paid for overnight shipping. But if you, Mr. Merchant, don't cross our palm with some extra money on top of that, we won't deliver the package overnight. Oh, and don't think you can just stop offering overnight shipping, because if you ship standard we'll slow that down too unless you pay us.". This is known as "a kickback", and in every other field it gets you in legal trouble. For my money, I'm not willing to do business with someone who's demanding kickbacks.

Most of us geeks would have no problem with Virgin charging their customers tiered pricing based on how much those customers used. We'd probably take our business somewhere that offered a better deal, but Virgin would at least be being honest. Virgin, though, seems to want to extort kickbacks from people who aren't it's customers so that they don't have to charge their customers based on usage. Sorry, but no.