.........Kind of like the cable company here, Comcast, or affectionately known as Comcrap. They charge fees for charging you the original fee.....
Just like BT (British Telecom) over here..... they want to force everyone to pay by direct debit (so they can basically take what they want, when they want) rather than you simply paying them when you get your bill - so, to penalise those who won't switch to DD, they started to charge them a "processing fee" for dealing with their payment. When the Government told them that was illegal, they just side-stepped it by setting up another "separate business" which is owned by BT, but which "handles all their payment processing" - so now BT don't charge you the fee (which would be illegal) but their "payment processing company" charges you the fee (which is sort of legal, though definitely not ethical)......
Anyway, I'm in the process of moving my line and phone service to the company that handles my broadband - which is NOT one of the "big boys", it's small enough to still give good personal service (oo-er missus) but big enough to be reliable - so BT can finally go and **** themselves as far as I'm concerned.
Sorry for the little off-topic rant, putting the soapbox away now.....
Just to give an on-topic comment so this post isn't completely futile, I've noticed several times that the "helpful estimate" conversion evilBay gives you on-screen when you're deciding whether to buy something is invariably better than the one they ACTUALLY give you one you've committed to buy it....
Jon.
