Advice on how to straighten out a crappy ISP

[Bill Moran]

Paul Robinson wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 10:11:35AM -0400, Bill Moran wrote:
> 
>>True.  It only took them a few months to figure that out.
> 
> Hahaha... OK, so they do sound like dolts...

It's tough to generalize, though.  When we had ours installed, it worked
the next day (and off and on for about two months before it stabalized)
When my brother had his installed, it took three install techs a week to
get it hooked up, but after that it worked perfectly.

>>>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.
> 
> Sure. I used to work at an ISP where it wasn't happening enough. I once 
> ended up picking up phones to customers and saying "Yes, I know mail is 
> broken at the moment, but I can't fix it because I'm too busy answering the 
> phone to people complaining mail is broken". Techs should stay away from 
> customers.

I understand where you're coming from, but when the level 1 techs (which
aren't really techs, but just phone-answeres trained to answer from a FAQ)
can't answer the question, they need to pass it on to the real techs.
Yes, it's a good idea to have people man the phones to handle the "I can't
get email" questions while the real techs are fixing the problem.  But
having them divert endlessly and never report the problem to the real
techs isn't right either.

>>Why?  Should I have to pay for a static IP in order to have a properly
>>configured SMTP relay?
> 
> If you really want "properly configured SMTP relay", then I'd say yes. SMTP 
> isn't designed for mobile IP. :-)

I'm not mobile.  How far am I supposed to be able to roam with this cable
anyway?

>>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.
> 
> Cunning bastards.

That's politer than what I said!

>>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.
> 
> Fair enough. And there is nobody at all you can move your business to?

I could go back to Pulsenet, whom I had the same problem with for three months.
At least Adelphia has finally corrected the problem.  Pulsenet got to the point
where they refused to answer the phone.  And messages that I left on their
automated system were never returned.
Unfortunately, no, there is nobody else.  This is a VERY old neighborhood, and
the high-quality ISP that I would like to use (city-net) can't get DSL into
my neighborhood because the phone lines haven't been upgrade in 30 years (not
exagerating ... sometimes the line quality is so bad I can't send faxes).
Nobody else can get DSL in here either, and only Adelphia has cable.  Pulsnet
is the only one providing wireless, and I refuse to go back them (last I checked,
they still hadn't corrected their DNS)  I haven't checked satellite yet, could
be possible.

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