Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Colorado's Peak ISP Sues Former Customer Over Bad Review

posted by janrinok on Monday August 04 2014, @01:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-only-ever-get-promised-'upto' dept.

AlHunt writes:

Russell Petrick, disgruntled former Peak Internet customer, posted bad reviews online about his former ISP (on: Yelp, SuperPages, Better Business Bureau, and Yahoo) and is now being sued for an undetermined amount of money.

According to Techdirt:

Russell Petrick is disabled and spends a lot of time on his computer at home. He signed on with Peak Internet for web access to watch movies and surf the net. "It was just too terrible to consider keeping," Petrick said when asked about the service. He said he was paying $50 a month for Internet download speeds of 20 mbps... Petrick claims the speeds were nowhere near that, and averaged 6.5 mbps. "The fastest speed I got was 13.6 mbps download and 3.1 mbps upload," Petrick said. "I didn't get anywhere near the 20 mbps mark."

It seems that Peak Internet's view is "ISP to customer: thanks for paying for a 20 Mbps connection speed. Anything above 4 Mbps is bonus speed. Stop complaining."

A customer who can only approach the speeds of a connection priced at half what he's paying obviously isn't going to be happy, but rather than work towards improving connection speeds, the company apparently decided to defer to its fine print. This isn't a great way to provide customer service and suing someone over bad reviews is an even worse decision.

Here are The Suit for Your Viewing Pleasure [pdf], Complaint Teller County [pdf], and the KOAA5 News Report.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Colorado's Peak ISP Sues Former Customer Over Bad Review | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 20 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Monday August 04 2014, @01:15AM

    by Horse With Stripes (577) on Monday August 04 2014, @01:15AM (#77043)

    Stop telling the truth about us! Waaah!

    I'd like to say that this type of move is a PR disaster in the making, but with the local monopolies that exist in this industry Peak can sue this guy into oblivion and then run commercials about "see how fast your searches for things not to say about us are now!" without any repercussions.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @03:27AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @03:27AM (#77079)

    I live in the market. It's not a monopoly. There are three Internet providers: Centurylink (slow DSL), the local cable company Baja Broadband, and Peak Internet. I've thought about switching to Peak, but I've stayed with Centurylink so far, mainly because I didn't want the hassle of professional setup.

    This probably refers to Peak's wireless Internet - some kind of WiMax setup. I've seen their advertising and it can be deceptive (though not in the legal sense.) They advertise "Up to 15Mbps" or so, but then in the fine print it says "guaranteed speed 1.5Mbps". I don't have an ad in front of me so I don't have the exact numbers, but you get the idea.

    • (Score: 1) by CirclesInSand on Monday August 04 2014, @03:54AM

      by CirclesInSand (2899) on Monday August 04 2014, @03:54AM (#77085)

      3 providers is a monopoly. Try to start your own company. You can't. It's a government monopoly.

      • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday August 04 2014, @11:24AM

        by Dunbal (3515) on Monday August 04 2014, @11:24AM (#77151)

        No, 3 providers is an oligopoly. One providers is a monopoly. Hence the use of the root "mono", which means one.

        • (Score: 1) by CirclesInSand on Monday August 04 2014, @12:43PM

          by CirclesInSand (2899) on Monday August 04 2014, @12:43PM (#77179)

          Don't be fooled by an arbitrary construct of identity. What's important isn't that they are legally considered separate corporations, what is important is that they are together the only providers and are working together to keep it that way. And they will not make greedy choices at the expense of each other (at your expense yes, but not at each other's expense). They may as well be 1 organism.

          • (Score: 1) by khedoros on Monday August 04 2014, @07:31PM

            by khedoros (2921) on Monday August 04 2014, @07:31PM (#77318)
            Thus: oligopoly. 3 companies acting in concert with each other does not a monopoly make. The system is simple enough, and the motivations of the competitors well-known enough, that for each of the 3 companies, maintaining the status quo makes sense. Yes, this means that they'll probably try to discourage real competition, in an "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of way. For that reason and others, it would make sense to me if you said that the arrangement is as bad as a monopoly, but saying that they're the same just doesn't fit the accepted definitions of the words.