Affordable Online Access with a Little Known Internet Service Provider (ISP): Access-4-Free
Written: Jun 16 '02 (Updated Jun 16 '02)
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Pros: Affordable Online Access with a Little Known Internet Service Provider (ISP)
Cons: May not be available in your area
The Bottom Line: If you're looking for an Affordable ISP, look no further! :)
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| doddaa2001's Full Review: Affordable Internet Services Online |
Doing my best to cut expenses after I was laid off from my job I took a hard look at what I could and could not afford.
Although I knew I needed access to the Internet, I couldn't justify paying $21.95/month for an ISP. At the time I was using AT&T Worldnet. The last straw was when I called AT&T Worldnet to request that they change my due date because of my now sporadic cashflow. AT&T's response was that I had to cancel the account and sign back up on the day that I wanted. Their poor customer service, even after telling them that if I had to cancel that I would not be signing up again, and their price were enough for me to cancel my account.
Now it was down to business I had to find an affordable ISP. I had no idea where to start looking so I placed the words "Free ISP" in MSN's search engine. It returned several hits. Some of the more popular ISP freebies were listed first: Juno, NetZero etc. Neither of which were appealing to me. I have used both Juno and NetZero in the past and have had problems with both ISP's kicking me off because of heavy traffic. Then there are the banner ads to contend with. I am so sick of banner ads! I know that the general idea is that if you click on the banner ad then the advertising fee gets sent to the company in order to support the cost of maintaining the servers so the service can still be free to you the consumer. (By the way, services like Juno and Netzero have a 10 hour limit unless you pay their additional fees.) I still don't like them.
Then I came across an ISP that I'd never heard of before, Access-4-Free. Once I clicked on the link it redirected me to http://www.Access-4-Free.com There I learned that this service has an unusual method of supporting itself. If you are online for 10 hours or under each month you are charged nothing. For each hour after that you are charged $1.00 up to $10. So if you exceed 20 hours, as I tend to do you will still only be charged $10. I signed up right then and have been using it faithfully for the past several months.
I have had no problems! The connection is always fast and reliable (no longer am I kicked off because of heavy network traffic), there are no nasty banner ads, no contract (I can cancel anytime), and not only is Access-4-Free compatible with my IM (Instant Messenger Services: AOL, ICQ, Yahoo etc.), they don't have you install any additional software so when/if you decide to cancel you're done. No having to find the uninstall program!
All in all this is a great way to save my pennies with a superior service!
Recommended:
Yes
Monthly fees (US$): Free-$10.00
Platform used: Windows NT
Hosted on Secure Server: Yes
Database used: MSQL
Main focus of Web site: Customer service and retention
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Epinions.com ID:
doddaa2001
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Reviews written: 64
Trusted by: 2 members
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