Is this true?

I paid deposit for my internet broadband in April 2008. A year and six months later, I am shocked.

The cable TV operator who supplies the net line to us actually responds to my complaints, and a maintenance guy lands up at my door in half an hour!

If the main server supplying bandwidth is down, they actually inform me about it. They even call back to check if the complaint has been addressed! Or if the connection has been set right.

What a difference from those hairsplitting hours and days I lost yelling at them, and lost time on precious work that I could do too!

Is it that my tricks and stunts at getting them to renew my account every month or repair the line paid off? Or reporting non-stop to their bandwidth provider about their callous attitude did the trick?

A hunch tells me it could be a drop in the number of connections. The internet line provider was a monopoly out here till recently. Some friends I know switched to wireless internet because of such bad service.

During the Diwali weekend, this provider spent a fortune on pamphlets advertising his broadband packages. Competition works!

Just in case you wondered why I put up with shoddy service for a whole 18 months, some friends suggested a move to a bigger company's broadband service when they saw me going through torture in the name of broadband internet.

I had a sound reason not to. When we moved in to this home, I called up the big companies for a connection - hoping for that quality stamp on them. Two out of the three I called up said they had no `feasibility' in my colony. With 168 homes in an enclosure and 10 such enclosures on a single road stretch - meaning not less than 50 per cent of them for potential customers, I don't know what they meant by no feasibility.

The third company had only six months and three months package options, which meant I pay lumpsum. I wanted to tell them I was newly married, and had no money left to pay them such huge sums. It would not matter, would it? I would look a fool too. Why would they be concerned about my not having money?

I took heart by deciding not to give them business for as long as I could.