Ive Been Shafted By Wanadoo.

[padi56]

Well OK, not personally, but my PC has. Or it feels like it anyhow.

I've just bought my first laptop, and although it's connected to my broadband network at home, I thought it would be a good idea to set up a dial-up account if I need it when on the move, so had a look at some of the options that came with the PC. I decided to set up a pay-as-you-go dial up account with Wanadoo, so that I'd have the number already set up in my PC if and when I'd need it.

However, to set it up, I needed to use the modem, and forgetting how bleeding unbelievable slow and cumbersome a 56k dial up modem was, I soon lost interest half way through the registration process, and cancelled it, thinking that I'd sort it out at a later date.

So I close the windows, and go back to my desktop, only to find no less than 5 new bloody icons on there, all advertising Wanadoo services. Funny really, considering I hadn't even signed up to the buggers but hey-ho. 5 clicks of the mouse, they were soon gone, and I opened Internet Explorer.

It was only then that I was thankful to Wanadoo for making me realise what a bloody stupid idiot I had been along, and how appreciative I was to Wanadoo for pointing this out.

Obviously my incredibly inferior Roboform search bar that I had installed in IE needed to be replaced by the far superior Wanadoo search bar. How silly of me. Plus, the address bar was in such a stupid place, but thanks to Wanadoo, was placed in the correct place above. And as for my TRF homepage, what a thick bugger I was by having my own choice, and how stupid I now realise I was by not having Wanadoo as my homepage. But thanks to Wanadoo, it soon sorted itself out. All this help, and without me even having to sign up to them!

Thanks Wanadoo. I wonder if the managing director would mind me breaking into his house while he wasn't looking and rearranging his living room to my tastes as a way of saying thank you? He wouldn't even have to pay me.

This sort of sh!t boils my bloody p!ss to steam. There's tons of software that does this kind of sh!t to your PC, such as anything 'free' or anything downloaded via naughty sites etc., which I've always desperately avoided wink wink. But although I've never had any dealings with Wanadoo before, I kind of assumed they were a reasonably respectable company, and it never even crossed my mind that they were the sort of company that used such low down, dirty, PC raping tactics to spread their business.

I've since done an Adware scan on my system, and found 1 new instance labelled "urgent attention" and 8 new cookie trackers that weren't there before.

What a bunch of absolute tw@ts. Do they really sit in their offices and assume that people will see this type of bloody, underhand, hard sell tactics, and actually sign up?

I sometimes look at these religious nutters that stand on street corners preaching the word of the Lord, and wonder just how many passing strangers they manage to sign up. I mean, I've never, ever, seen anyone stop what they were doing, and show an interest. In fact, everyone I ever see walking past them either quickens their pace, just ignores them, or looks on with a slight look of confused, frightened, "should they really be allowed out?" bewilderment.

This is the same sort of thing if you ask me. I can't be the only one who is positively put off from ever having any business dealings with Wanadoo now that I know what they are about. Surely it doesn't take a brain of bloody Britain to realise that this sort of sh!t is totally counter-productive?

I've now signed up with a pay-as-you-go BT account, and guess what? The only change it made to my PC was adding their number in my modem settings. I'm tempted to say 'thank fek', but why should I? They've only done what I wanted/assumed they would do, and will happily get my business if and when I need it. And to bleeding to the Wanadoo tw@ts the second word is a big OFF.