ISP banality

[David Guyatt]

Oh, I do feel for him. Been there, done that. It's almost standard dis-service these days.

From The Slog:

INTERNET ISPs: as the S stands for service, isn't it about time we got some?

BY JOHN WARD FEBRUARY 20, 2014 SHIT ISP SERVICE SUCKS YAHOO SERVICE SUCKS LIKE AN ELECTROLUX
All keen deregulators please read, mark and inwardly digest this email I Just sent to Yahoo. It's now 11 am CET, I've been up since six and I still can't get my job done. Here goes:
Hi there
Last year while using this laptop in Greece, I opened a Yahoo mail account, wardslog@yahoo.com.
The password for this account is **********.
I have matched the Captcha code. But your robot tells me I'm using a different appliance. I am not.
It asks me to give you guys my home tel no, but gives me nowhere to do so.
When I go into "Help", I just go round and round in circles.
When I look out the 24/7 customer no, it says the number has changed, but doesn't give me an alternative.
When I try to Skype you, it asks me for an app, which I can't download.
So now, after wasting half a morning…I'm here.
Over and over its says on your websites WE WANNA HEAR FROM YOU! I suggest you try a little harder, folks.
Look, in Europe, people move around now and again. See, we're a free-movement Union these days. We have our own flag and everything. It's really neat.
Every time I change country, however, your robot has a catatonic breakdown. I can't believe I'm the first customer to experience this, but you fellas just don't seem to want to know, hmmm?
I urgently need to access this account so I can pick up a verification code in order to access yet another product where everyone is down there in the goddamn silo playing Wagner at full blast into their ears while typing WE WANNA HEAR FROM YOU!
So in order to stop me from becoming a 21st century Flying Dutchman, I'd really
appreciate it if you'd turn Papa Richard off for a minute and help a customer (there's that word again) to access his mail.
Please DO NOT NOW REFER ME BACK TO THE HELP PAGE. That is going to help at roughly the same level of efficacy as a hornet up my ass, cappiche? Excellent.
This is my email address. Write me a solution. Thank you.
Technophiliac who just wants a few humans to do their f**king jobs now and then.


I raised the matter of appalling ISP service personally with Cabinet Minister Oliver Letwin in late 2009. He looked into it, agreed it was disgraceful, and said on return to power, the Conservatives would tackle it. They haven't.

The facts here are plain and simple, regardless of political leaning: crap service like this increases unemployment and reduces meaningful service to near zero….purely to reward already obese QE-dripfed shareholders with even more money. It is not why we deregulated our telephonic services 30 years ago, and be you Marxist or Friedmanite, it sucks.

People often thread here to say we are powerless against "tptb". This is bollocks and always has been: there are 5.7 billion of us, and roughly 300,000 of them. This is precisely the sort of leg-trickling piss take that deserves to be crushed, and could be within hours by bombarding legislatures everywhere with myriad threats until every ISP by law on the planet is forced to give customers an email address for direct service prominently displayed.

You can do this with one or two simple clicks by viralising this appeal on everything that books, tweets, blogs, sends, captures or broadcasts.

[Magda Hassan]

The same thing happens if you go from one part of the country to another here. Millions of people travel everyday and hundreds of thousands travel for a living everyday. You would think in an online world with out borders there would be no difficulty. I can't think of anything except appalling management and boxed in unimaginative thinking that creates this situation. ::fury::

[David Guyatt]

In my more cynical moments, I wonder if there isn't more to it?

Either that or they genuinely don't give a flying fuck anymore about customer service - they don't of course - they just want your money and then t hell with you. Here, switching from a big provider is problematical. They have to give you a special code number that a new provider needs to input to switch. You ask them for it, they promise to send it, but don't. Ditto if you ask them to do something they are bound to do, but don't want to. They just ignore you. Repeatedly.

The problem is that they're all pretty much the same, in terms of customer dis-service. They all make big promises on price, but simply present options differently. Try to pin them down in writing on download speed, and they won't do it.

In my experience all large retail corporations lie and cheat as a matter of standard practise.