Cancelling An Internet Service

[tfc]

I'm renting a house and the former tenant kept his internet running which she said I could just continue to pay for. The only problem is that it works perhaps 6 hours in 4 days. So far the ISP hasn't been able to do anything to fix this problem. I contacted the tenant and she said that if it doesn't work I should just get them to cut it and the ISP says that I can't because I'm on a contract. The former tenant doesn't mind if I cut it because she's left the country now but as a new tenant I'm wondering what my rights/options are here? While I'm not wanting to do anything dodgy, the thing isn't under my name and it feels a bit useless paying for a service that doesn't work.

[Phil Conners]

Only the person signing the contract can cancel it. You should have gone to the ISP with the owner of the line and completed the necessary paperwork to be responsible for it, that way you would have known about any contracts and been able to deal with issues yourself.

Obviously if you stop paying the bill they will eventually cut the service, but it is not a nice way out, and it is things like that, that makes it so difficult for the rest of us here. The locals quickly learn that farangs can't be trusted.

Who is the ISP anyway? Internet generally works ok these days. If as you said it only works 6 hours in 4 days you need to find out why. Very often the problem is the last bit of cabling, from the street-post to the router, and that is the one area that ISP's are not responsible for. Have you had the ISP come out and check the line to the street-post? Try buying a new string of phone cable, you can buy it in most hardware stores, it's only a few baht per meter. Run a direct line from the street-post to your router. If that takes care of the problem you need to replace the cabling to your house - that would be something you need to discuss with the owner of the house.

[givenall]

Only the person signing the contract can cancel it. You should have gone to the ISP with the owner of the line and completed the necessary paperwork to be responsible for it, that way you would have known about any contracts and been able to deal with issues yourself.

Obviously if you stop paying the bill they will eventually cut the service, but it is not a nice way out, and it is things like that, that makes it so difficult for the rest of us here. The locals quickly learn that farangs can't be trusted.

Who is the ISP anyway? Internet generally works ok these days. If as you said it only works 6 hours in 4 days you need to find out why. Very often the problem is the last bit of cabling, from the street-post to the router, and that is the one area that ISP's are not responsible for. Have you had the ISP come out and check the line to the street-post? Try buying a new string of phone cable, you can buy it in most hardware stores, it's only a few baht per meter. Run a direct line from the street-post to your router. If that takes care of the problem you need to replace the cabling to your house - that would be something you need to discuss with the owner of the house.

The person who signed for it responsible for the service. You can just ignore them and start a service with another provider if you wish.

As courtesy just let the owner know you don’t need the service anymore so he/she can cancel and not get charged for the service

[Phil Conners]

The person who signed for it responsible for the service. You can just ignore them and start a service with another provider if you wish.

That was what I said, wasn't it? It just doesn't make any sense to waste time setting up a new service just to find out that it doesn't change anything. It makes a lot more sense to try to find out first what is the problem. The OP didn't disclose the ISP, but if it is any of the big ones the problem is more likely to be with the local cabling. I'm not saying there are no problems with the ISP, but none that would only make it usable 4 hours in 6 days.

As courtesy just let the owner know you don’t need the service anymore so he/she can cancel and not get charged for the service

As the OP explained in the first post, the person responsible for the connection is no longer in Thailand and don't care. That is not the issue.

[Pib]

If you do decide to cancel and can actually get it canceled without the original contract signer doing the cancellation, but durn sure there is another Internet Service Provider (ISP) that can provide internet service to your house because in some areas/moobaans there may only be one ISP that can provide service.

Example: up until last year when True installed DOCSIS/cable internet & TV service in my western Bangkok moobaan, if you wanted a internet line your choices were TOT, TOT, or TOT because they had sole phone and internet rights to our moobaan...and they still have sole landline phone rights. Well, actually you could also sign up for a JINET internet plan which was a TOT concessionaire but you still had to have a TOT line to get the JINET internet service....JINET provided the internet server/gateway service while TOT provided the line and DSLAM connection....you only paid JINET for the internet service but TOT got a cut from JINET under the concessionaire contract.

[tfc]

Thanks for the replies. It's been handled now as the ISP cancelled and cut the service.