You know what really grinds my gears?: The moaning thread.

[pocaracas]

What grinds my gears?... incompetence...
Institutionalized incompetence grinds them even more.

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A few months back, I wrote a letter to a ISP I had for 2 weeks and who, for the whole 2 week period, never got the service straight and so I got out. Now, they want to charge me for the 2 year loyalty period, because they claim they upheld their part of the contract. BS!
OK, so when I got their letter about having to pay for the loyalty period, I wrote them a letter back, stating very well and in the very first sentence that the people working there are incompetents. I then explained the whole situation and signaled their incompetence where appropriate.
A few weeks later, I got a standard letter from them saying they had revised the case and found that I had to pay.
I wrote a new letter back at them, this time, lawyer style, pointing out all the laws that had been observed and which had been trudged over by them. In the end, I threatened to go to court, if they keep insisting that I owe them anything.
A few weeks later, they replied with exactly the same letter I had received before my last one.
So, the long arm of the law starts stretching... I filed a complaint with the national communications regulator. I haven't heard anything back from these guys.... and it's now been a month... this stuff works slowly in Portugal.
But the ISP, a few days ago, sent me a text (SMS!!!) saying I have to pay or we go to court over it!! I LOLed!
Let's go to court, dumbasses!
First step: ISP must present the contract I signed - I signed nothing! It was a contract over the phone, properly regulated by law, so they have to provide the recording of that... They only keep recording for the mandatory 90 days, so I guess it's gone, by now... Also, the call came from another company, which, by then, was already a part of this ISP, but still operating under a different name and a lot of confusion reigned over the merger... my guess is they don't have the recording. No recording, no contract, no court case.

Second step - Oh shit, we (ISP) never fulfilled the contract. Hush, threaten the client with court until he pays.... there's a chance he'll pay...

Third step - Me laughing my ass off! and not paying anything to those money grubbing idiot incompetents.
Now, should I put them in court for demanding money from me, when they (let's assume) know they have no right for it?

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If anyone here remembers this, it has come to fruition.
While I was in the UK, I got a letter from the ISP's lawyers claiming I owed them money and that, if I didn't pay, they'd proceed to court.
This time, they gave me an e-mail to where I could reply.... so I did. Instead of explaining why I don't owe them anything, like I had done 3 times by letter, I said I'd pay them if they could prove to me that I owed them that money. Since the limit to pay that they had given me on the letter had passed well before I got back to Portugal, I assumed they were gathering all necessary evidence to present in court, so I asked them to present that to me... I even made a list of what they should provide, just to make their jobs a little easier.

Just a few minutes ago, I got a reply to that email, saying that they'll send me a credit note for the value I "owed" and that the invoice which I never paid is annulled.

I read that as them admitting incompetence of their own people.