Advice on how to straighten out a crappy ISP

[Bill Moran]

Paul Robinson wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 09:50:32PM -0400, Bill Moran wrote:
>  
>>Their tech folks are incompetent, and their tech support is useless.
> 
> You appear to have conncetivity. If they were really incompetent, that
> wouldn't be happening.

True.  It only took them a few months to figure that out.

>>Their mail servers are broken and therefore any mail to @freebsd.org
>>bounces.  If you look at my headers, you'll see that I configured my
>>box to be its own mail relay and I'm able to send to the FreeBSD lists
>>(yippie!).
> 
> Define "broken". No reverse lookup on DNS? Tell them it's needed in the RFC, 
> even if it isn't. Tell them how to do it. Most importantly, don't tell the 
> front line support - get escalated up to somebody who knows how to do it and 
> has admin privileges on the right box.

The HELO line from the server announced itself with a machine name that had
no DNS whatsoever.
They've suddenly fixed it now, though.  Perhaps they were waiting for me to
publicly complain, or maybe it's just coincidence.

> ISPs are willing to help, it's just most of them are stuctured to keep techs 
> away from customers.

Hmmm ... those two statements don't correlate.

>>I am NOT paying for a static IP.  I don't need it, I have no need
> 
> Sounds like you do need it to me. :-)

Why?  Should I have to pay for a static IP in order to have a properly
configured SMTP relay?

>>When I try to talk to them, I get anything from "reinstall Windows"
>>to flat-out ignored.
> 
> 
> And when you phoned their manager and politely explained the situation, what 
> did he say? ;-)

Remember your earlier statement "structured to keep tech away from customers"?
It appears that they're structured to keep managers away from customers as well.
There's not much I can do when the person answering the phone refuses to
direct me to anyone but the same level 1 tech support I talked to the day
before.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com