TANSTAAFL. It’s an old Heinlein-ism that means There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Except that there is; we’ve been dining for quite awhile. Internet-wise, that is.

Way back in the heady days when DSL was the Next Big Thing, I ran out and signed us up for service. And it was good. Sort of. But it was also free. Sort of.

Yeah, they kinda forgot to bill us for it. Ever. The service provider had financial problems and went Chapters 1-99 and was sold off in bits and pieces to other companies and somehow we fell through the cracks and never got billed. Eventually we got tired of the spotty service (hey, we have standards too: free crap is still crap, right?) so we signed up for cable internet service.

They came out and gave us a modem and drilled holes in the walls and ran wires to the house and voila!, we had cable. And it was good. And they too forgot to bill us. Ever. We set the account up for payment to automatically be deducted from our checking account every month, but they never deducted. Ever. And still we had service. And every once in awhile the service would hiccup and I’d think the jig is up and I’d have to come out of the shadows, but then it started up again and I STFU.

I’ve had my own little internal arguments about this, about the ethics of basically stealing their service. But you know what? You can rationalize and justify just about anything. I’ve factored that into my internal debates even as I continued to debate … and get free access.

Eventually I settled on the belief that I’m not stealing because I’m not hiding. They know who I am and where I am and what they gave me and what I agreed to pay — or at least they should. It’s not like I’m using a black box I bought off the internet or hacking into my neighbor’s cable box. No, I signed up with them just like everyone else did with every intention of paying for the service. They just never asked for payment.

But… Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s all bullshit rationalization. I’ve always known deep down that it was wrong, always felt badly about it, always resolved to call them up and ‘fess up and get the billing started … someday. I just never got around to it. (Another rationalization, I know.)

Anyway, the free lunch is now officially over. My cable is hiccuped again and so I went ahead and called the cable company today and signed up for new service. Yes, “new” — what, am I stupid? My install date is Tuesday morning and it looks like the only ‘net access I’ll have ’til then is my work laptop with my company ISP’s dialup. Free, of course.

So I’m going back on the cable company’s radar. I wonder if they’ll bill me this time?