I signed on with MSN in December '00, when they had a promotion for DSL for $39.95 a month, free modem, and no startup charge. In the 6 to 8 weeks until the DSL line was installed, they offered free dialup. About seven weeks after signup, a man from Southwestern Bell came out to install the line. To be accurate, it was seven weeks and a day, since he had been given the wrong address and was unable to call because I was on the internet. He came out the next morning and set up the line. The DSL modem arrived a few days after the line was installed, at which point I had to wait three days for another installer to come set up the modem itself, which I could have done on my own had the tech support people given me the proper information over the phone.

Which was just as well. When the two (two!) installer guys came to my apartment, they quickly discovered I'd been sent the wrong modem. Luckily, they had a spare with them. The service took about 30 minutes to set up (my presence was only required to input my user name and password), and everything was well and good, almost eight weeks to the day I'd ordered it. They managed to do it within their window, but promptness would have been appreciated. Sadly, within about six weeks of getting DSL, NorthPoint, their provider, declared bankruptcy and suspended their service. A representative from MSN called me a few days later and offered six months (or until they found a new DSL provider) free dialup and a $25 gift certificate to MSN's shopping site. As I'd already seen the offer mentioned on a few news websites, I accepted, in hopes that they'd find a new partner and I wouldn't have to switch ISPs. Most other companies seemed to need $100 or $200 up front in order to activate the service, so I put it off until a screaming-great offer presented itself to me.

The dialup service was fair to middling, with few busy signals. However, about every other day it would disconnect for no readily apparent reason and refuse to reconnect for 30 to 45 minutes at a time. MSN Explorer is nothing but a reskinned Internet Explorer and completely superfluous. You can use dial-up networking if you put MSN/ before your username. Their help website, while nicely designed, is for absolute neophytes (Q: "I can't connect to MSN. What's the matter?" A: "Make sure your computer is turned 'ON'") and their annoying voice mail system refers you back to the website incessantly.

Then, on Easter Sunday, I discovered our bank balance was mysteriously overdrawn. A quick check of online banking showed that MSN Online Billing had applied a charge of $91.30. Most curious for free dialup, so I called customer service to find out what was going on. I was being billed for "US connection through ICG". The representative suggested that my modem was possibly being rerouted and dialing overseas numbers. I protested that those charges would then go through my long distance carrier, not through my ISP. After pecking around in his computer a bit more, he discovered that "US connection through ICG" is their code for broadband subscribers who go over their allotted 5 hours per month of dialup time, and as such I'd been being billed for every minute thereafter. I explained that I'd switched over to their free dialup plan and that the charges shouldn't apply to my account. I was transferred to a supervisor who then told me that they were powerless to credit my account, and that I would have to fax their billing department, who would take care of it the next morning. I copied the offending section from my bank statement and faxed it along with the letter to their billing department. The credit, along with the 4 or 5 overdraft fee credits, followed about a week (and many, many calls to customer service) later.

I considered the matter settled and continued to use their dialup service, naively hoping at this point they'd get themselves straightened out and give me my DSL back. Then, around the middle of May, we once again found that we'd been billed $237.54 by MSN for "US Connection through ICG". Being an expert on these matters by this point, I immediately called them and demanded that they take back, credit, or do something to the charge before it was processed, resulting, once again, in overdraft fees. The representative I spoke to was helpful and promised it would be straightened out by Monday (this was on a Saturday). We also called our bank and attempted to dispute the charge, but since it hadn't actually been applied to the account yet, they couldn't do anything about it. Taking MSN at their word, we figured it would sort itself out.

About a week later, my fiancé arrived home, furious, saying, "Check the bank balance". We were somehow negative two hundred dollars, because the MSN charge had actually posted (we never heard a thing from them about this), running our account negative for a few days, which we hadn't noticed because her paycheck covered the fees and left us (barely) positive. Called MSN again, who recommended that we fax their billing department to get it straightened out. No chance of calling them, however--apparently the MSN billing folks are sequestered in a mountainside somewhere in Washington, with only a fax machine connecting them to the outside world. Your only hope, if you have a billing grievance with MSN, is to fax and hope.

So--faxed billing yet again for refunds on $237.54 of farcical charges, as well as the 12 (and counting) $20.00 overdraft fees. We called MSN's customer support approximately once a day apiece, on average, to see if the mysterious billing folk had made any "notes" on our account to see if we might be getting our refund soon. My fiancé discovered that a portion of the $237.54 charge was $39.95 for DSL, and I dealt with a cranky representative that tried to tell me that they were simply long distance charges. After a week of no response from billing, I filed a dispute on the charge with the bank. They immediately reversed all twenty of the overdraft fees, and said we should probably receive the rest in 7 to 10 business days.

MSN billing finally did call, but managed to do so at a time when neither of us was home, leaving a voicemail that they'd try later (they never did). The number on the caller ID, when I tried to call it back, was a busy signal. In an attempt to put some pressure on MSN, my fiancé filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, a fraud charge with the FTC, as well as a few others. The reply we received from the BBB was more or less "we'll put your complaint in the Microsoft pile along with the others and get back to you in a year or so". Around two weeks later, the bank managed to reverse the charges, resolving the matter and finally letting me cancel my account with them. After we received the second exorbitant bill, I signed up with another ISP and never used MSN again, and have since found another DSL provider.

Then, just last week, a month after canceling my account, in perusing our bank statement, I noticed that they'd charged us yet again, this time for a mysterious $3.92. I once again disputed the payment with the bank (it's the principle of it), and am now in the process of changing my debit card number, simply so they aren't able to charge it anymore. Other services also use this card number to auto-bill me, but the hassle involved is well worth getting rid of them for good.

I'd feel awful if I forgot to mention one other aspect of their service--my e-mail address never, ever worked. Never received a single thing with it. I never intended to use it for anything, since I have my own domain, but it bears mentioning.

Oh, and they never sent the $25.00 gift certificate.


Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 39.95/"Free"