So I'm sitting at work, on a Sunday, waiting for the Comcast tech that was supposed to be here between 8am and 10am.
It is now a little after 12pm, and I'm on the phone with customer service for the second time. I was supposed to get a phone call within 30 minutes of the first time I called (at 10:40).
I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
I finally called back at 11:30am, and got the same run around. I've been on the phone with them for over 30 minutes now, and have talked to customer service, and am now chewing on a supervisor.
I was just told (at 12:15pm) that the ticket was invalidated and was never put through. So I've been sitting here for NOTHING. They didn't bother to tell me this when I called in 2 hours ago, or to do the courteous thing and call or email me when the ticket got invalidated. Adding insult to injury, they also tell me that they only compensate for down service, not for people sitting waiting on their non-existent technicians.
It is no wonder people hate Comcast and many other internet service providers. I remember now why I swore off using Comcast for anything.
So now, because misery loves company (and many people hate their ISP), what are your horror stories?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @04:36PM
I know it's the week of Christmas, but come on...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Monday December 21 2015, @04:40PM
I live in a first-world country with proper competition, so I don't have any issues or problems.
In fact the last time I contacted my ISP was last year when I move house and wanted the service moving. It was done on the day of moving with no hassles.
Oh, I also pay a heck of a lot less than you for the service I get. Not as cheap as the rest of Europe, but cheaper than "the land of the free"(tm)
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday December 21 2015, @05:01PM
It's not just the US, Canadian ISPs suck too.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Nerdfest on Monday December 21 2015, @05:05PM
I should actually add that not all of them suck. I use a small provider called TekSavvy that stood up for people's privacy rights before any of the others, will put you in touch with a tech than knows what he's doing, and has great plans. The only trouble I've actually had from them is when the tech got me to tweak a couple of settings on my modem and asked if I minded if he dealt with someone else while I restarted it. I said I didn't mind and restarted. I think I must have waited about 20 minutes for him to get back to me before I remembered that I use VOIP.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @06:16PM
I have done than.
(Hung up on myself by restarting the router)
(Score: 2) by mrclisdue on Monday December 21 2015, @10:14PM
+1 for teksavvy
I've been using them and another reseller (netfox) for a few years now and they're both a breath of fresh air vs the big three.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2015, @01:54PM
We're a small web hosting company, so I'm seeing this from the inside. One day a customer's internet connection went down. One of our managers asked tech support to open a WebEx session with the customer to see if we could determine the problem.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @05:58PM
CenturyLink (formerly USWest) is pretty decent. I could even get 1 gig speeds if I was willing to pay for it ($150/month).
(Score: 1) by number11 on Tuesday December 22 2015, @02:45AM
CenturyLink randomly bounces mail directed to me. It'll be fine for a month, then there'll be a day when at least four emails get bounced (I know because it's a mailing list and they tell me). At the moment, their POP3 server is erratic, my mail prog can't get logged on, then four hours (or days) later without my changing anything on my end it'll all start working again. That's been happening for a couple of weeks. Tech support doesn't have a clue (all they seem to know is webmail, and the web interface works fine except for the time they locked me out because they claimed I was spamming). My speed was down for six months (not throughput, but the speed the modem would train at) and they said it was my wiring. Mysteriously, after the field tech came out and said he couldn't find any problems, the speed went back up (actually to a little higher than I'm paying for). Last time my DSL went down, the field tech said that my card was just barely hanging in the frame in the cabinet, that CenturyLink had gotten rid of its craft workers and was using subcontractors of sometimes dubious competence (and he was a subcontractor from a thousand miles away himself, so it wasn't just a union guy with sour grapes).
Another outfit is laying fiber in town. they'll give me 100M up/down for ten bucks less than I pay CenturyLink for 7/5, or 1G up/down for ten bucks more. I'd hold my breath until they get to my place, except that it looks like it'll be a couple more years. I can't wait.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @09:28PM
gotta admit even aussie's most hated telco (telstra) doesn't seem to suck as bad as american telcos. we do seem to have a little more competition nowadays.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by riT-k0MA on Monday December 21 2015, @04:43PM
I once called up my ISP because I was having some serious issues with their lack of service.
I checked my phone logs and realised that, in a single morning, I'd spent about 3 hours and 30 minutes on the phone to them. Of those three and a half hours, I was speaking to a representatives for less than 10 minutes. I actually had a supervisor pick up their phone and immediately slam it down in order to terminate my call.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @05:00PM
Thank you for holding. Your call is very unportant to us.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday December 21 2015, @04:54PM
I wonder if there is not some way to charge them for your time and inconvenience. Likely, you would have to send them written notice, and make some reasonable allowances. However, if companies can have an EULA that is accepted by default, why not customers?
"Dear Comcast, I hereby legally notify you that I am amending the service contract for my household with the following terms. Technical support calls exceeding 30 minutes will be billed at the following rate... Service interruptions longer than 24 hours will result in reimbursement of all connection fees for that month... Etc... Etc..."
Of course, they may just terminate your service. However, if they don't, it seems to me that such a contract could be made legally binding. IANAL, nor do I even live in the US, so YMMV...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday December 21 2015, @05:16PM
Just make up an invoice and post it direct to their accounts department. Probably won't work, but you might get lucky.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MrGuy on Monday December 21 2015, @07:28PM
That's not how contracts work, unfortunately. You need both parties to agree to add new terms.
Unless one of the parties agrees as part of the original contract that the other party is allowed to change certain terms at their exclusive discretion over the life of the contract. And, as an ISP customer, YOU probably agreed to exactly that - you agreed that THEY could change the terms. However, the reverse is almost certainly NOT true - they did not agree that YOU could change the terms.
Therefore, you can't. At least, not without their agreement. Which you don't have.
Similarly, you can't get out of an existing contract this way - you can't try to change the terms and claim that a long-term contract you signed previously is void if they don't agree. A contract isn't void just because one party stops liking it. Absent mutual agreement on an amendment, you're stuck with it.
In GENERAL, this feature of contract law is good - it wouldn't be OK if you sign a contract with someone to fix your house, and halfway through they decide they want a different contract, and could void the contract if you don't agree.
However, in a (largely monopolistic, usually at least oligopolistic) service provider situation, it's problematic, because the provider can (and does) get you to agree to unconscionable (or at least unfavorable) terms because you lack options.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @11:17PM
"And, as an ISP customer, YOU probably agreed to exactly that - you agreed that THEY could change the terms. However, the reverse is almost certainly NOT true - they did not agree that YOU could change the terms."
Usually one sided contracts like this, especially when done by a big corporation against a regular person, are considered unenforceable by courts. Unless the two entities have reasonably equal bargaining power and a reasonably equal ability to negotiate contracts usually courts will find very one sided contracts between a big corporate entity like this and an individual unenforceable.
The problem, of course, is that an individual probably isn't going to bother taking any of this to court. It's very expensive, time consuming, and usually not worth it.
But still, if the contract states that they will provide you 100 Mb/sec for one year for $40 a month but they can arbitrarily change the conditions at will and later decide that they will charge you $50 a month for only 10 Mb/sec and that there is a $100 cancellation fee I imagine that their cancellation fee will not be enforceable and if they do attempt to enforce it on too many people they will end up having problems. So it's not like they can literally just do anything they want and expect it not to come back to haunt them.
But yes, overall, unfortunately, ISPs and big business does get away with a lot. and the sad truth is that our justice system, if left on its own, is too often very lenient on them and it ends up being things like public pressure that either has to directly compel big business to behave or, in the most egregious cases, they have to compel the legal system to do something about it.
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Tuesday December 22 2015, @02:16AM
I went to this website the other day and it said "by using our site you agree to blaaaaahhhhhhhh slurrrrrp herpa durp..." I didn't agree to my agreeing with their terms to read their website, so I kept on reading. Does this not work both ways? "By not replying to these conditions, your companies excepts the terms."
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Tuesday December 22 2015, @03:05AM
True - you're stuck with it, but so are they. No matter what the contracts say, they cannot amend them unilaterally, without notice, and hold you to them. This is part of contract law, which is well established. (IANAL)
Ongoing contracts, OTOH, are a bit different. You may notice that every time the terms change on your month-to-month accounts, there's always a section about what happens if you don't agree. It usually amounts to "terminate all service, and pay the account balance." You can send Comcast amended terms (which would have to be sent to the right dept, btw), but their response will be to simply not agree, and terminate service. There is an outside chance of it getting lost in bureaucracy before the deadline for accepting/rejecting the amended terms, but not likely.
(Score: 1) by mgcarley on Friday January 01 2016, @07:42PM
And yet it can still be very difficult to sue someone for breach of contract.
We're 2 years in to a lawsuit with an ex-customer who defaulted on payment, re-assigned the maintenance part of the contract to a third party without any notice *AND* circumvented us for the service part (despite non-circumvention clauses) - all without cause.
We received a lot of tech-support calls (mostly complaints) from their users after that but we couldn't even do anything to help.
Founder & COO, Hayai. We're in India (hayai.in) & the USA (hayaibroadband.com) // Twitter: @mgcarley
(Score: 3, Interesting) by arulatas on Monday December 21 2015, @07:41PM
Why not put it on the check you send them for payment (or just send one just for this purpose)? Put it in tiny writing that by endorsing or cashing this check you validate the end user license specified on such and such a website. Where you can change the terms and conditions when ever you see the need.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Monday December 21 2015, @04:55PM
>not for people sitting waiting on their non-existent technicians.
Let me tell you a horror story about people and business who are so over reliant on teh innernets that they can do absolutely, positively, NOTHING when it goes down.....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @09:38PM
that's the main reason why 'te cloud' will never really take off (i think any success at the moment is driven more by more fed-inflated bubbles in the economy due to low interest rates and money printing)
no business with any ounce of sense is ever going to put its viability in the hands of an internet service provider
many businesses don't even trust power and water utilities (having backup generators and bottled water on hand), but isp's are further down the trustworthiness/reliability chain
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday December 21 2015, @10:08PM
I can assure you, many do so in the names of saving 40% by moving into the cloud. It is cheapness that fuels the cloud, and belief in the promises they are told. Always up! never down! SLAs! It makes your local server patching looks absolutely archaic and quaint.
Then their internet goes down, as does their phones, email, and 100% of their access to the things they need to make money.
Those that decide these things, to save the 40%, are the loudest to scream at the local IT people who can at best open a service request with the telco -- via their personal cell phone. The CFOs that decide these things are rarely the ones to seek a new job, willingly or due to "business reasons".
Sometimes, the most reliable service you can have is the one you still control.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Monday December 21 2015, @05:02PM
Last April I decided to cut the cord, so I called U-Verse and told them to end my service at the end of the billing period. About 2 days before the end they called me with an offer I could live with. But, as my existing account had been cancelled they had to give me a new account, which meant a guy coming out to hook up my equipment. Never mind my equipment worked fine, as I'd cancelled they had to take back my existing DVR and WiFi box and give me new ones. With no way to transfer my recording schedule to the new one. jeez.
Anywhoo, guy comes out about 4 PM, disconnects everything, checks the line, and says he'll need to go outside for a bit but he'll be back in a few minutes. I waited. and waited. and waited. I have no cable TV, nor internet. Finally, about 5:30 (an hour after he left) I hooked everything back up and watched the news. Around 6 I figured he wasn't coming back. About 7 I'd worked myself into lather. One thing Uverse does is give you a piece of paper with not only the installer's name and phone #, but the supervisor's name and phone #. I texted the installer to never come back, I didn't want to see him any more. I then texted his supervisor telling her what had happened.
Then things got good. About 9 AM the next morning I get a call from the supervisor, apologizing and telling me the new guy would be here soon. Soon as she hung up another installer called saying he was outside and would be at my door in 5 minutes. Replaced all my equipment, ran some tests, and decided my existing cable connection wasn't good enough and rewired some twisted pair from my phone outlet to the cable box. Phone outlet was nowhere near the TV so this involved moving lots of furniture to run the wires, took about 3 hours. Then he decided my outside line wasn't good enough either, so he called in another guy. Guy #2 shows up, guy #1 says I'm in good hands and leaves. Guy #2 says it will be a couple hours. I've got errands to run, as I leave I see guy #2 working on an outside box with lots of wires around him. Get back an hour later, a U-Verse truck has it's cherry picker rewiring something on the pole half a block away. Get home, no TV/internet. So I wait some more. About an hour later guy #2 calls and says everything should be working. It was.
Figure I had 3 U-Verse guys at my house for about 8 hours. Plus the supervisor dropped by several times. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when the supervisor kindly asked the original guy why he disconnected all my equipment, then left and never came back.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Monday December 21 2015, @05:23PM
It was probably some procedural thing where you're not allowed to complete a job until some automated test passes, and your receive level was probably one dB lower than passing and falsification or pencil whipping is a firing offense.
Combined with budget crunches to eliminate overtime pay, where its "cheaper" on paper to have zero overtime and take ten total hours and three truck rolls, than to spend two hours and one roll with one of those hours being the forbidden fruit of overtime.
So he's gotta walk away with you unplugged.
I have no connection with uverse at all, just based on the smell and decades in telecom.
One day's pro-rated credit, assuming they tell you you'll get it and you actually get it, is probably about 5 minutes of overtime pay, and monopolies don't care about customer service, so ...
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday December 21 2015, @07:19PM
I can buy that. My issue is the guy walking out with all my boxes unplugged and disconnected, then never coming back. Least he could have done is come back, reconnect everything, and tell me he'll be back tomorrow.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday December 21 2015, @07:37PM
Might not have gotten the point that its a disciplinary action offense to turn over an install at a receive level of -11 dBmW if the corporate standard is -10 dBmW or whatever. At most companies its a firing offense to work without permission / schedule WRT manufacturing your own labor law violation lawsuit, so its not like he's interested in getting fired for working past quitting time. Service is important to you, feeding his kids is more important to him, we'll see how this turns out.
The other aspect is it smells contractor-ish or workforce management-ish. The days of "the guy" having "his beat" every day are gone. He can't honestly say he's coming back tomorrow because he might be wiring wall outlets at a construction site tomorrow, or the computer says he's working across the city (county?).
Contractors are especially bad because they're used to being darn near visually supervised by a GC, so just walking off the construction site is the way it is, coordinating over time is exactly what the GC is paid for. Of course corporations don't have a GC layer, they just kinda hope the contractor helped out very optimistically, or they dump the oversight on someone else who doesn't have time because if they were not swamped they'd 1) not hire contractors 2) downsize till they're swamped. Note that its no different for cubie programmers or electricians making a few bucks at the local utility company.
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Tuesday December 22 2015, @12:08AM
I fell for the AT&T Uverse cheaper rates and decided to switch over to them from Cox since it would cost half as much. AT&T installer came, said that there was trouble in the pair assigned to me, and that they'd have to bring out a cherry picker to start the install process, after that he would be back later that day or the day after. Like clockwork the guy came in the cherry picker, (very nice guy, ready to retire in two weeks) fixed the line trouble and dropped a new line and box onto the right side of the house.
Other. Guy. Never. Came. Back. I called him when the other guy left and told him that we were good to go. When I called his cellphone again after two days of waiting he wouldn't even pick up, same story for his supervisor. Got an automated call a few days later to reschedule my install. I waited for a real person and told them that "if this is the kind of service that I can expect I don't want it even if *you* are going to pay *me*." They kept calling to schedule an install, even sent the sales people to knock on my door again, but I never gave in. Haven't received a bill from them yet, and I'm still happy with Cox. Some things are worth paying for, good service is one of them for me.
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Tuesday December 22 2015, @12:20AM
Cablevision in NJ. Execellent ISP. Pretty darn good Customer Service as well. I never even considered changing ISP's, the service was just too good, as a reasonable price with no hassles.
I never understood the friends I have who would bounce providers every contract period trying to extract another $5/month savings, then bitch about the service/quality/whatever. After 10 years as a customer they only really ticked me off once, which is way better than most vendors.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @05:05PM
Reminds me of the On Call [theregister.co.uk] feature at El Reg.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday December 21 2015, @05:07PM
ISPs are bad, sure. Hate having to do the annual dance to get them to undo the huge rate hike after the "promotional" price expires. I always buy my own modem, don't pay them an extra $5/month to rent theirs. And I have had troubles with zombie charges. They are much too clingy, try to force customers to stay.
All that is petty thievery next to what the medical community routinely pulls. Pharma Bro's price hike of a drug from $13.50 to $750 per pill is just one item in a very long list of bull. If you ever visit one of those 24 hour emergency clinics that have been springing up everywhere, you'll soon learn how bad they are. Heard of a father who's 20 something son visited one of those because his stomach hurt. They ran a bunch of tests and concluded he was merely constipated. The bill was thousands of dollars. And, that was after insurance had supposedly reduced the prices. Son couldn't afford it, and Dad refused to pay.
(Score: 2) by Daiv on Monday December 21 2015, @07:25PM
And now you know why the Emergency clinic charges so much. When you come in, they throw every relevant test at you as well as charge for it. Many people use them because they don't have insurance and guess what, they don't pay the bill! So what happens to all the rest of the people who use it? They get billed more to make up for it!
I once had to use 24 hour emergency care because I was passing a kidney stone. Held out from 9 pm until 3 am and couldn't take it any more. About 6 tests/scans and 4 doctors later, I was discharged at 6 am with a prescription for Vicodin and a ~$700.00 bill, after insurance. Afterward, I found out where the nearest 24 hour Urgent Cares are and have had to take several people to them at odd hours. Urgent Cares bill at much, much more reasonable rates. I've never had a bill more than $40 for Urgent Care.
Emergency Care is for emergencies and you will be billed as such. They're required to admit and care for you, but you aren't required to pay. They are HIGHLY flexible with negotiating the bill however, if you ever find yourself in such a situation, as they try to bring in whatever money they can as easily as they can.
I'll never, ever defend drug pricing though.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday December 21 2015, @08:17PM
The problem is that it's a self defeating spiral. The more outrageous the bill, the more likely someone is to be unable/unwilling to pay it and the less likely anyone is to be sympathetic when they get stiffed.
The real problem is that they insist on a zillion needlessly expensive tests to compensate for the serious decline in clinical diagnostic skills. (Does it hurt when I press here?).
(Score: 3, Funny) by jelizondo on Tuesday December 22 2015, @03:13AM
Yes, it does! (Can you tell me where did you press so I can tell my doc? Many thanks.)
(Score: 3, Funny) by sjames on Tuesday December 22 2015, @05:43AM
Bad news, that was your wallet. :-)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @05:09PM
Moved to a South American country that straddles both hemispheres last year (long story). Had local state-run internet installed (everything is state run, even if it isn't broadcast that way). Set up my router to use a VPN through the States.
Phone call the next day from the ISP. My internet is not working and needs to be "repaired." I tell them the internet is running fine, don't worry about it.
The next day, another phone call while I'm at work. My internet is not working correctly and needs to be repaired. I tell them it is working okay, and they should leave it be. Five minutes later, they knock on the door, wife answers, but turns them away because they didn't make an appointment.
I buy a $10 switch, plug an old router into the switch that doesn't go through the VPN, and only attach mobile devices to it. The "problem" goes away, and no more calls from the local ISP.
Another local expat with another ISP (also state-run) was having issues with his speed. Paying for FIOS, but only getting DSL-type speeds. The local ISP shows up, and he shows them Speedtest.net which proves he is getting about 1.5mbit. They tell him that is normal and leave. The next day, he finds that speedtest.net is blocked (this guy is not tech-savvy and doesn't run a VPN).
In the summer, there were protests to overthrow the president, because he has been in office for about a decade and the nation's wealth has evaporated due to socialism not working out like he thought it would. Internet would shut down right before the protests started, and last all night. Hmmm ...
And to think, I saw a recent article listing this country as one of the best places for Americans to retire. I guess their information is a bit dated; this nation is quickly turning into what Venezuela became. Oh look, the president just got rid of term limits because 10 years and a bankrupt economy wasn't enough to make socialism work. Now he needs dictatorial power to make sure it works correctly...
TLDR - ISP horror stories in the US probably pale in comparison to the third world.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday December 21 2015, @05:33PM
a South American country that straddles both hemispheres
There are no South American countries in both East and West Hemispheres, so presumably we're talking about N/S...
So, Brazil, Ecuador, or Colombia...
the president, because he has been in office for about a decade
Brazil - President Dilma Rousseff Assumed office 1 January 2011 - 4 years
Ecuador - President Rafael Correa Assumed office 15 January 2007 - 8 years
Colombia - President Juan Manuel Santos Assumed office 7 August 2010 - 5 years
Oh hey look, it's Assange's "pals."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @06:32PM
2007 would be correct, which is 9 years next month. Posted without VPN so a mod can verify the IP location.
(Score: 1) by WalksOnDirt on Tuesday December 22 2015, @01:03AM
We have mods?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 21 2015, @05:35PM
I modded you up, but why don't you name the nation?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday December 21 2015, @06:26PM
why don't you name the nation?
they did. "a South American country that straddles both hemispheres" means it's Ecuador.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @07:15PM
please buy a map.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @06:36PM
Because I still live here and am rightfully paranoid.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @07:24PM
So Portland then?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @05:18PM
I wish it were easy to purchase or rent a spare ISP so that if the primary ISP jerks out, you have a backup.
I used to have an hourly-based dial-up service as a backup, but dial-up is too slow for most sites these days, with their bloated graphics and JavaScript UI libraries. Plus, most are tossing their land-lines and relying on an ISP for everything.
Such an ISP could sell a yearly subscription that has a yearly minimum of say $30, and an hourly charge of say $2.00 (per session). If you get a decent cellular plan, perhaps one can use the phone's data port as a backup.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Monday December 21 2015, @06:36PM
A dual WAN router would allow you to do that. Most also have a usb port to be used as a cellular failover. They are more for small businesses but still very affordable for home use.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @06:41PM
Set up a mesh link with your neighbour?
The Terms of Service probably prohibit that though.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday December 21 2015, @09:13PM
For me it's a simple cell network modem. I use T-mobile because it only costs me US$30 a month and only when I need it. The big cellular outfits charge a lot more. I have it mainly for when I'm staying on the boat, but it has also worked when my normal connections are out.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by goodie on Monday December 21 2015, @05:21PM
Bell Canada's reputation needs no introduction anymore I believe. It's been that way ever since the company has existed (check dslforums.com). The same applies with phone service. For me, it all happened when I decided to switch from Bell to Teksavvy 2 or 3 years ago (both on DSL). I gave Bell 30 days notice as they requested back then, and found out that they cut me at that very moment. That was after they tried to throw deals at me to stay with them (which always involved having to bundle services, paying less for 3 or 6 months and then not knowing what the full price would actually be after that). Took about 2 months to get my last bill's money back. Of course Teksavvy was not scheduled to come for another month or so so when I tried to hurry things up the technician had to come 3 times to the pole and finally realized that contrary to what they had told me on the phone, the speed I had requested was not available from them, only from Bell (go figure).
All in all, I lived without Internet for about 1.5 months. It was okay with 3g on my cell phone to help when needed (I believe that when I was not on the phone with either ISP I was more productive than before). My wife had a harder time ;-).
In the end, I told both ISPs to go screw themselves and went on with a cable provider (electronicbox) and have been pretty happy so far. ISP changes are always delicate but this one was pretty brutal. That is a good incentive to stick with your current one and they figured that out I'm sure :D.
And right now in my neighborhood, Bell is tracing lines to run fiber under the road. I told the guy taking measurements the other day that there was no way they were going to destroy the road in front of my driveway to run their horrible "service". I've seen driveways opened up for weeks when they were "working to improve service" at the end of my street. We'll see what happens. But apparently we're not part of the conversation as residents. Bell pays the city and does whatever the hell it wants to do and we can suck it...
I will never sign a contract/bundle anymore. I'll pay more money but I'll be free (somewhat).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @06:55PM
I had a similar incident with Telus and Nucleus Internet.
Because my computer was still living with my parents, but I wanted to host a server, I ordered commercial Internet on the second wire pair. However Telus refused to hook it up, claiming that the last pair is "reserved" for their use.
So I had to get the Telus service for a month. However, I was not able to use it because the Terms of Service prohibited "Reverse Engineering", which they defined as uploading more than you download (meaning no server hosting) (looks like they push SLAs now).
I was later told that because I had requested the commercial service from Telus, my ISP was charged more for the "dry copper" than they otherwise would have been.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @06:57PM
Oops, for got to mention why it was similar: Telus reserves the higher speeds for themselves.
I know know why: higher speeds (over 25Mbps) require more than one wire pair.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Monday December 21 2015, @09:58PM
OMG
I wish I had an introduction.
I am presently working with a firm that essentially hands Bell Canada contracts for anything without question. Even when presented with evidence of complete idiocy, dropping the ball, giant unexpected costs due to improper planning etc.
They are handling wifi deployment project, along with their subsidiary called Data Valet.
They had an "Emergency" wifi install that had to be done THAT DAY. I was a silent observer on their conference bridge; I was to take notes and report to management on the results, good, bad, or neutral.
They sent 8 people on-site. They talked about drilling holes in glass to mount the Single AP that was to go in (8 people -- one AP. That's 8 people to go and install that single AP). People asked where the AP they were replacing was. Where is the telco room. Who has access to it. Who can make network changes. Where, actually, is the AP to be installed? Is there a floor plan? what SSIDs are they supposed to see? No one had any idea of anything and expected to learn all of this once at the client site. There was absolutely zero preparation done by these 8 people, nor was there much in the way of guidance. They'd learn the SSIDs after the AP came online because the AP was preconfigured.
They found the telco room, found the original still mounted AP (and with some convincing, agreed to put the new AP in the same spot without resorting to drilling holes in the atrium walls), got access to that telco room, found a network person to make changes, but couldn't find the new AP. Where is the AP they all came on-site to do that was such an emergency to get done?
Someone on the same team that went on-site had shipped it priority overnight, that morning, and dropped off the AP to UPS to be delivered to the destination, that they in turn went to themselves immediately afterwards, only to ask where the AP was. They tried to pay for an expedite but it was not possible, and apparently, not retrievable either. It went into some sort of sorting center and was GONE until it wouldn't be relevant any more or it'd be the next day.
They resorted to "borrowing" an AP intended for another client; so person #9 showed up carrying it unboxed.
I do not know what most of them did besides wait around and be confused. They were charging by the hour, and the day started at 8am and ended after 5pm --40 hours for just their 8 people, plus whatever for the 9th person, and of course shipping, and probably the need to retrieve the AP that was supposed to go in.
They assured everyone the AP shipped had been preconfigured to work immediately, so the new AP -- had to be configured. No one that went on site actually were permitted to locally access the AP themselves (it phones home and is locked down and is only accessible except for remotely) and so the AP they did bring had to be set up via setting up a VPN connection and then remotely controlling the laptop to then get to the AP, after first factory resetting it, because it had some other client config on it, and...
And this was normal, I learned. Throw enough people at a problem and someone will solve it.
I found out the next day that it was a success, so I guess whatever notes I had taken really weren't necessary from a customer service standpoint. I do not know what this cost the client, but I felt guilty billing them for my time. I didn't do anything, but I did a lot less of that nothing compared to the amount of nothing Bell Canada did--and they actually found a way to get more than 9 people involved to install a single AP, mounted where the old AP was (what happened to the old AP is anyones's guess, no one remembered what happened to it because that's not what they went on-site for).
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 21 2015, @05:35PM
You're just not paying enough money. In the 90s for $400/month to $800/month or so you'd get a local telco tech on site within an hour of a service disruption if you had a hicap circuit (T1, etc) if remote testing to the DSU/CSU indicated a problem with the line. Obviously the more rural or natural-disastery the less likely they'd get there in an hour. Oh and I'm talking about within an hour of service disruption, not a one hour window, or an hour after you call. Within an hour of the red light ticking on in the CO... Also I'm talking civilized america away from coasts, not international circuits to taco bell. Bell canada or WTF they were called were also a little weird. Maybe they'd send a residential cannon fodder tech to screw around till a hicap guy arrived, but they'd have a warm body on site in an hour, at least.
Oh, whats that you're saying, you only want to pay $50/month for the whole service, not $500/month for the local loop alone? Oh well. Guess you get what you paid for, which certainly isn't very much.
If you want a meg and a half of internet access with bullet proof SLAs and service monitoring and fast response, its available out there in the market if you have a financial need for it and are willing to pay for it. If you're not, well, you get what you paid for, however little it is.
There's this weird belief in the tech community that it automagically costs $500/month to sling AMI/B8ZS on a piece of old barbed wire, magical somehow, and running DSL or DOCSIS is magically a tenth the cost. It isn't. Its just your service will be a tenth or more less responsive and effective.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by cmn32480 on Monday December 21 2015, @06:12PM
So let me be sure I have this right:
Paying for services at the rate they are offering is not enough to get half decent customer service? Regardless of the dollar figure I'm paying, cancelling an appointment with no notice to me and wasting my time is somehow OK?
I'm not asking for a bullet proof SLA. If I was looking for that, I'd be getting private fiber run, not standard Comcast Business service.
The 1.5mbps T1 is simply not enough to run a business on anymore. Generally reliable, but certainly not always. I've had T1's that were down more than they were up. Regardless of what is behind the internet connection, a T1 is not really enough to run more than one or two people in an office, and even that might be a struggle. 10 years ago, I was able to run the server side of a large corporation with 50 branch offices on a bonded T1 at 3mbps. Today, given the problems and bandwidth hogging of Web2.0, it isn't possible, even with most services hosted offsite.
What I really want for my money is decent service, both the internet providing part and the customer part. It is outright rude to cancel an appointment and not tell the person you are supposed to meet.
And for the record, we are paying in that several hundred per month range.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 21 2015, @07:16PM
Paying for services at the rate they are offering is not enough to get half decent customer service?
Yeah. You want T-1 class of service, its out there, just not at $29.95/mo. Or frankly at $295.99/mo
Regardless of the dollar figure I'm paying, cancelling an appointment with no notice to me and wasting my time is somehow OK?
Well it kinda ties into #1 above, you say now that you'd pay $1/mo extra to handle the labor of calling back for every cancelled appointment, yet when it comes time to write the check... of course they're not off the hook, its (current year) why they can't have a web and/or text message and/or email fully automated hands off gateway is a mystery, and that wouldn't cost much nor cost much of anything going forward. I remember Bell Atlantic or some other hell hole of a local loop provider would call back on any trouble ticket except no trouble found, they'd just silently cancel those and "haha" when you complained, they were not a pleasure to deal with intermittent issues, I can sympathize.
You're gonna pay the money anyway. Either in your salary doing nothing but herding cats / baby sitting every time there's a problem, or you can pay professionals to do it for you. So its not like the company is saving money.
run a business on anymore
Whats changed? Nothing? If you're hosting something its in a data center or its cloudy. If the receptionists and cube dwellers are just streaming youtube 8 hours a day you got bigger problems. My cruddy phone service isn't much faster. My home cable modem has 3-4 people pounding on it sometimes with no real issue.
And for the record, we are paying in that several hundred per month range.
Well, for a couple hundred more, at a real telco, you'd get real telco service. The price I quoted was the local loop charges I saw on orders more than a decade ago back in my misspent youth at a telco. On one hand inflation has only increased the cost of everything including the nearly 100% labor the cost of a local loop represents. On the bright side what your local loop connects to is likely very cheap.
There are other alternatives. Rather than paying one provider 20x as much for 10x the service, you could buy two, even three different technology links. A "business" cablemodem, a DSL, and a wifi WISP (are those still around?). Maybe even one of those cell phone adapter things that are admittedly very expensive per gig. Go ahead, provider 3 of 4, make my day...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by chromas on Monday December 21 2015, @08:40PM
Always a couple hundred short. This works in other areas, too: "We are sooo clooose to curing juvenile diabetes. If only you'd give just a dollar more." "Ohh, we could add email-notification to our appointment management system, if only we had $n+200."
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday December 21 2015, @09:04PM
No. Nobody here is expecting 5 nines with a tech on site within an hour of a detected fault for $50-75/month. They'd just like reasonable performance (say, 3 nines) with a tech that shows up on the day they say they will after you call them. Many of the things I want/expect would actually save them money.
For example, rather than making me set up an appointment for 5 days later for them to send someone who has no diagnostic equipment and no ability to work on the pole (not even a tall enough ladder to give it a shot), I would like them to be able to check status of nearby modems so they can see that it's a line problem affecting the entire street.
I would like people who speak passable english and don't lie to me about their name (imagine that, the first lie happens before you even say a word!) and who know that if you don't have WiFi, then WiFi can't be the problem.
I would like for them to not have lying as a matter of policy. For example, do NOT tell me that only my house has no service, especially when I asked my neighbor and his service is down too. Do not tell me that a ticket is in the system and progressing when you didn't even enter one.
It might be nice if their tier 2 people knew more about their network than I do (even though I have not hacked them and do not work for them).
Ma Bell for all her problems used to be able to manage that when you only paid $20-30/month for POTS.
(Score: 4, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Monday December 21 2015, @05:40PM
The packets were coming from inside the LAN! Boo!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @06:08PM
hmmm... no horror stories for me. then again was only using the interwebz thru 2wire copper cables but for a short time on a cdma modem.
-string new 2wire copper from dslam to house? check.
-replace company modem/router with ownZ? check.
-use more then one computer behind NAT? check.
-"extend" internet connection via wifi to the "open" neighbourhood? check.
-torrent ahoi? check.
-run vpn server and tor relay and exit? check.
-some-smtp in-ports are blocked? check. (i think this one is industry standard, but nithing tor cannot fix)
-...
nothing to complain about except of course that its too slow and too expensive. nothing new there.
maybe just having the isp route packets via another country to another isp in the same country, lol.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Dr Spin on Monday December 21 2015, @07:52PM
I have found over the years that IP over carrier pigeon beats the pants of most ISPs.
You just need rocket propelled pigeons!
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @09:06PM
That stunt in South Africa [bbc.co.uk] was not IP over carrier pigeon.
Notice that the data link was unidirectional with only one packet.
They also violate RFC 1149 - Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avia [faqs.org] by using a 4GB memory stick rather than "a small scroll of paper, in hexadecimal, with each octet separated by whitestuff and blackstuff."
To be fair breaking the standard in that way mays the use of the birds make a stupid amount of sense (High bandwidth, high latency link, instead of low bandwidth, high latency).
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Tuesday December 22 2015, @03:21AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 21 2015, @07:58PM
it's a shitty business to be in if you ask me, but then I was the monkey running about the countryside nearly running people over to meet appointments shoveled my way, not the guy cashing checks, plotting endless expansion and brow-beating the crew...
That said, I never had much trouble leaving without a connection established / re-established, anyone in that job for very long is probably not as willing or able to find greener pastures.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 21 2015, @09:04PM
The neighbor got fed up with poor service, and announced that she was going to the office to give them a piece of her mind.
Her cell phone was recovered with this image on it.
http://www.standbyformindcontrol.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/vaONgYlW6zByMFkZ6v2RLXzfxLt.jpg [standbyformindcontrol.com]
I guess she gave a little more than a piece of her mind . . .
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday December 21 2015, @09:24PM
Yep..that's pretty much the real image of the TelCo's inner being.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday December 21 2015, @09:13PM
In 2009 someone from another company in the same office building ordered a fax line and some technician decided to cut our internet line for that. We didn't know what had happened, but all of a sudden we were cut off from the internet. We paid an equivalent of $650.00 per month at the time for that SDSL line so we would have the best service available. After some fruitless investigating I called the ISP to see if they could get us back online ASAP. This was around 7 PM. They said they'd call back to the office where the line was, so I had someone wait there for them to call. After 2 hours of waiting, still no call. So I called them again to ask why they hadn't called and the answer was: "but we have 8 hours to respond". So they were planning to push the problem to the next day shift. After all these years they still think we owe them money, every couple of years another bailiff sends a letter threatening with a law suit, to which I always respond to please finally bring on the law suit so my own claim can be processed too. After that I never hear from them again, until a different bailiff tries again a couple of years later.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snotnose on Monday December 21 2015, @10:49PM
Heh. Around '82-'83 our part of the company got our own building about a mile away from the mothership. One thing the parent company made was microwave systems so military remote outposts had phones without running lines. They got the bright idea to put a dish on our roof, point it to the mothership, and save some money.
Worked fine for about 6 months, then phone service for the building would randomly cut out. After a few days someone walked on the roof and noticed a crane between us and the mothership, a couple times a day it blocked the signal. Someone got on the phone, figured out when the crane would go away, and got some temporary phone lines from the phone company. Things were hunky dory. Until the day we went back to the microwave dish. It was dead. As a doornail. Why? Seems the crane was building a building high enough to permanently block our microwave. Even better? They had the phone company shut off our service the day the crane was supposed to go away. Even better, it took a couple days before the phone company could restore our service. So we had 2-3 days of no phones.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday December 23 2015, @01:19AM
+3 informative? Jeez, it's a funny story I tell while sitting around drinking with friends. It's 100% true, which makes it funnier.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by No Respect on Monday December 21 2015, @11:19PM
They don't care, pure and simple. We had a 3-week nightmare with them a few months ago. The outside amplifier blow due to lightning in the area leaving us without TV, internet or phone service. The "48 hour" service call "guarantee" ended up being 72 hours. Guy shows up, farts around for an hour, does something outside and leaves. Half an hour later the amp blows again (no lightning this time). Customer service says it will be another 48 hours until they can get a tech back out to us. We bitch and moan, speak to a supervisor who promised us to get us an "emergency service call" the next day, i.e. in less than 24 hours. We wait all day and nothing. We wait another day and nothing. Finally we called back, waited on hold the usual 30 minutes, and were told that the emergency service call had actually been set up for the following month!
On top of that, their customer guarantee says they'll never charge for a service call if the problem is with their equipment. Except when they do. Twice. We got those charges removed from the bill, finally, but it did take multiple multiple-hour phone calls to get it sorted. I hope they all rot in hell.
The story is much, much longer than that but that was the worst part of it.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Monday December 21 2015, @11:28PM
In the early days ATT DSL service used to be known as being atrocious, both in terms of quality of service and customer service. How much things have changed thanks to competition. I have three sources for Internet and TV service now. Because I have alternatives now, they have to be good to me if they want my business. Now I'm hoping that Google will come here and run some fiber up to my house because it's unlikely ATT company will do it. They're doing amazing things with twisted pair copper wire.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2015, @01:08AM
I went to a customers house to reset a modem and it smelled like cat piss and was full of roaches. The people were rude and insisted that I climb over a mountain of garbage to get to the modem to reset it. After consulting the last guy to visit there I tripped all the breakers in the breaker box to keep from having to go back in there. That was over ten years ago, since then I've had to put up with more filth than any human being should ever have to and I"m the sysadmin not a field tech. Restaurants are the worse. Makes me eat in a lot. Places that have a IT boy are bad since the tiny techs I run into usually don't ever know how to diagnose internal network problems. So my ISP horror stories usually involves unappreciative people wanting me to fix their mistakes.
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Tuesday December 22 2015, @02:12AM
We bought a new house earlier this year and I called Cox about 2 weeks out to set up the move. As we are cable cutters, our internet access is our line for home entertainment, plus I attend school online. Cox informed me they wouldn't have a tech out for a week and a half after we moved in. I expressed the frustration that nearly a month turn around is pretty frustrating and made the appointment three and a half weeks later because I didn't really have a choice. The date rolled around, I took a half day off work and no one showed up.
I called them on my way to work only to sit on hold and arrive to work before someone could answer. A couple of days later, I got in touch with someone and told them the story so far. I got a scripted apology and they told me it would be 10 days before a tech could come out. I blew up at the lady on the phone and said "I need your supervisor to make this happen or you need to find out if your retention department can make it happen to keep me around." They promised to have a guy out by the end of the weekend and they delivered.
Not a week later, my wife gets home to find out the internet doesn't work. There was a notice on the door asking us to call Cox. I called to find out they disconnected us at the pole because we were causing interference on the network and it would be 2 weeks before they could come out and fix it. I explained to them how they were racking up a month of service I had paid for and not received and I expected an entire month's refund. They told me I could get a $15 credit. This got me really offended so I asked to talk to a supervisor, which the rep on the phone assured me wasn't necessary and I flat out refused to talk to him anymore nor conclude our call. The supervisor wasn't really warm to the idea, but I got him to send a business tech over the next day. Best part about this was the interference was caused by their own fucking equipment, a line filter on the pole, and not mine. The tech said he simply pulled it off the line and now I get a little bit of cable TV. Consolation for the head aches, I supposed, despite I don't watch it anyway.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Marand on Tuesday December 22 2015, @05:50AM
Technically, this isn't quite an ISP horror story because they never actually succeeded in getting things set up, but it's close enough...
I'd just moved into a new place and had to choose between Verizon (DSL) or Comcast (cable); at the time both had similar speeds and both supposedly could provide access to the address, but Verizon had a slightly better deal, so that's the way I went. First contact went great and I was informed I'd receive the modem in the post in a few days, and when I got it an installation would be scheduled. So far, so good.
The estimated arrival date came and went with no sign of the package. A few more days, still no modem. Called them back up to inquire about it, and that's when things got strange. The first support person claimed that I never got the modem because they cancelled my installation and service. Why? Because it was determined my address couldn't get service, but nobody bothered informing me. I pointed out that this had already been covered, and they determined I could get service and had already signed me up. The rep asked me to hold while verifying the information, so I did.
After 20-30 minutes in limbo, a different rep picked up and asked what I needed help with, so I had to explain the whole thing again. This new rep checked, said that yes, I could get service, and it was strange that the previous rep would say I couldn't. I got put on hold again while the rep set me up for a new modem delivery...
...and then a third rep picked up after another long delay. I had to explain everything again, including how the previous reps were giving me contradictory information. This rep told me that I could not receive service, the 2nd rep was wrong, and my delivery and service would be cancelled. I was put on hold again, when a different rep than the previous three picked up...
This surreal game of passing me from one rep to another kept happening, and every time it did I had to explain the whole bloody thing again, and I never did get the same answer twice in a row about whether I could or could not get service at my address. After about four hours of this, it was finally decided that I could not get service at that address, it was a mistake that any of their systems ever said I could, and they were sorry for the inconvenience. So, I called Comcast, set up an install, and had internet within a few days.
I'd like to say that that's the end of the story, but there's more...
A couple weeks later, I received a bill for the Verizon service I never received, including rental of the modem that was never mailed, so I had to call them and go through help desk hell again to get it fixed. Then, to top it all off, about a month after this was all cleared up and I thought it was all over, I received a package with a Verizon return address. When I opened it up, you know what I found inside?
A brand new modem.
(Score: 1) by malloc_free on Tuesday December 22 2015, @07:02AM
Mid project. Thanx guys.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 22 2015, @01:24PM
My ISP doesn't bill me for the £10/month dial up service I was getting. I don't notice because, hey - it's ten quid. This goes on for nearly 18months.
They cut me off, I telephone them. They want a single payment to clear the account. I refuse. They claimed they had no way to contact me to let me know the payment had stopped.
"But you run the email service I use. You know my email address because YOU RUN IT"
They waived the payment.
(Score: 2) by spxero on Wednesday December 23 2015, @04:25AM
This is on our business lines, mind you, but we've have great luck by moving to Peplink devices. In most of our remote locations we've moved away from $$$MPLS lines and moved to cheaper cable/fiber with DSL backups and had great success with their stateless VPNs. Funny antidote: Our corporate overlords were out a few months ago evaluating our network and seeing if they could help us save money by consolidating services. We mentioned what we were using, how we were using it, etc., and they mentioned that they were saving $400k by moving from one carrier's MPLS lines to another's. When we mentioned that our entire bill per location is roughly $300-500, and the conversation about how we manage our network stops almost immediately. For what it's worth, those Peplinks kick major tail and are cheap by comparison- and they take a lot of carrier-caused issues out of play.