Published on 12:00 AM, January 13, 2022

A breakup letter to my toxic ISP

“It wasn’t me, it was you.”

Illustration: JUNAID IQBAL ISHMAM

Dear ISP,

Everybody says a good relationship is built on trust, loyalty, and most importantly, connection. Uninterrupted connection. But along the way, you took away everything from me, even my buffer-less YouTube experience.

The first few months with you were a dream. I still remember the day we met. You reeled me in, made me feel special with your "no installation fees" offer. Pfft. I even thought you were charging me lower than your other customers.

I rarely had any issues with our connection, and even if I did, I knew that I could rely on your promised 24/7 customer support to fix it instantly. I never imagined that these promises would turn out to be emptier than New Market on a Tuesday. 

I refused to listen to the warnings of my friends who told me, "That's how they always are at the beginning." I'd always ward them off by declaring you weren't like everyone else. I was so naïve; I actually believed you were different.

Slowly but surely, the cracks started to show. I guess I was just wearing rose-tinted glasses so I missed all the red flags. It began with bad ping and sudden connection interruptions. You started to ignore my calls on the help desk hotline. And when someone did pick up, I'd get a cold "We'll get back to you shortly" or "We're looking into it" without ever actually hearing back.

 The default answer you'd give to my complaints was "Try switching your router off and on again." I can't believe how easily you made me believe it was all my fault – my router's fault – and never yours.

 You can't say I wasn't patient, that I didn't try. I thought maybe we were just growing apart. So, even though I hated the idea of buying things to make you happy, I still did my best I could financially. I always knew relationships would be costly, but I subscribed to your most expensive package and even bought a new router.

But you went on. How many times do underground cables actually get cut, ISP? Your lack of communication was becoming more apparent than ever. You were becoming slow to catch up with how I was feeling, slow to catch up with what I wanted to browse on the internet.

I mean, you stopped showing up. You weren't there for me on my final exams, you couldn't even be there for me on my late night Among Us runs. I missed out on spending time with my friends just for you.

I've finally come to my senses. In retrospect, I took this long to cut you off because I think I got too comfortable and I was afraid to leave you. I know you treated me so poorly, like one of your side customers, that Taylor Swift could probably write Red 2 about you.

We're over.

Don't you dare show up to collect your bills this month.

Send Tanmoy suggestions for a new ISP at: fb.com/tanmoy.tanzim