VERY OT: internet infrastructure - any alternatives to Hot and Bezeq?

[geoffrey mendelson]

On Jan 21, 2010, at 6:23 PM, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote:
>
> One thing that never got solved for me, by the way, is the fact that
> Hot absolutely refuse to provide anything written regarding the terms
> of a deal that you negotiate with them. They record phone calls, log
> issues in their CRM, whatever, and the customer has absolutely no
> verifiable record of what has transpired. I started keeping written
> summaries of my conversations with them, logging names, dates,
> details, etc., for reference. I do not know whether it will ever help
> in case of a dispute.


AFAIK, this is no longer legal. The new consumer protection law of  
2009 changed a lot of this, but since my Hebrew is not good enough to  
tell, and I have not found an English translation, I can't say with  
certantiy. The bad news is it does not matter, If you were a HOT  
customer before Jan 1, 2009, you fit in under the old rules,

The only way out is to cancel ALL of your service with HOT, wait some  
period, and sign up as a new customer.

There is a technological solution to this, BTW, several of the VoIP  
softphones record calls, and there are add ons for Skype, but my guess  
is that they are for Windows/Mac. If there is something you have to  
do, e.g. beep, when you are recording, or if they are admissiable in  
court, I don't know.

HOT just received approval to be an ISP, so you can have "one stop  
shopping", although I expect the word stop has a lot more to do with  
it than you want.

Geoff.
-- 
geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Jerusalem Israel geoffreymendelson at gmail.com
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge  
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