The crooked verbal contract of Speakeasy
I live in the Seattle area, much to my chagrin on a “private road”, where there is little in terms of availability of broadband Internet connections. This is particularly sucky because of the oodles of provider options in the area. I use static IPs, so I typically have a business plan with whatever provider I use. For about the past year and a half prior to the most recent six months, I had been using Comcast cable with a business plan. The speed was great and I never had any problems. It was a relatively decent price for a /29 (almost) and oodles of bandwidth. When I moved, I practically begged them to provide service on the road 
Unfortunately, when I moved, due to the “private road” crap, there is no cable along the length of the road. So I was forced into DSL, which I’ve never really had a good experience with. At the time, it was my understanding that Qwest didn’t offer any business class services, so I ended up going with a provider I actually signed up for while heading up the systems side at Avvo; Speakeasy.
I had been happy with the service, despite it being grossly overpriced for crappy DSL at $150/mo. Originally they had set me up with an 8Mbps/1 line but I consistently had problems with it, and despite apparently trying to sell me the more expensive circuit, the line was too far from the CO to handle it. So a couple of months into service I downgraded to 6Mbps/768k for $130(!!)/mo.
The house I’m living in currently has a 6mo lease, so when I signed up for service I certainly would never had committed to a year contract. And, of course, I did no such thing. The items on my first bill were “monthly DSL” and their outrageous setup fees. But I had not much choice due to the location and I wasn’t going to pay comcast $200/foot to bring a cable to the house.
So I called up the other day after calling Qwest (which is the carrier for my DSL line under speakeasy anyway) and realizing that they do, in fact, provide business class service for … oh… about half the price. Yep, they offer the same speed, same subnet for about $85/mo. So I called up Speakeasy to find out if I had to cancel with written notice or whatever and spoke with Stephen Wille (stephen.wille@hq.speakeasy.net). He was pleasant and, despite my almost immediate frustration with being told I was under a contract, I explained to him the situation, my 6 MONTH lease and that this can’t be right. I also dug up all my old correspondence (of which was only some emails) looking for my old order information. Nothing to be seen about a 1 year contract, let alone the criminal $300 fee for terminating it within the first year.
So he does some checking and apparently the 1 year agreement is a verbal contract. Ha! And by using the service, as seen in the tos below, you’re agreeing to whatever they could have possibly told you over the phone. Which, in my case, didn’t include anything about 1 years worth of service! Yay!
Well today I got an email which I’m not surprised to see:
Hi Ryan,
I’m afraid the use of our service is taken as a contractual agreement, which I’ve linked to below.
One work around may be to have the next occupant take over the contract, or go with Speakeasy at your new location.http://www.speakeasy.net/tos/msa.php
Acceptance by you of this Agreement occurs upon the earlier of: (a) Speakeasy’s acceptance of a Service Order signed by you indicating your acceptance of this Agreement; (b) your acceptance of this Agreement electronically during an online order, registration or when installing the Software or the Equipment; (c) your use of the Service; or (d) your retention of the Software or Equipment we provide beyond thirty (30) days following delivery. If you change Service plans, your term and monthly rate may change (depending on the plan you select), but all other provisions of this Agreement will remain in effect unless otherwise noted.
________________________________
Speakeasy<http://www.speakeasy.net/> - helping small businesses succeed
________________________________
Stephen Wille
Business Support Representative
M-F 07:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. PSTPhone 1.800.556.5829
Email support@speakeasy.net
www.speakeasy.net/myspeak<http://www.speakeasy.net/myspeak>
________________________________
Now I’m usually pretty anal about bills and whatnot. I’m not one to omit reading the fine print. And I’m not stupid enough to agree to a 1 year contract living in a house with a 6 month lease.
You see, what happened was that Grant Hetherington, the lowly sales guy that I apparently talked to when dialing the 800 number to request service never mentioned a 1 year contract. I, of course, only know his name in retrospect. Do you remember the name of the guy you talked to when you signed up for cable, for utilities? Must be nice for his bottom line to sucker people into crooked setups. Unfortunately Grant’s email address is doesn’t seem to correlate to any speakeasy pattern that I can guess within a 5 minute timespan. Although you can view his linked in page here. I would love to post his email address so everyone can let him know how crappy it is to omit telling someone about a verbal contract they’re agreeing to!
So there you have it. Notice in the signature, they’re “helping small business succeed” by suckering them into contractual fees.
So, Speakeasy, you’ve alienated one of your customers who previously would have been in a position to spread the word around Seattle that, despite the higher price, the service is good. No more.
Thanks for your blog entry. I’m thinking about s#itcanning Speakeasy also. Fortunately I am past the 1-yr contractual obligation. I sure hope the salesman didn’t say something like 5 years because I sure don’t remember. Their customer service is better than Comcast, but like you we were upsold on a theoretical rate plan. In reality we have 1.5Mbps service that’s almost 100% rock steady for…. drum roll… $60/mo!! It’s almost criminal, especially in the beginning having to pay for the modem (twice!) and the Qwest/Covad setup fees. Well, I’m looking at maybe Clear/Clearwire. For $45 minus taxes we can (in theory) get 6Mbps, or correspondingly lesser plans. Good luck to you.