WHY I THINK SPEAKEASY SUCKS.

I am officially free of Speakeasy as of today ... easily the worst, with frequent service outages, secret fees and confounding policies. After they were bought out by Best Buy a few months back there was zero reason for hanging on -- their status as an independant local firm was gone and so was I. But then I learned from one of their friendly phone support people (infuriatingly, Speakeasy staff are unfailingly polite and apologetic about any problems) that since I was locked into a contract it would cost me more to pull out early than to pay for two more months of service. In the meantime, I had to call Speakeasy three times to report service outages, an absolutely obscene lack of utility from a company I didn't even want to employ.

Today I sat and waitied on the phone while the service fella's computer slowly loaded up the necessary forms to process my cancellation. He asked me why I was cancelling and I pointed out how much awkward silence we had just endured together on the phone while his lousy computer huffed and puffed and struggled to complete the task he had given it. "Even the computers you use at the Speakasy office suck, how can the internet service be any good?" I asked. He remained unflappable, but offered that I might have a point. Then he told me he couldn't uncover the genesis of a mysterious $150 charge that appeared on my bill and it would take some research. I told him to take his time, I wouldn't be paying it anyway.