The situation is a bit more complex than I indicated, but my arthritic left wrist was giving me fits, so I tried to be brief. The actual situation is as follows: I've had the Earthlink DSL for about a year & a half, but after you complete your contracted year unless you choose to abandon the service at the one year mark, they appear to be locking you in for another complete year. To me this is unethical. Also, I'm supposed to have 20 hours of free dial-up with the DSL each month. If you go over the 20 hrs, they bill you (actually deduct it from your card) $1 per hr or part thereof for each excess hour. With me, however, they decided that I should have a dial-up account in addition (without my authorization), and are now deducting an additional $21.95/month from my Visa. This, apparently, was due to my exceeding the 20 hrs of free dial-up under the DSL programme. Obviously, with only one CPU, I don't NEED two separate accounts. They seem to be oblivious to this. When my monthly Visa statement comes in (fairly soon), I intend to fight tooth & toenail to get the smaller of the two amounts restored to me. As to the CPU mfg, I did, indeed, follow the instructions of the "tech support", which is what angers me so. I did have a great deal of my data backed up on ZIP disks, and have managed to restore quite a lot, but I had been composing a family cookbook (had about 530 recipes in it already), and since I restored the ZIP drive to the CPU, it no longer recognises the extension on the cookbook, and when I try to change the extension, the ZIP drive won't permit it. My anger at both companies wouldn't be nearly so great if it were possible to restore all the data, but some of what was lost on the genealogy was digital scans of documents from an archive which has since burned, destroying the originals. Many of these were deeds, wills, etc., which were close to 200 years old (one of the wills was actually probated in 1836). Some of the recipes which were lost (they're still there on a ZIP disk, but unavailable for access), were over two hundred years old, and there were about 6 of them which were written down in 1603. I do wish to thank you for your input on this. Just telling the whole tale helps me relax a bit more...doesn't dispell the anger, just helps my disposition! Mike, IBSSG ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ruthie Jones" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 1:51 AM Subject: [BS-L] Bermuda Triangle??/Mike > > if the DSL client (Mike) signed a contract for a specific time (which is the norm) , i.e., a year, HE is breaking the contract by dropping the service before that time, and yes, he is subject to a early termination fee. It is not the DSL provider's problem that you no longer have an ethernet board. Read your paperwork before you start screaming for the FTC/Better Business Bureau and upper management. > > 40 years' research! That is a lot of data, to be sure. This is a lesson to us all to have everything backed up, off of the system's hard drive. On CD's, floppies, zip disks or what ever. That way, if your system dies, your data is safe. > > On the other hand, if the CPU mfg phone tech gave you instructions over the phone to follow, and you followed them perfectly, and the result was your board being fried, they are liable for the repair/replacement of your board. If they do not agree, call your credit card company, explain the situation and tell them you wish to refuse the charges. That should help make up for the cost of a new ethernet board. Hope this helps, > > Ruthie