Texas.net terminated our dial up service without notice or cause, allowing 
email to bounce.  Excerpt from complaint below:

RE: Denial of service by Texas.net

Dear Sir:

.On Saturday, November 1, 2003, my computer was unable to logon to the
internet.  A call to my ISP revealed that someone had called in and canceled
my subscription to texas.net.  The record showed that the call was made on
September 10, 2003 and the technician on duty was told we would not be
renewing our subscription this year. 

I told the tech we made no such call and there must be some mistake. 
He said to call Troy on Monday to get reinstated.  It was Saturday. 
The problem would surely be fixed on Monday, however; it seemed unfair
that the service should not be available for three days due to their error. 

Some time later, I called back and asked tech support to turn the service 
on just for the weekend, explaining that there must be some mistake. 
He said, "No mistake, I am looking at your file and it shows a call came in
to us on September 10, stating that you would no longer need the service."

I told him I made no such call and asked him if the person calling 
identified themselves.  He said there was no name mentioned in the file
but stated that "It had to be someone who has your drivers license number
and your mothers maiden name."  I asked why I received no email confirming 
that the termination of services.   The technician said to talk to Troy 
on Monday. 

Troy called around 11:25am on Monday and the conversation is as follows:

      "I heard you were trying to get in touch with me." he said

      "Yes, I am trying to find out who canceled the account.  I was told by your
         technician on Saturday that there was a note in our file that someone had
         called in September 10 and said we would not be renewing our
         subscription.  That is not true, we have no intention of canceling our
         account with Texas.net." I said.

       "That was not a call in.  We did not renew your subscription.  We can
         no longer supply your special needs."  he said.

         "Who decided that?  What kind of special needs are you talking about?
           When you decided to terminate my account, why didn't you notify me
            so I could get another provider without a break in service?"  I asked.

          "You are no longer a Texas.net customer.  We can no longer supply your
            special needs."  he repeated.

        "What special needs are you talking about?  Our needs have not changed
         since we signed on with you in 1996. I stated.

        "Perhaps you can find another provider who can supply your special
          needs.  You are no longer a customer of ours."  he said.

        "Yes, I will look for another provider and when I talk to the provider,
          what special needs shall I mention?" I said, rephrasing the question.

        "Mam, you are no longer a customer of ours, we cannot supply your
          special needs." he repeated.

         "How can I find another provider if I cannot explain to them what my
           special needs are?" I asked, again rephrasing the question.

        "We are sorry we can no longer supply your special needs."

        "Why won't you tell me what those special needs are?" I asked.

        "Mam, what is your home phone?" he asked.

        "255-0993.  I left both my phone numbers on your answering machine."

        "And your address, is that still box 715, Round Rock?"  he asked.

        "Yes, same address and phone number for 25 years." I said.

        "Mam, you are no longer a customer with Texas.net.  Do not call here
          again.  We have your name, address, and phone number and if you call
          again, we will file a complaint with the police for harassment."

        "I still want to  know what you mean by "special needs".  I said.

        "I really can't talk any longer." he said, hanging up the phone.

There is no reason to deny service to me.  All my bills to them have been paid on time automatically by credit card.  They should have notified me that they were terminating service so that I would have time to change addresses.  Instead, the denial of service was done secretly in order to deliberately cause my email to bounce back to sender with a "user unknown" message.

In order to resolve this issue, Texas.net should do the following:

     1.  Texas.net should be required to give a definition of the term "special
           needs"  as it applies to our subscription to their dial up service.
     2.  The monetary penalty for this unreasonable denial of service and the
          failure  to notify us of the termination of service, therefore causing our
          email to be bounced back to the sender as "user unknown" is $90.00, the
          cost incurred in changing the address and getting a new provider.
     3.  Any email should not be bounced back to the sender, but forwarded to
          the new address of packratchet@ziplip.com

Thank you for your attention in this matter,

11-18-03 UPDATE...TESTING THE LINE
We are testing our generic 1.6Ghz PC with
Windows 98 operating system.
Any techs out there feel free to offer suggestions
to apackrat@GBRonline.com
Keep in mind our email does not work well so
it may be necessary to call our webmaster at
512-255-0993 or email eleanor@raven1.net.

Hyper terminal window was used to test the line.
The commands are shown in bold and
the results are in red.  Text messages in the
browser window appear in italic.

Southwestern Bell Data Technician:
"Open Hyper terminal and do the following:
(The commands are in bold, the computer
 response is in normal text.)

ATZ <enter>
OK
RING, RING
ATA <enter> (this makes the test modem answer my modem
and run a test)
The following appeared in the hyper terminal window:
CONNECT 28800
+++ of TESTgdE4kz.60L1^E4@30^~GO=
97o3($.YbK2R#odr@"U-F3OA6;8#]E)+[AP~Tg)?N+4u
NO CARRIER

The tech asked if there a "y" connection or surge protector
on the phone line.  We said there was.
The tech said these can sometimes cause problems.
We replied that the surge protector and jacks were the same
as they had been since 1996.
The tech said that these could sometimes go bad over time.
We said we had previously connected directly to the box
outside and had the same problems.
The tech looked at the test and said"
"As far as the test goes, we allow for an 8db loss and your
line had a 4db loss and the data passed as fast as it could.
Normally it takes about 2 minutes and yours only took about
1minute 46 seconds, so that is a really good speed.  We did
not detect excessive noise.  However, there may be an
electrical problem indicated by the fact that there were
85 times when your modem stopped or was not getting
data as fast as it could run so there were 85 resend requests
during the test.  This means that your modem outran the
phone line and stopped and requested a resend 85 times.
This could cause the modem to reset itself, drop off-line,
slow down the downloads, etc.  This is not an excessive
number of resend requests.  If it were 150, I would think
that would be the problem but we will try to dial out to
another number first.

ATDT5830917 <enter>
What appeared in the hyper terminal window:
NO CARRIER
ATDT5830917 <enter>
Technician: You should see the word "connect"
The modem dialed in and screeched, but
the word "connect" never appeared, instead,
the following appeared in the hyper terminal window:
OK

So we entered:
ATDT15013730534  (this dialed the test number
at the phone company.)  It connected successfully
and began to ring the phone.  The tech told us to
hang up and enter the following on the hyper terminal:
ATI3
V5.43.063-T-PI
We were asked to relay what appeared on the screen, then;
ATI5
Broadxent DSI V.92 PCI DI3631
OK
A small heart (valentine) appeared in the window and
locked up the keyboard.

Then on the hyper terminal page, we entered:
ATI
56000/33600
at+ms?
+MS: V34,1,00300,33600
OK
atdt5830917
CONNECT 28800
Then the following appeared on the screen:
"Welcome to 3Com Total Control HiPer ARC (TM)
 Networks That Go The Distance (TM)"
login:

We then hung up, closed the hyper terminal window and went
to the modem advanced connections and clicked on
advanced.
Then we went to the modem connection settings
window and changed +MS=v90.0 to:
at+ms=v34
in the extra code box in modem connection settings.
and tried again.  The tech said this would slow down
the modem a little.
#1 Tried to logon:
The message in the browser window:
"error 645
Could not complete connection to the server"
#2 Tried to logon again and it did connect that time
and did pull up new web pages.
#3We disconnected and tried again.
"Connection terminated"
#4 Tried again and did get connected, but
Tracert and ping still did not function.
Discussed the possibility that someone had tapped
into my phone from the "green post" at the back
of the lot.
The technician recommended we call 800-246-8464
and ask a wiretap test to be done.
Before we do this, we are going to remove
the surge protector and the "Y" connection
for the fax and try it out for a few days.
The trouble ticket is #0337504

Our ping attempts all end the same way:

C:\WINDOWS>ping google.com
Pinging google.com [216.239.37.99] with 32 butes pf data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 216.239.37.99:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 0ms, Maximum =  0ms, Average = 0ms

As do our trace routes:

C:\WINDOWS>tracert google.com

Tracing route to google.com [216.239.37.99]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1   161 ms   121 ms   168 ms  gbrdialin [216.85.28.3]
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4     *       *        *     Request timed out.
  5     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  7     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.
10     *        *        *     Request timed out.
11     *        *        *     Request timed out.
12     *        *        *     Request timed out.
13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
15     *        *        *     Request timed out.
16     *        *        *     Request timed out.
17     *        *        *     Request timed out.
18     *        *        *     Request timed out.
19     *        *        *     Request timed out.
20     *        *        *     Request timed out.
21     *        *        *     Request timed out.
22     *        *        *     Request timed out.
23     *        *        *     Request timed out.
24     *        *        *     Request timed out.
25     *        *        *     Request timed out.
26     *        *        *     Request timed out.
27     *        *        *     Request timed out.
28     *        *        *     Request timed out.
29     *        *        *     Request timed out.
30     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Trace complete.

Is there a computer whiz out there somewhere who can shed
some light on this problem?  If so, call our webmaster at
512-255-0993 or email at apackrat@GBRonline.com

01-06-04
One technician speculated that "Ip spoofing may be going
on here and that could require a slower computer."

March, 2004
A complaint has been filed with the Attorney General of Texas.

Since the termination of services, we have had ongoing problems with
our internet connections, email, and computer.  We have installed a new
mother board and had to reformat the drive 6 times since November.  The
internet service is incredibly slow, as though it is going through a server
that screens everything.  The computer has continual strange "glitches" 
as though worms and viruses are getting in that Norton cannot detect.
Our netscape program has been permanently disabled somehow so that
no matter how many times we reload the program, it mangles the name
of the user name so the password can never work.  We are now forced
to use outlook express which is harder to back up and easier to hack.
We will persue this as it is hard evidence of perp tampering.

to be continued........