Does ISP Accountability Ever Exist? (rant!!)

[Draggar]

Originally posted by Lilosh
*sigh* I love people who bad mouth the techs. When we give you the troubleshooting steps that solve a good 70% of people's problems, we get the "That wont help!" "I can't do that". "It's your job to fix it, I'm not troubleshooting".

I'll never bad mouth techs in general. In fact, I'll praise (and write letters) about good techs.

I work as a tech for a wireless provider, and trust me, the WORST are bad techs (and not uneducated techs who want to learn, someday they'll be great techs, I'm talking about the ignoramus who doesn't want to learn, even my company has a lot of them).

I've been on both sides of the fence several times, I am a good tech (or at least all my supervisors say so) and I try to be a good customer when I'm calling in.

[Lilosh]

Draggar is right.


I worked for AT&T Broadband right when the switchover from Excite was going on.


That was a Cluster-of-forks, if you catch my drift. Didn't work there for more than a few months, but boy, did people get upset about that one. Stuff was very very unsmooth.


-Lilosh

[Sanna]

Cubynn is right, the dorm does not allow me to 'outsource' my isp. Thus, they get to jack us around and not feel like they have to tell us things.

And all this comes after they a) lied about which dorms were going to be offline during their 'upgrade' over Thanksgiving, b) they lied about when service was going to be back (If it's going to be Sunday evening, just SAY that, not 'by Saturday noon'), and c) they have had WORSE disconnect issues SINCE this 'upgrade'. And all of this with exceedingly little communication to the 'customer', ie the student, ie ME.


/sigh. thank you all for your responses. And now I go to have blood drawn for the first time in my life, and I'm so scared I'm about to vomit and/or cry. I hate medicine, I hate needles, I don't want to do this. /cry.


/hugs for everyone for being kind when I need a bit of kindness. And, er, beware of me if for some odd reason you see me on the boards or in game today... I'm being given a loopy-drug so i'm 'present' as little as possible. I'll probably just go to sleep afterwards, but in the meantime.... I just need a hug.

I'll probably have loopy dreams too... I swear last night, I had a dream about how the Paladin became a Shadowknight (and of course it was highly influenced by LOTR:ROTK which is an incredible movie btw). The one question I have, from the dream, is... why was I the Cleric?? o_0 Silly Paladin goes oor of cheal and gets bitten by Evil and becomes a Shadowknight... serves him right. /nod. ^_^ (And of course Evil comes after the Cleric next, heh.)

-- Sanna
I can hijack my own thread, can't I? I'm still scared, I hate invasive proceedures... I need a hug >_<

[Ilona]

/HUG Sanna!

I'm afraid university networks many places are like you're experiencing

[kiztent]

Originally posted by Sanna
/hugs for everyone for being kind when I need a bit of kindness. And, er, beware of me if for some odd reason you see me on the boards or in game today... I'm being given a loopy-drug so i'm 'present' as little as possible. I'll probably just go to sleep afterwards, but in the meantime.... I just need a hug.

Loopy drugs are fun, especially when they take blood, raising the concentration of loopiness higher. Plus it's LEGAL!!!

Hugs to you sanna.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Ok now this one hit my pet peve

Originally posted by Sanna


And all this comes after they a) lied about which dorms were going to be offline during their 'upgrade' over Thanksgiving,

Was it posible they made a mistake... you know mistakes... or even a comunications breakdown within their ranks?

b) they lied about when service was going to be back (If it's going to be Sunday evening, just SAY that, not 'by Saturday noon'),

And this is similar... maybe they ran into problems that they did not anticipate during the upgrade? Maybee the tech that made the upgrade plan did not anticipate something... or was more highly skilled than the person that did the upgrade?

For timing issues like this... I truely doubt they "lied" Stuff happens that causes delays. They made an estimate (I won't say it is their best estimate... just an estimate) and they were WRONG... as simple as that... I truly doubt they purposelly LIED.

Now part C does suck It should be better not worse after an upgrade!

[Sanna]

YAY ME. They did not have to take blood. Maybe in a month, but not today. /WHEW. This also means no loopy medicine today. SOOO Happy. And thanks for the /hugs ^_^ muuuuchly appreciated.




And Ngreth Sir: Yes, they did lie about which dorms were going to be affected. The official-type release-statement as linked on the email page in large red letters originally stated that my dorm (and others around) would not be cut. LATER, they reneged. Without telling anyone beforehand. Like me.

If they would have told me in the FIRST place that they would be cutting the net service, I could have made plans to move my computer to someplace where I had internet and could have gotten something USEful done over the break, like research for the dance paper. Why I had to write a paper for Dance 1003 I still don't know. /shrug. But anyway, they did lie, they made no efforts to re-inform, nor do they ever bother to tell us what is going on.

THAT is what gets me: Lack of (honest) communication. It always happens. My uni refuses to communicate on their own, like telling me/us what's going on, or in some departments, they WILL outright lie and screw students over in the name of money. IE, never ask my bf about his ordeal with Housing. I am paying these people... for what? To deal with red tape, wool, and deception. It just kinda makes me mad, not to mention depressed about dealing with real life. Are real life people as aggrivating as this? Do they lie, cheat, steal? Because that's what I'm seeing so far.


I dunno. At the moment I am neither at the dorm nor on loopydrugs and minus some blood, so I'm pretty happy. But I will have to deal with these morons for another 2-3 semesters, so that's kind of a dampener.


Thanks everyone ^_^ /hugs are nice. /hugs to all, they fix everything. I hope. ^_^

-- Sanna

[Nhin Impious]

Cubwynn is right, the dorm does not allow me to 'outsource' my isp. Thus, they get to jack us around and not feel like they have to tell us things.

I'm sorry, but exactly...how do they keep you from signing up for a dialup account? Do they not have phone jacks in the walls?

If you can't tell me, that's okay. And I'm not suggesting you switch entirely to dialup, just that I have a dialup account as a backup for when cable isn't working, because this household does depend on its internet connection.

But when I am having problems, the LAST THING I want is the guy I am talking to for support sounds like he would rather be watching Mtv.

No, when I'm having problems, the last thing I want is a tech who doesn't know their stuff. Unfortunately for the world, not everyone with good troubleshooting ability has good phone voice and the ability to sound excited and pleasant on every single call, even after 49 calls of the day have been completed. Like everyone else, we get upset when yelled at, sound tired when tired, or maybe even sound like we don't want to be there because we have no choice but to come in or get fired (position at one of the jobs I've had was like that, after a few absences.)

You want pleasant-sounding techs? Support companies that treat their employees like human beings, for one; that'll fix 90% of the problem. And for the rest, understand that sometimes people do have bad days. Life isn't about getting cheerfully pleasant people to interact with you in every single situation; it's about working with the folks you can to get done what you need to.

Maybe your words hit a little close to home because tonight, I have to work (medical support, not tech; I'm one of two people that can do my job, and the other one works another shift and is there already.) There's no one who can cover my shift and it HAS to be done. I know I won't sound great, and there may be times when I may sound like I don't want to be there. But it's not because I'd "rather be watching MTv." It's because my beloved grandmother passed away last night, I've been crying off and on all day, and I'm pretty tired (and hoarse). Sometimes the people you talk to don't lead perfect lives, and you (generic) really have got to recognize that we're human beings, with events above and beyond what we do with the headset on.

I hope that the people I talk to tonight share my views, and not yours. I would hate for them to think that I sound less than happy to be there because of THEM, because that's not it at all. I don't want you to think that, either. You've done the job, and maybe you've had to go to work in the middle of being sick, or upset-- just give people the benefit of the doubt, ok?

Nhinx (can't believe I just publicly admitted crying) Aphsion

----
"Life's too short to wear uncomfortable shoes." --Billie Jean Austin Smith (1928-2003)

[Ilona]

/HUG Nhinx

I am so sorry for your loss

[Cubwynn]

now I understand.


*long tender bearhugz for Nhinx*

[Sanna]

holy crudmonkies, nhinx. /hugs for you. >_< Quartic also sends sympathies.


-- Sanna

[Nhin Impious]

Really, it's all right, folks. And thanks for the good wishes.

I don't mean everything is fine. I'm sad, I'm grieving, but... this was her favorite time of the year. She certainly wouldn't mind that in between the waves of tears, there are times of laughing and remembering all the good times we've had.

She had all her holiday shopping done, so in less than a week I get to see what she got me, and the kidlet.. I'm sorry that she's going to miss out on my present, but my grandfather should enjoy it, at least. And as a final gift-- her services are on Tuesday, so I'm actually off work for three days-- this is the first Christmas I've ever had off to spend with my family.

And one final more-on-topic thing... after working as an insurance agent for many many years and doing a lot of business over the phone, my grandmother retired to run a bookstore with no phone. When asked by customers, "Why don't you have a phone?" she would answer, with a smile,

"Because you'd call me. And then I'd have to answer it, and who said I wanted to talk to you?"

Nhinx Aphsion

[Aandaie]

I've been happy with cox for cable internet.

Its quite good for the most part, with 99.9 percent uptime or more. Once every few weeks there may be an outage for a bit but its around 3 am usually, maintenence stuff I think. There is a number to call at such times where the person tells you this, easy to get through at that time

Even on a day of a horrible ice storm here, regular cable was only out for an hour or so off and on with internet a bit more.

KIZTENT:

Ahaha what a sad story. A person actually took the time to flood your wife, how sad. Its like flashing back to 1990 or something.

Just wondering, do you have something like zone alarm installed? I thought by default it would stop all such things, in connection with upgrading your software tcp etc with windows update.

[KyrosKrane]

Stuff like ZoneAlarm wouldn't really help in Kiztent's case.

ZoneAlarm (and most other firewalls on the market for home use, whether software or hardware based) are designed to block and filter out the odd incoming attack message, or at least undesirable ones. In the normal course of using the Internet, this will be a tiny fraction of 1% of all the data you send and receive.

What Kiz had happen is called a denial of service attack. Basically, the attacker floods so much garbage data into your connection that that the "real" data (EQ messages, in this case) just can't get through. This can only be stopped at the ISP level by reprogramming their firewall or router.

In a case like this, particularly when it's ongoing for months, I would have done two things. First, I'd have called the police. Second, I would have had a lawyer send the concerned ISPs a letter. Getting an inquiry from the police about why one of their clients is getting "hacked" -- the police may not get the techincal intricacies, but they know "hacking" is a Bad Thing(tm) and a crime that under current statutes could well be interpreted as a terrorist act, with its attendant penalties -- followed by the threat of a civil suit for damages from the lawyer, would have gotten the ISP's to correct the problem within 24 hours, and probably landed your attacker in jail to boot.

Edit: Heck, they could probably arrest the guy on stalking charges if they could show he was specifically targetting you with malicious intent. That basically eliminates the vagueness of the "hack" attack and puts it squarely in the jurisdiction of your local police department.