Using the Phone Co-op has been a complete nightmare.

Firstly, there is no proper communication between the co-op and BT in order to set up a new telephone line. It took two visits from BT and numerous phone calls to the phone co-op to even get the line up and running. The icing on the cake was that the co-op began their billing period from the first day the line was supposed to be working - this was the first instance of the phone co-op scrounging for money.

Secondly, our so-called 'working' line is anything but - some calls come through and others don't in a daily game of call lottery that the phone co-op forces us to play. It's really a matter of luck if someone can actually get through to us.

And finally, we were charged our connection fee twice despite ringing up the phone co-op and highlighting their mistake. Though we were assured that this error would be rectified before the direct debit was processed, we had the phone co-op take out three times more than what our original bill was worth come the end of the month. I had to eventually ask to speak to a supervisor since the initial customer service assistant I talked to spouted so much gobbledygook that all meaning was lost ("The initial connection fee has not been processed, and will need to be allocated to your account before we can refund your payment"). It takes over a month for the phone co-op to 'allocate' payments it seems.

And it's not a case of 'You get what you pay for' either. The Phone co-op is expensive relative to other ISPs.

We didn't want to give more money to the big companies and decided to give co-op a go. What a mistake that was. We're roped in for another 18 months of this BS, if I were you I would look for another ISP.