internet connection

So my next to oldest son calls last night and wants me to help him find a way to get internet in his apartment. The first task at hand was finding any place close to him where he could get free internet access. He tried Starbucks since they are every where in that part of the land, but they only provide it if you buy something. That is also a mini story as he tried to buy something and his debit card was rejected, but more on that later. Since we have wonderful internet access, I quickly used Google Chrome to search for "wireless hotspots emeryville ca" and 3rd link had exactly what I was looking for wi-fihotspotlist.com. It showed that a Borders bookstore was right around the corner from his apartment and they had free wifi. He mentioned that a couple of people used ComCast in their apartments, so I went to their web site which he went off to Borders. The ComCast web site looks nice and clean and I quickly found the selections available. All was well until I hit the last step, except it was odd that I was never asked for a credit card or any form of payment. I was put into an on-line chat program for the final step. It did not work as I needed a new version of Java to support the chat plug-in on Vista. The download itself took several minutes and then I had to refresh the browser twice and finally I saw I was next in line for a chat person to talk to me. Once she arrived at the chat window she asked me to re-confirm what I entered and the last 4 digits of social security number to verify something or the other. Then the selections I had made we for existing customers, so everything changed when she found out this was a brand new service. Pretty good prices as just for internet access was $25 initial fee and then $25 a month for the first 6 months, for service that is slightly faster than Time Warner, which is what we use here. At the last step she gives me the account number and order number. I try to copy-n-paste it from the chat window but it does not support any type of selections. I asked her to email it to me and she said she was not allowed. So I wrote down the information and then emailed it to my son. The whole process started off nicely, but was a bit rough at the end. At least no up-front payment and no payment at install time, so that was a nice bonus.