A while ago, our internet provider has, as is normal these days, merged/been bought/acquired/made a deal with (delete as appropriate) one of the largest DSL providers in the country. The result was that I paid a third of the price for a better connection. In the letter (one of the few REAL letters that I ever got from that company – let me call it Web.de) it stated that
- Everything around my DSL account would be moved to the new provider (let us call him 1&1)
- included in the deal was – among other things – a free domain
- I had to do absolutely nothing, as everything would be taken care by them
The few people that tried to access our domain, or send us an eMail the last few days might have noticed that the domain was unreachable, and that mails bounced back. The reason for this was that I had failed to pay for the domain name – apparently I had been sent a bill (to a more or less defunct mail account which only received SPAM from web.de every few days, so whenever I went to check my first action was to delete all web.de mail in one go – one of the features of the account was that it was impossible to opt out of the (internal) SPAM) which I failed to read, and pay. The fact that I had neither signed any new contract, or that they used to have my bank details did not really matter to them. In fact, when I asked why they did not just take it off my account, they said that they gave all my account info to the new provider, and that’s why they would not have it – they must have found my address by employing a psychic, as the address clearly is also part of any “contract data” they would have passed on. And if they kept my address, then why not the bank details? Might it be that I actually never agreed to pay for any domain name, which, according to the old contract, and the letter they sent me, was part of the DSL deal?
Anyways, I am contemplating whether I should get a lawyer and see whether I can sue them for unfair competition or something like that. I am sure that there are more people like me, that got screwed over by them. Maybe it all depends on the meaning of “absolutely nothing”. Any thoughts?
b.
