My ISP has banned Opera :furious:

OK, I knew this was coming. I'm with BTOpenworld (formerly BTInternet) and they've slowly been "upgrading" users to their new portal/brand called BTYahoo!.

Apart from a new super-overloaded and XP-style homepage which I can – and will – do without, they require you to log-in on every visit. Try doing this with Opera and you get a polite message saying it's time to 'update your browser' . And what do they offer? That awful browser/bruiser IE6 or Netscape. OK, NS ain't so bad, but it's no longer even supported by Netscape so far as I know. Makes no difference if you identify Opera as IE (though why should we?).

The upgrade has totally pooped my most heavily used e-mail account as well. Apparently it'll take up to 48 hours to know whether it'll come back. Can't even get to it via webmail at the moment. Small mercy is that there's a short route to collect webmail that does accept Opera.

All this is supposedly so they can give me a personalized web experience. Well I'd achieved that on my own. They even send the advisory email in html with no proper plain text version attached, so I have to change the settings in Pegasus if I want to read it properly, go back on line and allow lazy-html to make its way to my machine.

So deeply unhappy tonight… :down:

This Post Has 17 Comments

  1. Rijk

    10 Mar 2004

    Make sure to tell them what you think about this change!

  2. ctv

    10 Mar 2004

    tough luck… do you use ie or ns???

  3. non-troppo

    10 Mar 2004

    what if you mask Opera completely from the user-agent string (Proxomitron will do this for you)?

    If you post a URL to the forums, probably users can analyse what exactly they are checking and maybe help you out.

  4. chas

    10 Mar 2004

    I got a similar message some days ago, but now I seem to be able to connect to the portal bt.yahoo.com using Opera – but maybe that's not the URL that was throwing you off?

  5. Words

    10 Mar 2004

    Chas

    That's the one that blocks me if I try and log in. The webmail portal works fine (well, not fine: it allows me in once, then throws me out when I try and log in on another mail account. May need to check my cookies on that one).

  6. Words

    10 Mar 2004

    I've resoreted to IE to log in, but once I've got my mail problem sorted they won't see me at that page for dust!

  7. Words

    10 Mar 2004

    I'm on the relevant thread somewhere! (Open the Web/BT Yahoo Portal). We suffer (but not silently)

  8. Words

    10 Mar 2004

    Oh they know alright. Ongoing saga on their internal newsgroups…

  9. OperaSinger

    10 Mar 2004

    and I can try to sort them out??

    Let's just say I have a bit of experience dealing with heathens such as this 🙂

    Cheers,

    Dean

  10. Words

    10 Mar 2004

    I'll try and find a phone number or email for the head honcho there…

    Words

  11. nottstu_1

    10 Mar 2004

    you could of coure change your isp……

    http://www.metronet.co.uk are not only cheaper than bt they seem to me to be better on all counts.

    i never used bt but a friend is in process of changing after seeing my metronet, which is price capped payg broadband.

    cheers

  12. nottstu_1

    10 Mar 2004

    you could of coure change your isp……

    http://www.metronet.co.uk are not only cheaper than bt they seem to me to be better on all counts.

    i never used bt but a friend is in process of changing after seeing my metronet, which is price capped payg broadband.

    cheers

  13. Words

    10 Mar 2004

    Dean

    I've located the e-mail for the Managing and Head of BTYahoo development. Have you got an off line address I can mail to (I don't want to publish the addresses)?

    You can mail me at March04@paulcecil.com

    (the address is good for two months, and then I kill it… spam avoidance)

    Thanks… lots of us at BTYahoo wil welcome some pressure on this one.

    Words

  14. Words

    10 Mar 2004

    Dean

    I've located the e-mail for the Managing and Head of BTYahoo development. Have you got an off line address I can mail to (I don't want to publish the addresses)?

    You can mail me at March04@paulcecil.com

    (the address is good for two months, and then I kill it… spam avoidance)

    Thanks… lots of us at BTYahoo will welcome some pressure on this one.

    Words

  15. nottstu_1

    10 Mar 2004

    a friend of mine is just leaving bt to join me at metronet (co.uk) – going to save herself a lot of money too.

    ulimited access cost capped pay as you go broadband starting rate less then some people pay for dial-up.

    i hae no pecuniary interest in them but have been telling all my friends how good it is so why keep the secret from you….

    browse on.

  16. Words

    10 Mar 2004

    Thanks for the recommendation.

    It has crossed my mind to move, but I'm not the only user and there's umpteen mail accounts and a couple of websites tied to the account. I'll suffer a while longer (but not in silence).

  17. Maverick_NYC

    10 Mar 2004

    That must have been a bad pill to swallow!

    DUDE, write them a nice letter letting them know that you switched ISPs…

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