news provider recommendation?

Not the best place to ask, perhaps, but I think I've seen a few nntp access discussions here in the past...

I've been a happy NiN user for several years. I'm still a happy NiN user, but it's renewal time, and that shower of useless bastards called ClickAndBuy are screwing me around, to the point where I don't think anything will get resolved before the NiN account expires (and TBH I don't think I trust an outfit such as C&B with any of my financial details, given how bad their website is)

So... I'm soliciting for useful alternatives to line up before my NiN account keels over - any recommendations? I don't mind paying a small amount per year if the service is as good as NiN's has been (it's just a pity they use idiots for the payment side of things)

cheers

Jules

(I'll email NiN later on the offchance I can just pay them directly)

Reply to
Jules
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Jules posted

Quite. They are the reason I stopped using NiN.

What I did was set up free accounts with TeraNews and Albasani. Both work OK with the odd slow period or outage. So I set some of my newsgroups to work on Tera and some on Albasani, ands thus there's always stuff coming through. If one of them collapses for an extended period, I can always switch the relevant newsgroups to collect from the other. So far it's been successful. I believe Motzarella is good too.

Reply to
Big Les Wade

In article , Jules scribeth thus

Glad to see that I'm not the only one then!.. Spent around an hour and a half with that load of wallies just to spend 8 quid and still no further forward!..

Pity our German friends couldn't get a more together outfit to take the money!...

Reply to
tony sayer

BTDT. Just last week, in fact.

Just email NIN user support, who are as helpful as CnB are useless, and tell them you want to pay by Paypal instead.

They'll change your account, you log onto your support page (use the same name & p/w as for news) and click on the Paypal logo. Sorted.

You can. I have. They're *very* helpful.

Reply to
Huge

:-) I suspect something's gone screwy because I moved countries, so have a US correspondence address for my bank, but a UK billing address. Maybe C&B's system can't handle that these days (although I'm surprised it cares about anything other than what the billing address is - which is still the same one I've had on file with them for the last x years). The really odd thing is that I paid via C&B this time last year when living in the US and it worked then, so from my PoV nothing's changed.

Unfortunately their website is spectacularly useless when it comes to feedback about problems, so I'm just speculating. I did just receive a reply from C&B's support folk a few mins ago after waiting a couple of days, and it sounds like they have no clue what's going on, either.

Hmm, I shall try. Maybe they'll cope better with the concept of people not living in the same country their whole life than C&B perhaps do :-)

I don't have a (working*) paypal account any more, but I should perhaps think about setting one up in the US (or I see that NiN support bank transfers, which might be even easier and less prone to problems)

  • that's a story in its own right and best kept for another day, but it left me extremely distrustful of paypal...

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules

I was equally frustrated by the annoyance of dealing with clickandbuy - so I tried out

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just happens to be free, which is always a nice bonus

Ran motz side-by-side with nin for a couple of days - couldn't see any difference, if anything then motz was a little faster.

Gave up on click-and-buy and nin - now running with motz - so far so good !

Adrian

Reply to
adrian

NiN had at least one other option.

[Pause while he logs on to check]

They have a "Pay by Bank Transfer" button, too. I have no idea what it does, and nor am I going to click to find out. But it might be worth asking.

Reply to
Huge

You can pay via PayPal as well as ClickAndBuy.

Cheers,

Reply to
Bob

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Jules saying something like:

NiN will happily take payment by IBAN/BIC - drop an email to Bettina Fink at NiN.

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

Barton's sister?

Reply to
Stuart Noble

The only way Nin said that I could cancel was to cancel my C&B order, this I could find no way to do, as I was in a hurry as the payment was imminent I removed my payment card. Then when I wrote to tell C&B I wanted to cancel there service they wrote back and said I needed to confirm that, what a run around. I am now with Motzarella.org, and am finding them much quicker as well as being free.

Reply to
Broadback

Hmm, I just heard back from someone at NiN and she says she can nuke the link to C&B for me, and then I can set up a paypal transfer instead...

That's probably the way to go; I'm just trying to get my paypal account into some sort of sensible shape before I give the go-ahead (they're another one of these multi-national companies who don't seem to acknolwedge that in this day and age people do move countries from time to time! :-)

cheers

J.

Reply to
Jules

That's what I thought when they started with C&B.

Yep I dumped C&B this time (within the last week or so) and paid by Paypal. Hardest bit was working out how to cancel the sub with C&B, the beggars still emailed me when it ran out with a message that read that I would no longer be able to access NIN unless I renewed via C&B.

You can do an international bank transfer but reading the NIN information you have to work out how much sterling to pay so that 8 euros dribbles out the other end after exchange rates and commissions.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Been running with Motzarella for some months now without problems. Free and good service.

John Miller

Reply to
John Miller

S'what she did for me.

Reply to
Huge

It just got better...

After some to-ing and fro-ing with C&B and no resolution or anticipation of one, I contacted NiN, who offered to cancel the C&B setup for me (as mentioned in another post), and I'd switch over to paying by paypal.

So, timeline for events so far today:

11:56: I emailed NiN telling then to cancel the C&B account. 1:54: Email from C&B arrives to say my payment went through, account is suddenly all working again, all is well with the world. How mysterious. 1:54: Second email from C&B arrives to say that due to the problems I'd been having (i.e. not due to NiN's request!), payment to NiN has been cancelled and my account has been credited. 1:55: Email from NiN arrives to say they've asked C&B to cancel the payment, as per my instructions. 2:11: Email from C&B arrives asking me to confirm cancellation of automatic payment to NiN.

I'm not sure if NiN contacting C&B magically got someone at C&B up off their backside to sort things out, but then the second of the C&B emails received at 1:54 seems to contradict the first, anyway.

I did ask NiN whether they had plans to use anyone less useless for payments, but they didn't respond to that bit ;)

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules

I've just got the Virginmedia news feed up and running which will do for now. They don't seem to filter out the junk posts quite like NiN do but I suppose yer pays yer money..

When you can..

As to click and buy .. its click and bye;)..

Reply to
tony sayer

Appears to have worked fine for me as usual. Have people been having problems?

Reply to
Tim Ward

My first use of C&B (when NiN started charging) wasn't too awful, just very bad. The first renewal was unbelievable and truly dire - but eventually worked. Now it goes through automatically without any problems - well, it said it did ...

Reply to
Rod

In article , Tim Ward scribeth thus

Yes.. couldn't get my card details changed either by phone or online..

Service over the phone is useless too:(...

Reply to
tony sayer

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