User Charged With Taking ISP Tech Hostage 327
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.
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?
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.
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.
Counter-suit (Score:4, Interesting)
Sue their asses away.
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:No contact with any ISP employees? (Score:1, Interesting)
I got out of a two year DSL contract with Bell because of their slow response/broken promises.
The phone tech mad the mistake of telling me they would send someone on site 'within one week' to diagnose my sudden, horrible connection issues.
Since I knew it was just his way of getting me off the phone, I made a note of the time and his name. I used the week to read the terms of service on my account and gave them a call back exactly a week later.
Since they hadn't (of course) done anything further to diagnose the issue, an hour of arguing with the manager got me out of my contract without paying the ridiculous cancellation fees.
A few days later I was hooked up (on the same lines and equipment) with a 3rd party reseller, paying less with no contract and flawless service. Teksavvy FTW!
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.
She was arrested?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What was wrong with her pc? (Score:1, Interesting)
ide.
The common answer from ISP is
ISP: The problem is on your computer.
ME: Hey, I don't even have ADSL synchronisation and I have checked with two ADSL modem and one ADSL modem/router.
ISP: Have you checked your ADSL filters on the phone line?
ME: already done, I have three filters, checked with all combination
ISP:let's follow procedure.
ME:whatever.
20 minutes later
ISP: OK, there's no problem with your computer. By the way, we effectively
have a problem in this zone.- since three hours ago. We're working on it
ME face palms.
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
ISP support a farce (Score:3, Interesting)
I've had a lot of experience with ISP support, with Adelphia (before they collapsed), Comcast (before I switched) and now Verizon. I'm a computer engineer, so if I call the ISP it's usually because I've figured out that the problem is at their end, and I can tell them what to do to fix it, yet I've found myself getting very, very, very frustrated and angry at the absurdity that I've encountered. In one case, after a half-hour of maneuvering through the maddening computer prompts (press 1, press 3, press 7 etc...) to speak to a human being, I got a support person who gave me the standard "reboot your computer and reset your modem". After a few minutes of first humoring him, and then another few minutes of walking through steps I knew were not the problem, I tried to explain to him what the problem was and what he had to do. He obviously had no idea about IP addresses, default gateways, DSN or what "ping" meant -- and after pretending to listen to me, he said that I needed to call "Lynksys". I said "okay", hung up, and immediately called back, went through the same scenario with another support person, who told me "you have to call Microsoft". I said "okay" hung up and immediately called back, and after maneuvering through the prompts again to get a human, I got a support person who (after suggesting that I reboot and rest my modem) listened to what I had to say, appeared to understand everything and had my internet running again in under 5 minutes. All told, however, I was on the phone for about 3 hours, and you have to realize how maddening it is when after to finally get to the prompt that says "press 7 if you are having connectivity problems", you're put on hold and every minute the recording tells you to try going to their website!! I know few people who have my patience or restraint (and it took every bit of that restraint to avoid letting out my frustration on that third support person[the one who finally helped] when she told me to try rebooting and resetting the modem) so I can just imagine what a layperson must feel. I remember having a technician come to my house to set up the internet service who kept trying different modems (saying "I can't believe all these are defective') before I intervened and set it up myself. I think that ISPs are overwhelmed with service calls, are understaffed, and suffer from a wide discrepancy of skill-sets amongst their personnel. The use of computer prompting to carry some of this burden is what gives computer prompting a bad name. I wouldn't be surprised if the actress actually did threaten the technician -- ISP support seems designed to coerce otherwise normal, well-adjusted persons to become homicidal, suicidal and paranoid.
Re:I've had (Score:2, Interesting)
I couldn't get my DSL installed until I had two techs come out to my place, one from the phone company, and one from the internet section. They swapped info, and could then begin working on the problem. The solution: replace the bad card in their DSL remote terminal box that was claiming that it was working properly, when in fact it didn't let me out past that card. Time required: 2 months until I finally convince phone company to send someone out, and 3-4 days after the 2 techs met. They weren't allowed to talk to each other until they met physically. This was about 7 years ago.
Re:I've had (Score:1, 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 ;)
Actually, with some PBX systems you can... and it's quite fun to do.
If you (the customer) don't hang up, the connection never really goes away, even if the help desks guy/gal hangs up. The connection stays, and prevents any other call from getting through to them. They still can call other people internally (putting you on hold), but they can't hang up. Well eventually, after a longish time (half an hour) and possibly after the intervention of their manager, they are able to break lose, but it's not pretty. I've used this twice with some success (once with my mobile phone provider, who wouldn't supply me the parameters to configure internet via GSM, and then again a couple of months later against Philips who refused to tell me where they've lost my hand-held movie player that I sent in for warranty repair)
Re:ISP support a farce (Score:3, Interesting)
What is really, really, absurd, is that once I encountered an ISP support tech that was naive enough that I was able to convince her to reboot her computer. Afterwards, I told her the problem was still present (it was ... it was a dialup pool that was ringing and not answering). She seemed to actually believe at that point that there were indeed problems that rebooting didn't help for.