Experiences with Freenet DSL

I signed up for Freenet DSL a week and a half ago and I still haven't heard anything from them. I got a confirmation e-mail but I every time I check the website for any updates, it gives me the same message that I should hear something in the mail. Has anyone switched from T-Com to Freenet who has any experience with this?

Also, a German colleague told me that I have to cancel with T-Com in WRITING? WTF?!? Does anyone know if that is true? Cancel a contract with a telephone company in writing? I can't even pay them with a piece of paper (i.e. a check) and they want me to write them a letter? Only the Germans could actually still require such a silly thing...can someone confirm/deny this?

It depends on what you have ordered from Freenet. If you have ordered internet access only you usually get written confirmation (by registered mail) within 2-3 days. Did you find a note from the postman in your mailbox to say he'd tried to deliver anything, but found no-one home? Is you name on the mailbox so he knows where you live?. Did you think to contact Freenet to check on the progress of your order?

If you have ordered DSL and Internet access, then Freenet will take care of the transfer of the DSL line from Telekom, but it usually takes 2-3 months. During that time you can use the Freenet internet access over the Telekom DSL line.

If you have internet access from a different company (such as T-Online) then you always need to cancel in writing, by mail or fax. This is in the agreement you originally signed up to. Note that T-Online recently changed their contracts in line with many others to limit when you can cancel - usually only on the annual boundry of your contract, and often with at least 3 months notice... It's always wise to check when you can cancel your current contract before you start a new one.

Of course you can pay your Telekom bill by cheque, just like any other - simply send it to the address on the invoice. Having said that, I can't remember the last time I saw a cheque, so I'm curious to know where you have yours from?

YL6

Until the technology is invented to vocalise your signature, written notification will continue to be required to terminate a contract.

Thanks, YL6. Two to three month?!? You are kidding, right?

At STB, the technology has already been invented...it is called "call them on the phone" and they verify your security information. Are mistakes made? Sure, but no more than people getting scammed for other things.

cya

You have to sign to take out a contract and you have to sign again to cancel it. That is their recorded confirmation that you have chosen to cancel. I have never known it to be any different with any company in any country.

It's not clear from your posts what you are actually trying to cancel (just DSL or the whole phone connection), but if it's DSL then it probably will take 2-3 months from the moment they receive your letter. And that's assuming you are outside of any lock-in period (24 months' minimum contract for DSL is fairly standard).

Two to three months to change over the DSL element of you line, but you can still use the old DSL service with the new internet provider and thre monthly costs are (usually) the same, so you don't see any difference...

Many providers don't need a signature to start a contract as the customer has 14 days time to cancel without reason, but I agreem most will require written notice of cancellation...

you can go into the shop to cancel or phone them. use search (top right) to find the thread about this.

you can't call them or walk into a store to cancel with T-Com. I tried this a couple of months ago and they told me it had to be in writing or fax.

I cancelled my phone contract by walking into the store.

Telekom do need written confirmation these days. If you meet a helpful T-Punkt employee they may pass on the cancellation for you, but as they earn no commission for this generous act, many simply tell you it's not possible and move onto the next customer.

I'm not sure what the problem is anyway, it takes about 60 seconds to type up a one-line letter. Quicker than hanging on the phone for half an hour listening to inane muzak.

very good poinbt STB!

Ok, let me try to clear up some of the confusion. I am trying to cancel my telephone, ISDN and DSL with T-Com and change over to Freenet for DSL with VoIP phone. On Freenet's website (and others I looked at), they claim that you can change over in a few days, not months. I have had the same phone/DSL service through T-Com for over 2-years, so contract length should not be an issue. My main question at this point is that I have signed up with Freenet at a much higher speed and I want to know when I can start enjoying that speed?

Ok, now as far as cancelling in writing vs on the phone. In the USA (where I come from), you can cancel your phone system OVER THE PHONE and it is instant, i.e. the effective date is when you tell them to stop your service. If I want to cancel with AT&T today and get hooked up with MCI tomorrow, it only takes two PHONE calls or I can do it online. And that brings up another point, I can change my service online, pay my bill online, but I can't cancel online? WTF?!?

@YL6 - I have never seen a written cheque in Germany. I asked my HVB rep when I would get some checks and she said "keine Moeglichkeit". I tried to get official check paper to use on my printer and I was told that they have stopped selling it Germany. I know that you can write an Ueberweisung and give it to the bank to pay, but that is not the same as a check.

I think you may be misunderstanding what you have and what you have ordered. Your phone and DSL currently come from Telekom (I presume). A phone line is a pre-requisite for DSL. Your internet access does not come from T-Com, but my guess is that it will be coming from T-Online (a sister company to Telekom, but independant of them). If you take the Freenet offer you should be able to get an replacement internet access in a few days (simply wait for the login data to arrive) as they promise. This replaces T-Online and can be used for VoIP services. You will, however have to cancel T-Online in due course, and you MIGHT find you have a long cancellation period. T-Online revised most of their customer contracts last year to enforce annual renewal and for you to only be able to cancel within 28 days of the end of your contract year. There is nothing to stop you still having the T-Online contract running (as in fact you may be forced to do), even if you don't use it - you can use either Freenet OR T-Online Internet access on the line. Freenet will ultimately take over the DSL element of your line from Telekom, but it can take a couple of months. If you are upgrading speed they may wait until they have the line in their hands before changing it. This will be invisible to you - the cost won't change, the service won't change, just the person who bills you. You can't (shouldn't) cancel the phone line. Without this you can't have DSL. Even if you now get VoIP services from Freenet these will supplement your current phone line/number. You will continue to pay phone line rental to Telekom once your Freenet transfer is complete.

Cheques are such old-hat these days - I've not seen one myself for over two years. Although still legal, very few banks in Germany issue them these days, although there is nothing to stop you printing your own.

Just to break up all the tales of woe...

We just got Feenet DSL (DSL2000 + flat rate with our existing T-Com connection). It only took a couple of weeks from ordering to getting it switched on (at my last place I used Tele2 which took over 2 months), it was switched on the day they said it would be, the hardware arrived on time, it was a piece of piss to set up and (and I realise this also depends on the quality of T-Com's cabling) the upload/download is as fast as it should be.

Big gold star for Freenet.

Wait till something goes wring and you have to call them on their 1,29 euro per minute help line..

1&1 is .99 cents a minute if it hasn't gone up.

Alice has a free call line.

I was with Freenet for a couple of years using their FreeDSL 2000 flat rate package and was quite happy with them. Never had a problem. However, when we recently moved house we discovered that we could not migrate the connection and had to go through a cancellation of the contract with Freenet to then have to re-open a new contract with them.

Sadly for Freenet I decided to go with Arcor who have a pretty good deal at the moment which is flatrate DSL (6000) plus flatrate calls in Germany and ISDN for €45 a month. So far everything has gone smoothly. The cancellation of the old T-Com ISDN has been handled by Arcor, the new hardware arrived today and the line should be activated next week. Only made the contract about 2 weeks ago, so it has all been done a lot faster than I expected.

Had a call a few minutes ago from a chap from Freenet. Asked me for some personal details which I wouldn't give him since he had no way to prove he was actually from that company. He had some outdated information about my T-Com contract which didn't exactly inspire confidence. Will look into it further as the 16M connection looks interesting.

This was the third call I've had in the last few weeks from various different service handlers. Seems there's a bit of a push going on.

I am in the process of trying to cancel my Freenet contract. I made a contract with them for 24 months based on the verbal promise of the sales person at the time.

1. The first promise was that it would take maximum of 4weeks to install.
2. The second was that if I had to go back to the U.S., all I had to do was get my Abmeldung (de-registration) and fax/send it to the service headquarters.
I signed up three months ago...still no connection, no hardware, nothing.

So I went to T-Online (Deutsche Telekom - T Mobile). One week later, I am up and running.
Now here is the whammy... I sent in a letter of cancellation stating the reason for my desire to cancel - a failure to fulfill their part of their promise to install on time...I got a letter back in three days saying "NO". So I went to the guy at the shop that sold me the contract. He called the headquarters to try to cancel for me, but ended up arguing with the headquarters worker. So I faxed in an official "Stop" on my account withdrawals from Freenet and wouldn't you know, 3 days after I faxed it in, I get an email saying that the hardware was being sent and that I had an appointment with the technician in 11 days. So I went to the lawyers at the Verbraucherzentral (consumer protection) and he had me send a letter that he wrote. Then he asked me to wait and see and call him back if it didn't help. So that is where I am at currently.

Needless to say, I am here to let you know via personal experience that YOU CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT SIGN ANYTHING BASED ON VERBAL PROMISES. Yes, it is my mistake for being so gullible. But you don't have to go through it. Go with Alice's monthly contract even if it takes longer to install. I don't think that I will be able to cancel even if I do move back to the States, but oh well, that's their problem since I don't plan to come back to any country in the EU for at least ten years after I leave Germany. I will keep you all informed of the situation...what a soap opera.

A SIDE NOTE:
The government agencies and the business establishments are the complete opposite of the everyday folks in Germany. They are without compassion, without ethics - worse than the greed of the American companies in some cases, while the people who live here in my experience are fine people who are fairly honest. The only bad experiences I have had in Germany have been with people who look like they come from the Mideast somewhere. This so far has been without exception. I have yet to find one who has been honest with me. Maybe I will get lucky and meet one, but I won't keep my fingers crossed. I didn't understand the rumors about how there rough sentiments between Germans and Turks or Mideast people in Berlin...but now to my dismay, I am beginning to see why.

I hope that this changes and that everyone can get along and just be honest to one another. This isn't a bashing of Mideast folks, nor the defense of Germans...I have had bad experiences with both, but at least I have had a few good experiences with Germans.

Best wishes and be careful of what you sign and who you deal with.

VT

gangsters !

Hmm... I took out a subscription for their DSL a couple of months ago, so your post is a bit worrying! Any further details?
Up to now, I've found them ok if everything goes ok. Support has been a bit of the "is it switched on?" level though.

A little story from arcor:
A friend of mine signed a contract for phone and internet flat.
After the installation he found out that he only got 2mbytes instead of 8.
He tried to call the hotline but only received meaningless answers.
So he directly wrote to the CEO of arcor promising him that he would sue arcor if they don't give him
what they promised.
Arcor immediately terminated the contract and cut the line.
Then my friend went to T-com to get a contract.
4 weeks later his telephone was working!
When he asked why it took so long, they answered that arcor blocked the line for 4 weeks.
Tomgraham is right!

I will stick to my T-com account. Even if I pay more.

Having worked for Strato (ducks behind sofa) a few years ago inbetween real jobs, having also been with T-com and 1&1 I would say there is little difference betweem the companies.

There are plenty of info on just how bad they all are, especialy when it comes to freeing up your line after you have cancelled your contract.

Fact of the metter is (right or wrong, in my opinion very wrong) when you cancel you go to the bottom of a pile of work, way below exisiting customers staying and way, way below new customers.

As far as I am concerned if you do not have a contract with a company then they have no right to have any block on your line. It should be freed straight away. Not the case at the moment.

Thats just as well, because withn Alice you are likely to be calling it a lot. A friend of mine has Alice VoiP and their servers were apparently down for nearly two weeks recently.

andy M

Has anyone managed to get the Freenet domain alias for email working?
I can use the default email address ok but I also took the free domain name from Freenet and set up some aliases for the family. Some mail servers have problems sending to these, and I can't get MS Outlook to download anything that does get through. I've followed Freenet's FAQ and emailed then a couple of times, but no luck.
Anyone successfully using their alias for email? I'm beginning to wish I'd paid for a domain name instead!

Well, I should have read through this before switching to freenet myself - but I wasn't around tt at the time I got my Freenet call. Assuming that since they had taken over Tiscali the transition would be smooth was WRONG. I'm back online after a day and several expensive and useless phone calls - and with the WRONG PIECE of hardware they sent. Idiots. Will probably cost a pretty penny to get the wireless up and running and my MAIN TELEPHONE NUMBER back.
Totally not worth the effort IMHO. Even cabled up the download time of seems SLOWER than my old connection.

Just wondering if anyone has found a way of cancelling the contract?

They signed me up to the wrong plan (pay per minute internet which I would NEVER choose) but deny this and I have just found the 700 odd euros to pay the first bill and I tried cancelling but they won't let me and just send me another 200 euro bill which I can't pay as they well know!

You need the help of a lawyer.

I'm considering that but from what I've grasped of their AGBs (I speak German but the 20 pages is a little hard to get through!) I don't have a case...