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User Charged With Taking ISP Tech HostageComments:327
Posted by
samzenpus
on Tue Sep 02, 2008 10:55 PM
from the to-kidnap-or-not-to-kidnap dept.
from the to-kidnap-or-not-to-kidnap dept.
User AttheCoalFac pointed us to an interesting tech support story from Canada. Halifax actress and playwright Carol Sinclair was arrested and is now facing criminal charges after a repairman says she threatened to hold him hostage until he fixed her Internet connection. Mrs. Sinclair denies the allegations and says that she merely stated, 'I don't want to hold you hostage, but would you mind hanging around until the other technician arrives so that the two of you can sort it out.' She was arraigned in Halifax Provincial Court Friday and is now free on conditions including that she have no contact with the repairman or any employee from her ISP. Having a lot of experience on both sides of this issue, I'm not sure who I'm cheering for.
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Misleading title (Score:3, Insightful)
Threatened to take him hostage Taking him hostage - the title is misleading.
Here in US, most repairmen won't leave until you sign for the work, as I understand it. If your not satisfied, don't sign for the job.
Re:Misleading title (Score:5, Funny)
Or rather "Hell hath no fury like a woman denied access to the internet.".
Re:Misleading title (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, that is the common mis-quotation.
The correct quotation of William Congreve is "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
Re:Misleading title (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. The GP said "You know what they say", not "You know what William Congreve said"..
In any case, I can see why it is misquoted...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He quoted it correctly, the common misquotation is "Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn." I don't know what point you were trying to get at other than being a karma whore.
Re:Misleading title (Score:4, Funny)
Your advice, while appearing sound at first glance, has one fatal flaw - women are far from logical about these things. Yes, I'm married. No, your advice does not work.
Re:Misleading title (Score:4, Informative)
On your other note: go to prefs and sections and just disable 'idle' from the main page, simple as that.
Seems to me (Score:5, Insightful)
this is just a case of a disgruntled customer's remarks being taken WAY out of context.
Re:Seems to me (Score:5, Interesting)
the problem is we don't know what she said.
there are 3 versions of the truth here, her version his version and what really happened.
Re:Seems to me (Score:4, Insightful)
there are 3 versions of the truth here, her version his version and what really happened.
That would imply that all three are true. I prefer the B5 variation: "Understanding is a three-edged sword. Your side, their side and the truth."
Of course sometimes it is just a matter of perception and all are equally "true" in that sense, but most of the time not...
Re:Seems to me (Score:5, Funny)
Which begs the question: If a truth fell down in the middle of a forest, and nobody heard it, would your wife want to have sex with you?
Or, put another way, if truth were a car traveling down the highway, and were to suddenly be attacked by a mac fanboi in one of Balmer's thrown chairs, would the bad car analogy still allow this post be modded +4 insightful?
Re:Seems to me (Score:5, Funny)
Having been an on-site tech for a cable company, a DSL company, and a multi-service ISP; I can assure you that customers do think that they can prevent a technician from leaving if the service isn't working to their satisfaction. I've responded in a number of different ways to customers. Here are some of the ways I've managed to vacate the premise:
1. Explain that the issue is elsewhere and that preventing me from leaving will only prolong their outage.
2. Show that the problem is with their own equipment, and that I'm not responsible for it.
3. Offer to permanently close their account, remove the equipment, and blacklist their address/company/name (this only works if you are friends with the owner of the ISP, which I am)
4. Last resort - offer to remove some of their blood through an entirely new orifice that I will create.
#1 and #2 are usually effective and will get you out the door
#3 I've used twice (one resulted in the closure of the account)
#4 I've used once (electricians scissors are truly multi-purpose)
The key is to remain cold and unemotional when delivering your chosen line. #4 requires having the scissors in your hand.
Re:Seems to me (Score:5, Insightful)
#4 can get you shot. You can't claim they started it if you're dead with a pair of scissors in your cold dead fingers.
Re:Seems to me (Score:4, Funny)
Yea but I have a lower UID than you, so ner.
Gives a whole new meaning to... (Score:5, Funny)
Vendor lock-in.
Typo (Score:5, Insightful)
That should read "Threatened to take him hostage (is not the same as) Taking him hostage - the title is misleading. I had a less than and greater than that were scrubbed out of the final posting - sorry.
What was wrong with her pc? (Score:3, Interesting)
What was wrong with her computer?
I mean, what was it in the end. To go through this whole song and dance just to realize maybe Cat5e patch cord went bad?
What was so beyond wrong with this computer that took 20 phone calls then to a site visit?
Are there no local IT company's in the town they can recommend to the women that can fix computers?
Re:What was wrong with her pc? (Score:4, Insightful)
No doubt there are companies that do computer work. But she would have had to PAY them.
People don't expect that they might have to actually pay someone to fix their computers after they frak them up.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They didn't know what was wrong with her internet connection / computer from what I can tell. "There's something wrong with your computer" was just a way to make her go away.
It's sad really all real geeks should love solving problems, but I've worked with loads of people who'll spout some excuse like that even before the customer has explained what's happening. What's even worse is that they do it in a such an obvious way that even non technical people can tell it's bullshit. And it's not like they
No contact with any ISP employees? (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, so up in Canada they have ISPs where you can actually get in contact with the employees instead of the automated phone system from hell?
Lucky Canadians.
Re:No contact with any ISP employees? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, and after the 20th time, they reward you by sending someone to your house. Next, they waste an hour of your time, tell you they can't fix your connection, and then file criminal charges against you.
Gotta love the Canadian ISPs ;)
You forgot the best part... (Score:3, Funny)
When you are arraigned you are told you can't call up and cancel service! :)
Re:No contact with any ISP employees? (Score:5, Funny)
Fingernail file? Jeez, if a fingernail file brandished by a woman can drive terror into the soul of a technician, no wonder those bumbling idiots were able to take over a plane with boxcutters!
Lady: Hold it right there mister. You're not going anywhere. If you even try to leave me with no internet I'll... I'll... I'll give you a manicure!
Tech: No! Please don't! It's taken me weeks to get into this disgusting state of personal hygiene, and if you clean my fingernails, the other geeks in the office will make fun of me again!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it only takes three or four weeks until they get tired of telling you "we're looking into it" and they send out a technician. Usually he takes a look, calls up his buddy at the switching station and they quickly realize that you haven't had Internet for the last two months because some idiot at central office didn't get around to filing the disconnect order for the previous tenant until after your connect order.
Internet addiction (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
Not Sure Who To Believe (Score:5, Interesting)
The part of me that burned out on tech support oh so long ago is quick to jump on the side of the repair tech. I have known people who were crazy enough to do that sort of thing when they reached their breaking point.
On the other hand, it's possible that even if she was at her breaking point, the tech -- caught between the rock of the customer and the hard place of his employer's prior actions -- found he had to get out of there before the customer got REALLY angry.
On the gripping hand... I've found that in the vast majority of times that I've had internet connection problems, with the exception of Verison DSL on Staten Island, NY,* especially when I was the only one in the neighborhood with connection problems, especially after several weeks... the problem has almost invariably been with my computer.
So, wild-ass speculation here, but I think the customer vented her frustration a bit too firmly (she did say she was not going to be polite, always a bad way to start a session); the technician hit his own breaking point and rather than go off on the customer he found an excuse to flee and a story to lay on his supervisor; his story of a crazy customer with a gun who wanted to hold him hostage got blown out of proportion and the woman was taken to court... ... and in the end, it really will be something wrong with her computer.
While my sympathy automatically lies with the technician, rationally I'm certain the truth is going to be somewhere between these two stories. And in a larger view, this might kick up the tension between residential end-users and technicians by a notch. While residential end-users might be a bit more inclined to be more polite to techs, it might also raise their animosity towards same and the relationship becomes more hostile as a result. At best this will fade into a footnote.
* - Kids, not much is worse in a customer sense, than a telco who sells you DSL and then moves some equipment around the central office such that you are now further from the central office than they rate DSL for. You're not actually farther from the CO, but the wiring inside the CO is now long enough that you are outside the CO's radius. And then they don't tell you. Fortunately, Verizon did the right thing and finagled something so that they returned my DSL. Part of me is pretty sure I wasn't the only one who had this happen to.
She opened the door for him, ya know? (Score:4, Insightful)
I might even have more sympathy for the techie, if not for the following detail: she actually opened the door for him, when he said he needed some CD from the van, and propped it open for when he returns. (Only to see him run off and drive off to the cops.)
I'm sorry, but is there any realistic and sane way to mistake that for a genuine hostage situation? I mean, hello? Isn't that the polar opposite of _preventing_ someone from leaving?
How would that even work, if it were a genuine hostage situation? "KK, you can go now, but please return later 'cuz you're my hostage. I'll let the door propped open for you. KTHXBYE." Or what? :P
Surely it would count as the most incompetent kidnapping in known history.
Look, that maybe he was close to the breaking point himself and he left an impolite customer, ok. I can live with that. Maybe the company even has a policy of leaving at the slightest perceived threat, even as a joke, as someone else suggested. Fine. Leave if you must.
But going to the police and filing criminal charges? Nope, sorry, my sympathy for him automatically ends there. He's an arsehole who thought he can abuse the system to teach someone else a lesson. And I have no sympathy for that.
Well, either that, or he is genuinely schizophrenic and thought that opening the door for him equals preventing him to leave. And in that case, someone put him in a nut house and on neuroleptics. Because God knows what else he might mis-interpret in surrealistic ways, and how he'll react then. Maybe at the next customer he'll think that offering him a glass of water means trying to set him on fire, or whatever. Maybe he'll end up injuring someone or himself, thinking he's fighting for his very life.
Re:Not Sure Who To Believe (Score:4, Insightful)
You're entirely correct, of course. There's not enough information in TFA to say one way or another. Heck, even if it goes to trial, it's literally 'he said, she said.'
Not finding a gun is a major piece of evidence in favor of the playwright, true. Although I've known people who will use threats like that without anything whatsoever to back it up, if they thought they could get away with it; but I'm not getting that vibe. Fortunately, the trial will not be decided on vibes. =)
It's a figure of speech (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a figure of speech ... "I hate to hold you hostage, but ...". That is said in a lot of contexts. If things went down as this story claims, then the ISP tech didn't understand and just blew it all out of proportion.
Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
Huh?
I've never heard that statement used in conversation, in any context.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Counter-suit (Score:4, Interesting)
Sue their asses away.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Considering how badly some people deal with women up here? It's not a bad plan. Especially the number of times that I've had the nice old lady, grandmother, cousin, GF, get the run around by a various company until you act as the S/O, brother, etc, because they have a pair of ovaries instead of a pair of balls. This isn't a all companies are bad, rah-rah burn them down. It sure makes me wonder if they want their business still, but then I remember...that in most cases they're the only business in town.
And
This is so messed up (Score:5, Interesting)
What a small world. She doesn't seem like the "hostage holding" type at all, and the local ISPs are known for their shitty customer service. Seems like quite a misunderstanding.
[Insert "so, do you know Bob/Joe/Cathy from Canada?" Jokes here]
Re:This is so messed up (Score:4, Funny)
[Insert "so, do you know Bob/Joe/Cathy from Canada?" Jokes here]
Hey! I knew Cathy. But then again, everybody did.
Could have been worse... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
C'mon man, get real. You don't need to hobble a geek to keep him in the basement.
Re:Could have been worse... (Score:5, Funny)
Court order for what happens anyway? (Score:4, Funny)
...is now free on conditions including that she have no contact with ... any employee from her ISP.
Granted, I'm used to trying to call an engineer out from US ISPs... But how is this different to what you get without a court order?
My sympathies lie... (Score:3, Interesting)
The policy does allow us to return to the customer's premises at a later time, at our discretion, but only when accompanied by another tech.
While I cannot vouch for the following, it is what has been described around the office here. "Back in the day" a subscriber apparently did use a shotgun to, ahem, "troubleshoot" a wiring ped right in front of a field tech. So, no, I have no doubt whatsoever that some people are more than capable of threatening what's implied in the article.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your policy is nothing more then a bullshit cover your companies legal ass policy. If someone actually threatens another person, the law supersedes any company rules and the situation is what it is. The policy is just so later in court the employee can't sue the company saying he was forced to be in that situation or he's lose his job.
Now for your sympathies, as the tech being a person, I can sympathize with him as his customers won't know what they are doing and are going to be upset before he gets to the
Physical restraint? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
She's an actress and a playwright (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me that she was just being humorously dramatic. Summary says nothing about a weapon being presented at any time.
ISP excuse, thinks I (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a remarkably good excuse for the ISP not doing their job; the customer is forbidden to contact them. I think it's probably system-abuse on the part of the ISP.
Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
The repair man should have plugged in a laptop or similar, showing a working connection, thus placing the issue squarely on the customers computer. If the repair man couldn't make his laptop connect either, the issue is either with both computers or - much more likely - the connection, and thus he knows he has work to do.
She was arrested?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
There's a better picture of Sinclair here, much more flattering:
http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/d-f/dinos34-01.jpg [ultimatedisney.com]
I've had (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had, though over the phone, not in person. Sadly, tempting as it is, you can't really hold someone hostage over the phone ;)
ACT 1
It went like this: so at some point I activate my email at T-Online. They had a handy-dandy page that allows one to change their _email_ password, and I use it.
Suddenly I can't log in to the ISP any more. I figure, hmm, I bet the damned thing changed my ISP password too. I try the new one, it doesn't work either.
I'm pretty sure I didn't forget the new password, since it was one I had used before. But ok, it could happen. I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
So I call the ISP's tech support, he makes me try both the new and old password, neither works, ok, he says he'll send me a new one by post. But first he wants to know my invoice number, to be sure he's sending it to the right guy. I read the one from my phone bill to him. Says it's ok, all clear, he'll send me a new password.
A week goes by, I have no new password. I call again, different employee, makes me read him the invoice number again, assures me all is well and he'll send me the new password. Nothing happens.
The spiel continues for one and a half fucking months, in increasinly short intervals as my patience wears thin. Then I lose my patience entirely and escalate it to hell and back.
Turns out that when I moved, both the ISP and the parent telco gave me a new invoice number. Each. Different ones. But on the bill there was only the telco one. So the retards from support saw that the numbers don't match and _lied_ to me.
They fucking lied to me for a month and a half. They didn't even bother telling me what's wrong, or finding a simple solution like "ok, come to one of our stores to prove it's you." Nah, the bloody retards lied to me.
(At this point it's worth noting that (A) DSL connections are point-to-point anyway, (B) they can know it's me or at least calling from my phone number since it's a subsidiary of my telco, but most importantly (C) they're sending it by post to my address. What more confirmation do they want?)
ACT 2
My brother buys a new house informs the same telco and isp, is assured he'll get dsl in a couple of days.
It's worth noting that somehow he was flagged as VIP customer. Dunno why. Maybe because he and his wife are addicted to their cell phones, and get a phone bill comparable to some small companies. But anyway, he's a VIP customer and for that they assure him that it won't take more than a day or two to switch his account to the new address.
Short story: the same spiel as in my case happens. He's repeatedly assured that, yeah, verily, someone will take care of it by tomorrow. And nothing happens. Again and again.
What had happened? The drone who entered his new address made a typo. Let's say his new house number was 42 A (not the real one, for the obvious reasons), and the drone entered it as 42 S. Which didn't exist.
Ok, typos happen.
But again, they just lied to him again and again. If they do that even to "VIP customers", I rest my case.
ACT 3
After the previous incident, I was weary of doing anything to my connection any more. But eventually I'm dumb enough to say yes, when some salesman offers me (again) to upgrade my connection to 6000 MB/s instead 1000.
Life goes on for a month or so, in which time nothing happens to my connection, good or bad. As in, I'm still on 1000. Well, ok, I'm fine with that. At least I still have it.
Then suddenly I can't log in any more.
The call this time was a surrealistic carousel affair, where I'm passed around between 6 different departments. Each sees only his slice of the problem, so as soon as it even touches any other domain or aspect, he gives me a new phone number to call. And, as we'll see, didn't even see his own slice well enough.
It took me a whole weekend, albeit with large breaks to recharge my phone's batteries, of going round robin like that.
In that time, I'm