I now have DSL service at my house. A highly-skilled Covad employee arrived at my house this morning and performed a "professional installation," which I was unable to opt out of.

On the one hand, I was told beforehand what the charge would be and for some reason agreed to pay it. On the other hand, I was told that the exorbitant cost was the result of some mystical and highly technical procedure that had to be performed by a high priest of Covad, which mere mortals such as myself could not possibly comprehend. When the service technician arrived this morning, he plugged the router into the wall, put an ethernet cable in it, and connected the other end to his laptop. The pre-configured settings of the router worked just fine. We tested it on my laptop as well, with a similar result. That was it for my professional installation. It lasted approximately three minutes and cost me roughly $75 per minute.

I was livid, naturally.

I had a few rounds of email back-and-forth with the ISP, during which they became quite defensive and their attitude was made clear: I agreed to pay the price, as per the signed contract, so it doesn't matter what they said the money was for.

I convinced Minesh not to use the same ISP, which I'm sure will cost them well over $225 in the long run. Then I flamed them forcefully on DSLreports.com, a sort of Better Business Bureau for DSL providers. If they hadn't given me nothing but utter bullshit when I complained this morning, and been rather condescending about it, they'd be making more money right now. For now, I'm going to spend some of my 21 day grace period, during which I can cancel my contract at any time, looking for a provider who has a bit better sense of customer satisfaction.