The director of ISP SurfAnyTime (SAT), Derek Lewis, has updated us on the increasingly hostile situation between SAT and the new owners of Affinity Internet, Vitaldata (VD). VD appears to have begun posing as SAT in order to gain the custom of existing subscribers.

Those unfamiliar with the history of this dispute may like to read some of the past / related news (in order) HERE, HERE and HERE. SurfAnyTime's director has kindly allowed us to replicate the content of his message:

As you may be aware, SurfAnytime recently decided against signing a contract with Vitaldata Ltd. (Formerly Affinity Internet Ltd.) This decision was not taken lightly - but was based on two years experience of 'torture' at the hands of Affinity followed by the loss of a five figure sum of money. Indeed SurfAnytime have not seen a penny from Vitaldata / Affinity for 6 months.

Unlike other ISP's we gave the directors of Vitaldata the benefit of the doubt, but were continually let down in the 2 months following AIL's demise. Following the appointment of Paul Hesketh, we were told that if we didn't fall into line and do exactly what Vitaldata wanted, our customers would 'have the plug pulled on them'. Another example of this is that Affinity / Affinity's administrators are contractually bound to provide us with a database of our customer details - this comprises of billing details as well as dial-up details.

Receipt of this would have allowed us to easily import our customer base into our existing RADIUS platform - something we should be allowed to do following the administration of AIL. Instead, due to their reluctance to provide us with these details, we were forced to migrate customers email and ask customers to re-sign to us directly. Despite numerous emails and despite promise after promise, we have yet to receive the database. Without wishing to wildly throw accusations about, it does however appear that, these customer details have been freely passed between AIL and Vitaldata.

More recent events have been equally disturbing. Several SurfAnytime customers recently contacted us to say they had received an email which initially appears to be from SurfAnytime (see attached). Despite being signed off "From the SurfAnytime Customer Service Team", this email has undoubtedly come from Vitaldata and is a blatant bid to encourage our customers to join Vitaldata.

At no point has SurfAnytime or it's directors entered into a contract with Vitaldata nor have we ever given Vitaldata permission to use the SurfAnytime Ltd. brand name. Despite several attempts to contact Paul Hesketh and other Vitaldata employees (Mick Doyle and Rebecca Friswell), we have had no response. Unless a satisfactory explanation is given as to why Vitaldata has acted in such a manner, we intend to inform all relevant authorities and pursue the appropriate course of action.

Finally I'd like to point out that over the past few days Vitaldata has implemented a 'tunnelling device' meaning that all SurfAnytime customers have had their internet access tunnelled to a page which forces them to sign up to a Vitaldata package. We feel that this is bully boy tactics and would like to invite all SurfAnytime customers to join us on our own platform.

It’s clear from past news items that other UK ISPs have chosen to adopt a similar position to SAT by moving away from the old platform and going it alone. This whole situation no doubt explains at least some of the reason behind why those services chose to move.

Unfortunately we’ve been unable to contact VD because their website does not provide any higher-level address or phone details outside of a basic support line. We will continue our attempts next week in the hope of gaining some perspective from the other side.