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Judge Sues ISP for Poor Service
Pig Hogger writes: "According to this National Post story, Ontario small claims judge Beverley Reade is taking Rogers Cable to court, after she failed to get a credit when her Internet connection stopped working for a few days. She asks for either $5800 ($500 for breach of contract, $300 as compensation for her inconvenience & $5000 for punitive damages) OR an apology from cable mogul Ted Rogers himself (like this would ever happen...). The kicker is that, despite being hounded by a collection agency seeking the disputed amount, judge Reade keeps being getting solicited by Rogers marketroids trying to sell her high-speed internet access and cable-TV service..."
Does that now also mean that tech support lines will have to have people who are competent or risk being sued?
Instead of going to court and causing hassle to all concerned, begin signing up new fictional people accounts every three months or however often they shut 'em down for non-payment.
Tat allows anywhere from zero bps up to the maximum stated throughput, yes?
...that they are supposed to immediately terminate the communication, whatever it is. So you can't get cute with them in a legal way, OTHERWISE they will promptly direct you to their legal counsel. Funny thing, though...I did threaten to report the poor service I was receiving in Fremont, California to City Hall, where there are more strict rules against cable ISPs. When the guy on the phone told me that if I was threatening a lawsuit that he would hang up, I said "Nope...you won't be dealing with my lawyer, you'll be dealing with Fremont city council's..." Needless to say, problem solved rather quickly...
...comparing her to Erin Brockovich, the single mother who brings a chemical conglomerate to its knees...
So, the author of this article has absolutly no knowledge of either Cinema or History?
PG&E is a GAS AND ELECTRIC company...
damn, ignorance is bad, but editorial stupidity is unforgiveable...
I'm in the Scarborough area and I have very few problems with Rogers. However, every two to three days I wind up having to reset the cable modem and Linksys router sometimes followed by a DHCP Release and Renew to get going. Most users may not know the various tricks to try resetting the equipment at the client side. The big question is how well do their technical support people know how to train users. One of the first questions they should be asking is what equipment are you using. Their support people never ask me this. Then again on the rare times that I call support I am usually calling in with a list of which of their servers that I can and cannot ping. If they perhaps can better document proceedures to reset client side equipment then they could probably cut down on the number of support calls. I have a technical background and can figure out most problems on my own. The average person is not going to do this. They are going straight for the phone.
I have COGECO in Kingston Ontario. My experience is the exact opposite of yours. I've had no service for months at a time, and been expected to pay full cost for that luxury. Let me tell you about the COGECO: Whenever it rains, I loose my service. I call their "local Kingston number", which is just a goofy forward to their Burlington head support office. I spend on average 2 hours on hold, no matter when I call. Day or night, week o week-end. I ask how many people are there working the phones; usually the answer is between 6~12, never higher than 16. After 40 minutes of going through checklist type "help" with the "technical support" trained monkey, they book a service call. A dude shows up in a truck two weeks later, claims to have fixed it, and leaves. A week later, it breaks again. The modem falls into a cycle of working for two days, then not worknig for three. The support guy doesn't want to book another service call, because the guy was just there last week. "We'll credit your account..." Of course, they didn't. I don't know how you define training, but I don't define it as reading off a checklist that's just: A) Try rebooting the computer B) Check all the cables and drivers C) Reset the modem one way D) Reset the modem another way E) Delete your IE cache -> Service call if they're feeling generous The entire time I keep saying "I'm an enterprise IT tech, I know it's because the modem isn't connecting to it's network." But the greasy teenager on the other end always knows best. So why do I still have this COGECO nonsense? Because there just isn't anyone else. COGECO@Home, Rogers@Home, Shaw@Home... They all have jurisdictional monopolies... They prove the cable TV, and the Cable internet. If you dont' like it, go back to Dial-up. You could try ADSL, but it costs more than cable, and isn't as fast. The marketing guys at Bell really have their act together...
Actually Rogers are terrible. Some people never have a problem, but woe betide you if you are not one of those people. It took them FIVE weeks to get my connection working after the initial installation. Two days after the installation, I called and asked them to send a new modem (I had tested a friend's modem and it worked). A week later - and countless power cycles (Phone Support: "Sir, power the modem off and power back on, you chould be OK" Me: "The last phone support guy had me do that 20 times. I just tested a friend's modem and it works. Send me another modem please." Phone Support: "Sir, please power the modem down and power on again. Everything test out fine here." Me: "Yes. The modem is the problem." Phone support "Sir, please power cycle ---" click)
Where was I..? Oh yeah a week later they sent a guy with NO modem. He said everything was OK.
Repeat cycle, over and over. Finally I SNAPPED and gave the phone guy bloody hell, so TWO weeks after that they sent a guy with a new modem. Guess what?
After that, I just lost the mail server a few times every week and totally lost service a day or two every week until I finally gave up on them.
On the other hand I have friends in another city who've had uninterrupted service for over 2 years. Go figure.
Anyway my point is - Rogers really don't make any effort to supply what they advertise, and this person is perfectly right to take them to court over it.
PS, using BELL Symnpatico DSL now for a year. No interruptions, throughput 2x any I ever got from Rogers.
I'm a former SWBell (an SBC baby bell) DSL customer, and myself and others in the area have been through far worse.
My latest scenario:
A year ago, I moved to a location that was declared as being over 24,000 feet out from the CO, and therefore could not continue to get DSL. It took me about 3 months to get it removed from my bill (ARGH!).
Okay, three months ago (a year after previously cancelling my service), I suddenly was billed for DSL service. How the HELL can I be billed for service that I not only do not have, but can NOT PHYSICALLY obtain?
The first month, they credited me the amount mis-billed, and swore up and down that the DSL service was removed from my bill.
The second month, I did in fact get the credit, but was still being billed for the non-existent DSL! I called back, was credited again, and was put on hold for 25 minutes while the rep (who previously claimed she could not get ahold of a manager at the time) spoke to a manager who said that, on the spot, they removed, and confirmed removed, the DSL service from my bill.
A week later, I got a call from a DSL installer wanting to confirm a schedule for them to come out and install my DSL. Argh!
This month, I recieved my bill. I had not recieved my credit for the previous month. I was charged a late fee. To add insult to injury, they were STILL FUCKING BILLING ME FOR DSL!!!
This time, I got another credit (AGAIN!), and they claimed, once again, to have removed DSL from my services. This time, I spoke with my local billing office (as opposed to SWBell Internet Services). I asked them to specifically note on my account that SBIS was BARRED permenantly from being able to add services or bill my account. Period.
We'll have to see.
A relative of mine, on the other hand, has been billed for a year now for a dial up connection he does not have. SWBell has attempted to criminally extort this money from him by telling him he had to pay the entire amount of the bill (now several hundred dollars) and file a complaint. Then, if and only if it was determined to be "true", then he would be CREDITED for that massive amount. In the meantime, they have turned off his phone and DSL service multiple times. They even turned the phone off after being given a direct order by the Texas Public Utilities Commission that they were not to disconnect his service under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHAT-SO-EVER. Keep in mind that in most states, the phone companies do what the state PUC's say, or ELSE. It is a severe penalty when they violate an order like that.
The latest I hear is that the PUC is about to "lower the boom" on SBC. They have warehouses full of complaints just about their DSL service.
Here are some more little tidbits:
-- Their phone reps have been caught red-handed giving false names over the phone (caught by verifying with their own supervisors/managers they transfered people to).
-- Whenever you accuse SBC of capping their DSL service below their guaranteed cap of 1.5MB (which is a severe FCC violation) they suddenly become very quiet--you don't have that many people react in this manner unless they know something is going on.
-- The same thing occurs when you accuse them of chaining multiple DSLAMS together (thereby reducing the possible bandwidth of the connected DSL users).
Personally, I'm waiting for Birch or one of the other local phone carriers (NOT AT&T) to get rolling in town, and I'll tell SWBell to kiss my ass forever.
In Quebec and Ontario, for high speed access we basicly have a choice between two monopolies, the cable and telephoen monopolies. There is only one isp on cable.. and for ADSL, well, you can get another isp, excep that Bell Canada sells its isp service (inclusing the line) for less than just the line without service..
.. which is $US 20.. That's for cable service... even tho it goes down quite often (lets say I see on average one hour of downtime per month.. maybe per week).. At that price, I believe I still get an excellent service... The ADSL servie is somethins liek 35$/month...
But, in Quebec, where I live, the cable company (Videotron) sells its service for $CAN 30
So yes, we are stuck with monopolies, but at least they are monopolies competing very vigorously...
I'd say she's at least entitled to legal fees as well. Additionally, I happen to agree that punitive damages are in order. Roger's shouldn't be allowed to get away with just losing the amount they owe her. Otherwise they'll have no incentive not to treat their other customers the same way. They should face at least SOME penalty.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Umm.. here's what I don't understand. If you don't get the service that they want you to pay for, how can you be considered to be "in debt" to them? In debt for what? What did they give you? Seems like if they aren't providing the goods, they shouldn't get the money, right?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Unfortunately what the Firestone/Bridgestone case shows us is that in order to draw enough bad press to really have an effect on a large corporation, they have to kill a few dozen people.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
This is indeed scary--this woman is hearing cases? Her actions in this suit show a fundamental lack of understanding of the law.
Yes, this is Canada, and not a state where I have a license. Note, though, that the US is usually in the forefront of jackpot-style expansions of the law.
Never mind whether or not you hate the ISP, or what you think is fair. This is about the law.
There are no punitive daages on a contract. None. Zip. Nil. Just can't have them. You might get something for general damages in addition to the value of the services not delivered, but not several thousand--at most, she gets here regular rate of compensation.
The only way to get punitive damages out of a contract is to show a fraud in getting you into the contract. To show this, you need to show that a statenmt was made with the knowledge it was untrue. This does not appear to be what she's doing, though, according to the article.
and why did I give it up for academia???
hawk
After a year and a half of a VERY broken connect and refusals time and again from rogers to send anyone to my house to repair my connect, I threatened them with a lawsuit in order to talk to someone in a higher tier in tech support. (A benign threat- I didn't have the time or money to take on this sort of thing.)
I insinuated that they advertised that Rogers allowed you to do certain things with your cable modem, including surfing the web and playing games. However, I was told flat out by many of their techs that as long as my connect is up and they can ping it, they will do NOTHING ELSE to help me with my connect.
When Rogers left British Columbia and Shaw moved in, a tech came to my house to switch my Lancity modem with a Terayon model (thanks to Terayon and Shaw for the non-competition monopolistic contract). Apparently the wiring inside my wall was positively rotten. It was fixed by a Shaw employee that day.
Rogers deserves to rot for what I would call false advertising.
As a sidenote, if anyone is going through a Shaw to Rogers switch like I did, check out my experiences.
\\\ SLUDGE
When the guy on the phone told me that if I was threatening a lawsuit that he would hang up, I said "Nope...you won't be dealing with my lawyer, you'll be dealing with Fremont city council's..." Needless to say, problem solved rather quickly...
I GUARANTEE your threat didn't get you any further than if you had just attempted to resolve the issue without trying to drop names.
My family lives under Rogers' monopoly. When both my sister and I left for university, my dad cancelled our cable TV service since noone left needed to watch TV at home.
Rogers did not cancel our service and after my dad came back from a trip out of Canada, he found letters from Rogers threatening him and they continually called to threaten him about not paying for the service. Needless to say, he was really upset. Especially since he had paid for three months _after_ his original cancellation request. He told me each time they harassed him, it always ended up in a shouting match with whomever Rogers sent to harass him.
The issue was never resolved. Since then, Rogers has continually called to try to solicite their services. On a few occasions, my dad decided to go ahead and subscribe only to later be called by someone working for Rogers harassing him about how he still owes them money. And then the cycle repeats...
Before Cox Cable came to Vegas, the local company Prime Cable offered cable modem access (one of the earliest in the country, if I remember). And god was their service just horrid. Luckily, the most basic modem installation was only $20. The first time they came out, the guy installed everything and nothing worked. Rather than troubleshoot, he claimed "there MUST be a problem at the street!" and told me that another tech would be out soon. A week later some guy in a rusty old van came and dug up my front yard. And then ended up running the line along a fence and the side of the house. STILL not working. Tech #3 shows up just under 2 weeks after the first and replaces the modem. Third time's the charm! Luckily, when Cox Cable came to town and bought out Prime Cable, they really focused on straightening out the problems with the modem division. Granted, it took them a while, but things have gotten much better. When I moved into the place I'm at now, I called on a Monday to order 2 digital tv boxes and a modem. The earliest appointment they had was that afternoon. And instead of doing the regular 8-12 or 1-5 time frames that Prime Cable had, they moved to 7-9,9-11,1-3,3-5,and 5-7. Two hours is a whole lot better than four, especially when the hours extend further in the day. Even better, a couple weeks ago my modem was acting up and I called the tech support around 11am. There was a tech at my door at about 1:15 and my modem was normal again by around 2. Beyond that, they recently raised the basic downstream rate to 1.5mbps from 512kbps with no additional charge (unless more than 1 IP is used-- but thats what NAT routers are for). It seems to me the folks in Vegas are pretty lucky these days (at least from my experience), compared to some of the other shithead cable companies in this country.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
But... as a matter of ethics, no judge would get away with presiding over a case in which the defendant is the same company that they themselves once sued, particularly when it is for essentially the same reason
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
NAFTA. Remember the increasing entanglement of our laws and business practices in North America.
This could get interesting if she wins; couldn't it be used as precedent for several aspects of customer/business/government communication interaction? Imagine having to provide x number of tech support for each 1000 customers, or metered internet access with automatic deduction for downed connection time. Interesting possibilities.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
If they have not provided you with a proper degree of service, you should absolutely withold payment. In a conflict liie this, it is FAR more difficult to get money back than it is to get a bill cancelled.
Of course, the ISP is easily within their rights to report the failure of a bill payment to a collection agency, but the burden of proof, and its enforcement, is on the shoulders of the vendor.
Asking for a refund is not at all the way to handle this. Clearly you haven't dealt with many vendors like this before.
Videotron is not bad... i just got a cable modem in yesterday, and being the first one in my area to get it (it's been available for less than a week) the repeaters they had on the lines weren't 2-way yet, they brought my modem over yesterday and after the realized it wasn't working, the tech put in a call, and later that day they started changing repeaters. It wasnt until today that my connection started working, but that's prolly because they had to change the switchbox for the whole neighborhood, even taking off tv service for about 10 minutes. Anyway, after all that, my cable modem is finally up and running, and I should also mention that I never spent more than 15 minutes waiting on the phone line. Now if they would just do somehting about the 6gig download quota and the 1gig upload quota I would be really happy.
to do with it...IT IS IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT, there is a financial cap on damages.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
(look of disbelief) The canucks must be pretty hard up. I've missed every episode of Survivor, ever, and I'm perfectly norm.. uhhh nevermind
IANAL, but as far as I can recall, there is presedence already. A contract is not valid if it is not balanced, benefitting only one party.
A company can put all kinds of disclaimers in their little print, but if these disclaimers are not reasonable, a court will dismiss them in a heartbeat.
Yeah, basically a court can find a contract to be "unconscionable" if it is absurdly tilted towards one party or the other. Trouble is, I bet you could count on two hands the number of contracts voided by courts in the US for unconscionability in the last *century*.
In theory, such a thing can be done, but in practice it virtually never happens, because the general presumption is that both parties understand the contract before signing it. You could try to get a contract voided that way, but believe me, you're never gonna get beyond the judge asking you why, if the contract was so awful, you signed it anyway. Unless you're retarded, insane, or otherwise demonstrably incapable of guarding your own best interests, you're going to be stuck with that contract, even if it is totally one-sided.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
I have ordered both Cable and Phone service over the phone, they did not read me the written agreement before placing my service. This is the same as the EULA agreement about agreeing with the EULA after you open the box.
Also the arguments about 5800 as too much, i think its too little. Her time is worth more than 500 bux for hours of lousy on-hold music.
File a complaint with your state communications authority. Being a monopoly most local phone companies are to some degree regulated by state and federal agencies.
Filing a complaint with the FCC is also important, but in my experience doesn't make much of an impression.
Another thing to keep in mind, is that you are not just losing your phone service, but you are losing your 911 emergency dialing. This is a FCC regulation and if a phone company can be shown to be negligent in this matter they can face some major fines.
As always, this should not be considered legal advice, ie consult a lawyer. Hopefully, it points you in the correct direction though.
Lando
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
I had AT&T @Home for two years before getting my new locally owned and run cable modem service in my new place.
The level one support people are clueless, and like to blame your machine or hardware for every problem, even if you haven't changed anything, and you wake up some morning to find all three of your computers no longer connecting to the network, and you've swapped out your hub and every network cable. I am not making this up, it happened to me, and it took two and a half weeks for them to diagnose that there was a problem in the cable box outside my apartment building. One tech had come out, but didn't bother to actually TEST the line, just installed a new modem and left saying "it should work in a couple of hours".
What I want, is for ISPs to take providing service more seriously. If you do convince them that there is an actual problem with your line or modem, @Home always schedules someone to come to your house in two weeks, not the next day, not even that week.
Would I accept that from the phone company or the power company? Hell no! Maybe access to the internet isn't important to them, but it is important to me, as it can save me several trips to the office to fix minor glitches or help out computer-challenged users.
Now, I understand that cable modems can go down, but for the love-of-god, have a free dial-up number locally for when it does, so that those of us who have phone modems at least have a backup that we can use for those two weeks while we wait for help. AT&T has a modem pool that their subscribers can use, FOR FIFTY CENTS PER MINUTE. That's adding insult to injury.
What is the average cluelss user supposed to do for two weeks without access? You can generate an awful lot of negative eBay feedback for unpaid auctions and unsent goods if you can't get to your e-mail for two weeks...
I know that if you really NEED Internet access 24/7, you should be using something more expensive than a $30/month cable modem, but it's time that @Home actually showed some concern for the experience of the end users...
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
--
Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness.
In reality, many contracts include unenforceable language that is knowingly included for its intimidation value. They know that it would get laughed out of court, but they know that most people are not lawyers and will assume the language is valid.
You need to consult with a lawyer if you want to know what the contract actually means.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Rogers sent a collection agency after her over a disputed bill. That agency threatened to ruin her credit rating. She certainly is entitled to damages, and $5000 isn't excessive.
I think she'll win.
It might set an interested precedent if the judge wins. As another poster mentioned, there's probably one of the usual "we disclaim any liability for it not working" sort of clauses somewhere in the agreement. (While the agreement for signing up with the cable company may not have been an actual "click-through" thing, the "it's not our fault if it doesn't work" is a common feature of such things).
If the judge wins, should commercial software developers start worrying about the lack of protection that these clauses in the licenses?
---
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I got my cable modem installed right away, no delay. When it fried itself a few weeks ago, they came by the next day (I called tech at 11pm), and replaced it for free.
Sometimes, there does exist good service.
I've always wondered-- do churches carry Act of God insurance?
Now, naturally, if the ISP loses a peer or upstream provider, or your cable gets cut, there's gonna be some connectivity problems, but it should be fixed promptly, and other problems should be fixed immediately. My cablemodem died two nights back, and Roadrunner sent a tech out (after standard tech support call) at 10:30pm to figure out the problem, and fixed it. In the past, they've always either fixed it immediately or given me credit for the day.
It's reasonable to assume your ISP will provide you with Internet service, funky EULAs stating "we won't provide you with service, even though our ads explicitly promise it" be damned.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Add to that the actual threats they made towards her credit rating while she was attempting to get that bank loan, plus the usual obnoxious behavior that collection firms can sometimes get into, a complete lack of respect by the service provider about any of it's customers, makes me think that she's asking for too little in punitive damages to get the company to rethink this kind of behavior.
It's exactly concerns like this and other horror stories that make me mistrust most cable ISP's.
Rogers is notorious for being way over subscribed. I know several people in Toronto who have had lousy service and non-existant support form this company. Fortunately for me, I'm not in an area serviced by Rogers, and for that I am glad. From what I've seen when I've tried to help the above people, they use @Home's DHCP servers - which keep blowing up. Their backbone seems to be at or near capacity all the time. They put way to many subscribers on the same cable segment - which really degrades performance. And they don't want to fix these problems - capital expendature.
Myself, I subcribe via Cogeco, who was about the same when I first started with them. However, they have a clue - when thier backbone started melting, they quadrupled it's bandwidth. When @Home kept blowing up it's DHCP server, they put thier own in Burlington, Ontario. When wait times on service calls regularily went over 45 minutes, they hired new staff - they even trained them before they went on Hell desk duty. I have only been off-line for a total of one hour in the last 4 months. All in all, I am extremely satisfied with Cogeco.
The difference here is that Cogeco is in this for the long haul - they want to keep thier on-line customers happy, so they keep thier on-line customers in the face of any competition. Rogers doesn't give a flying fuck as long as you pay your bill.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Cable companies in Canada are granted local monopolies for cable access. Rogers certainly behaves like it has a monopoly - "Oh, just pay your bill, we'll fix it soon."
This is just someone who is hitting back since there's relatively no alternative. I myself couldn't go back to dialup, and Sympatico is not much better for service. As well, I'm fairly certain thet there's not a CO on or within 7 or 8 Km ( about 4.4 to 5.0 miles) of Pelee Island - IOW it's out of DSL range.
(OT: There is also somewhat misleading advertising from Sympatico. They advertise "No sharing, always fast" - about 760Kb to the CO - but what they don't tell you is that you and the other 200 people in the CO are sharing a single T1 to the Internet. Since Cable is usually @ 1.5Mb, it's about the same in the end, isn't it?)
I won't duplicate an earlier rant, but let's just say that the trouble with Rogers (and Bell Canada - owners of the Sympatico service) is one of being a little too focused on the bottom line and not thier customers. Having a monoploy seems to do that to a company, IMHO.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
The Judge probably decided to do that after Rogers sent a *collection agency* to collect supposedly owed fees for a service that didn't work.
.. It's a consumer service. The consumer has a right to demand that things work.
Also, recall that she is not seeking punitive damanges because of her internet service, but because of Roger's actions as a company. She is not asking for punitive damages because her net access didn't work, she's suing for damanges because of how they acted *after* she cancelled her service.
The breach of contract part is about the contract/aup/whatever you want to call it.
However, an AUP that disclaims punitive damanges would be, i'd think, limited to damages related to internet access or loss thereof, directly. So you can't sue them when they crash and you lose access to e-trade for an hour and lose money.. that's not their fault. You cannot, however, disclaim all punitive measures against the company itself for whatever reason...
She's suing because of their actions as a company, not because of lost internet access.
No.
Punitive is supposed to punish the offender, more than pay the plaintiff.
The judge asked for much smaller amounts for 'damages'
Yes.
I hope to receive such a notice some day.
My response will be 'We understand what you are asking, but fail to see how you can compel us to do this. If you feel we are stealing your product, please file charges, otherwise, please stop harassing us. We do not have the time to deal with you.'
The bulk of the money she's asking for is in punitive damanges because of Rogers behavior; the behavior of their collection agents, and there refusal to do proper business.
This is not simply about internet downtime.
I was on Telocity for about 9 months. Then my local provider, Rythm's decided to quit providing DSL to residential users. So Telocity informed me that in 2 weeks, my service would be terminated, and they were sorry. So I quickly signed back up to my local cable provider, and unhooked my dsl modem.
That was in Feb.
I just found out that I've been still getting billed since then. Thank god it wasn't still automatically getting charged to my CC.
Dipshits.
This can get real interesting if the license is way out of line with the marketing. If there is a reasonable claim that one or the other is fraudulent, ...hehe...
Interesting. In Canada, officers of the court (lawyers, judges) and their families are exempt from jury duty. Now, I don't know if they are also prevented from it.
I don't think that "A main router went down, and we're too cheap to invest in failover." counts as an Act of God.
Yes, floods, etc count, but I don't see anything like that mentioned by Rogers.
As a disclaimer, I work for an ISP too - so I can sympathize with you about things that are really out of your control - but equipment failure doesn't cut it.
This could be interesting..
According to the cableco, they can't be held liable because their AUP says so..
This sound suspiciously like a "click-through" license.. if the Judge wins, it could spark a HUGE blow against such licenses - finally (at least in Canada) bringing them under legal scrutiny..
I'd be interested in seeing how this plays out.. a legal precident could be in the makings...
Rogers is a HUGE media company, with fingers in cable, cellular, pagers, TV & radio stations, magazines, video rental, baseball team etc etc etc. Their profit in 2000 was almost one billion dollars.
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"Acts of God" usually refers to specific events beyond a company's control. In the words of my DB professor, it's "Fire, Floods and Insurrection." (And Tornados, Hurricanes, heavy unseasonable snowfalls, war, et al.)
It does NOT include something a company could reasonable foresee. E.g., building a switch in a flood plain.
Very few people aren't willing to cut a company some slack after a bona fide Act of God. But many companies try to use this to justify Acts of Gomer. (Think Gomer Pyle, Cable Guy, and you know what I mean.) It's Gomer Pyle, CEO, who didn't staff the help line and caused hour-long waits on help-calls, not God. It's Gomer Pyle, CEO, who made some decisions that caused the network connection to be routinely dropped.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Yeah, read the contract. It promised timely, 24-hour support. Not hours on hold, only to finally reach a clerkoid with no answers or authority.
Besides, taken to its logical extreme (something many cable providers attempt), that clause would make it perfectly legal for them to provide *no* service whatsoever. That flies in the face of common sense - contracts are supposed to be mutual guarantees of exchanges of value. Paying $40/month while the cable company does absolutely nothing doesn't make sense, and any court would throw it out.
That's all the judge is asking in this case - a determination that the company can't routinely drop that connection without reaching the point where no reasonable person would consider it worth the hassle. There has to be *some* limit, and since it's not stated in the contract that's something that can (and will be) determined by a judge or jury.
There's also issues regarding business and collection practices. From what the article said, I agree with the judge that the company's behavior crossed the line of acceptable behavior. Promising a future credit, for an unknown amount at an unknown time, is nothing but a clear "fuck off" to the customer.
(IANAL, but can read.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I was forced to talk to my children. I rang my mother up and asked her what to do but all I got was a bunch of babble about "raising" my children. I think my mother has been reading one too many self help books.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The dude has an offer on the table to make the whole thing go away by apologizing. Why in the world didn't he do so immediately? Doesn't he know what it's going to cost a company the size of Rogers Cable to litigate *anything*?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
In London Ontario she doesn't have any other cable isp choices, but she can choose to go with Bell sympatico's DSL service. Also there are other ISPs that offer DSL service. There is also Look ( RF modem ), and Satelite.
Yes in canada, the cable and phone monopolies must also allow other isps access to their infrasture.
However due to the cost of implementation, nobody has so far gone that route with Cable (although in the huronia region as small isp has begun to look into offer high speed cable as well) , only dsl isps have done this.
Odd how this is the first I've ever heard of anyone complaint about this ISP via way of a lawsuit. I wonder how many others have either complained, in comparison with how many users they have, etc. People always complain for whatever reason about anything, it's human nature.
As stated how many people faced this same problem with this provider? A bit disturbing to see this article which seems to contain shaky grounds. So she doesn't want money but an apology? If it's a matter of morals, why waste the peoples time and money with this bs, just move along to another provider, unless she has a vendetta which is not written going on against the provider.
Now when I see things like it would shut down when she and her kids were using it, how the hell does she know it wasn't her own, or her kids negligence that was causing it? For this I refer to "Diary of an AOL'er", a funny ass story, but oh so true for some people.
Want Root?
You don't mean four, you mean "at least 5".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I think I'll go into the ISP business. I'll sell customers a 100gigabit access for $19.95 per month. When they complain that they ain't getting any service I'll point out the Rogers Clause in their contract, and try to upgrade them to my premiere package (1 zillion terabits for the low, low price of $39.95 pre month).
Heh.. I got a letter in the mail, claiming I was part of a class action suit against the local cable monopoly. Seems they used to charge a $20 late fee, and had a standing policy to refund the late fee if bitched at. Well, they got bitched at enough they lowered it to like $5, non-refundable.
So a lawyer decides to make a name for himself, and sues, claiming the late fee was is so huge as to be illegal under state law (It isn't, or they wouldn't be trying to settle without a trial)
The proposed settlement? A $5 coupon for every customer, another $5 coupon for every customer that was charged the late fee, and a guarantee they couldn't charge more than a $5 late fee for two years. Total to the consumer? My guess is about four million bucks.
The lawyer, however, pockets $6 million.
*That's fucking ridiculous.*
.sig: Now legally binding!
Considering the suit was filed last month, on an infraction committed four months ago, I should say not.. Even if he devoted 100% of his practice to it, it's only, say $80K, in fees. And this fucker is a personal accident shark, one of those fellows who advertises on TV (I've seen his adverts)... An ambulance chaser, per se..
While I agree they do work hard, as a whole, I object to this on principle.. He's a money grubbing moron who hopes he's got his star to the easy life.
.sig: Now legally binding!
I have suffered with Rogers shoddy service for the last year and a half. when I tried getting technical support, I would always get the explanation "we are upgrading our mail and dhcp server, and we apologize for the inconvenience". Uhm, I've got a static IP, never use their mail server, and my problem was due to packet loss.
*sigh*
What a bunch of weenies.....
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
If I lived within this judge's jurisdiction and was having any trouble whatsoever with the cable company. I would be running to her small claims court and filing as many suits as I could against the cable company.
This story is very lackluster on details, and does a great job of making Judge Reade look like a hero fighting a big company. That may be the case, but the facts sure don't back it up. It is made clear that Rogers has harassed her, and she should sue for that. But from the rest of the facts, this looks more like a typical frivolous lawsuit.
Unbiased Article: "Their protagonist is a former litigator..." PROTAGONIST?
She is suing for $5800: $500 for breach of contract, $300 for compensation, and $5000 for punitive damages. Lets examine this:
What are the damages? "...Reade says her kids have agreed to testify in court about the deprivation of missing television -- particularly this year's Survivor show -- and its effect on their lives..." Many Slashdotters would probably PAY money to not be mass marketed. These people consider it a $5000 damage!
Well first we wouldn't have a hard time defending our country in most military engagements as our military is quite well trained, and we have allies other than the US.
As for bashing the US, he did nothing of the sort, it was actually a comparison of the two contries, biased perhaps, but it was far from the bashing that you just gave.
As for the fact that no one wants our land, that's a pretty broad comment, especially since in 1812 the US took a stab at getting it. We are very rich in minerals and other natural resources.
Canadains don't start fights, but we fight like hell to finish them.
AT&T has a modem pool that their subscribers can use, FOR FIFTY CENTS PER MINUTE. That's adding insult to injury
This is why I went with the Sympatico ADSL service Bell Canada offers. sure I never get more than 50kB/s and it's a dynamic IP but the customer service makes up for it.
Case in point, I was having trouble with intermittant connections with the modem. Called the toll free number, got live person within 3 minutes and they were helpful going thorugh the proper steps to double check that everything was fine, and when I told them I was using Linux, I was imediatly written up for a check on the network line, tech support said "You must know what you're doing on your end then"
Next day got a call from network support to do some checks with the modem to test the line, when nothing came up that way they sent a guy out THAT DAY to get me a new modem.
compared to the 2 weeks it took to just get rogers out to my old place to hook the stuff up, the intermittant service and the hangups when I told them I ran Linux (with the phrase "Sorry we don't support that OS") I am extremely happy with my connection, even if it's slower.
She asks for either $5800 ($500 for breach of contract, $300 as compensation for her inconvenience & $5000 for punitive damages)
Which, in US Dollars, is about equal to a cup of coffee and a bagel.
I am not alone with this problem. Everyone who lives in Hacienda Heights and Rowland Heights, CA are having similar problems:
1) Very slow speed, especially during peak hours (i.e. analog modem speed during peak hours). I was told that there are only six T1 lines in this city.
2) Too many cable modem outages.
3) Horrible technical support (nothing unusual for any companies).
4) None of can get DSL because we're too far. IDSL, satellite Internet, etc. are too expensive and slow (i.e. gaming).
5) The problems are getting worse.
6) Adelphia@Home is still adding new subscribers. My cable friends and I recently got flyers and postcards.
I was told Adelphia is going to discontinue @Home and switch subscribers to its PowerLink ISP service. I doubt that will help a lot.
Some interesting links with my city's cable modem problems:
My city complaints... Hacienda Heights, CA 91745
Speed Test Results (type in 91745 for zip code).
Adelphia Forum: A few posts related to my city and Rowland Heights.
Some results from my traceroutes, pings, etc.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Although you can't just stop paying a bill, you can put the payment in escrow by handing it to a notary with a notice to the contractor (Rogers in this case) that you are doing so until service is satisfactory.
You have a contract with Rogers to provide you with a service. You have the right not to pay for the service until it is deliverd, but you have to show "good faith" by ensuring that the money is available when the contract is delivered. That is what the escrow account is for.
This suit really isn't as frivolous as some here are making it out to be. Regardless of what the contract says, there are certain minimum warranties required by law, and certainly a company should be held accountable to a degree for the claims it makes about itself in its advertising. Presumably she knows the law in this situation and believes she has a good case.
Clearly, Rogers could have avoided this simply by providing the support they promised they would in their marketing literature. Even if they lose, they're getting off cheap compared to the cost of actually hiring enough support operators.
And the brethren went away edified.
Have you read the story of Bob Kolody vs. Coca-Cola?
I've never heard of this cable company (I'm a USian) but my local telco, Verizon, uses "Always on, never dialed" to advertise their DSL service. I'm sure that the contract says that service isn't guaranteed but they seem to be advertising a service that would be always available. A little false advertising??
---
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
$5000 to one customer just seems like an excessive request given the situation. My guess is she doesn't really expect to win, and is asking for more than she realistically ought to get, on purpose. I'm really curious to see how this turns out, and I hope she does win at least a moral victory if not a financial one.
---
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
Personally, I wish I'd had the time and energy to sue my old DSL ISP in small claims court to get back the the two months of charges for service they failed to provide. Hours and hours on the phone with techs with no clue, lies about "widespread outages," and much bullshit. Finally gave up and switched to a wonderful new ISP with techs who really know their stuff. I'll be interested to see how this turns out.
---
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
This reminds me of Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul where Dirk Gently is going through his mail and receives a letter from American Express notifying him that his account is past due and now terminated along with a letter asking him to apply for an American Express card. I thought it was funny when I read it as fiction, but this is great.
-Legion
And yet apparently the local phone system worked, (if people are bitching you out on the phone) despite the weather. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
We have similar problems in Australia. Telstra limited downloads on their BROADBAND connections to 3Gb per month. So you pay for BROADBAND but cannot do all the BROADBAND things you want. They also say their contract says they don't have to make sure the service works.. but you still have to pay them... The service is down more than it is up and yet nobody can or will do anything about it. -Sigh-
I'd far rather be happy than right.
Telocity has been something of a nightmare for the past 3 months. I've opened several tickets but have had no resolution yet. Their billing department wouldn't credit the full amount of downtime because they'd seen the closed ticket and time had elapsed before the next ticket was opened. Here's the script that I use to check availability:
#!/bin/bash STATUS=`ping -c 2 -q 216.227.80.37 2>/dev/null`
CODE=$?
NOW=`date`
if [ $CODE -gt 0 ]; then
echo $NOW DOWN >> ~/temp/status
else
echo $NOW UP >> ~/temp/status
fi
They were supposed to call my Noon today but haven't. The next step is to file complaints with the local PSC and the FCC.
I guess they get threatened a lot then.
When I ran Zeta Internet we used to get the occasional customer call and threaten to sue us for something or other. In every case it was a baseless threat, made simply because the customer was frustrated. We would ignore the threat and just do our best to fix up their problem, whatever it was.
The funniest one we ever got was the guy who threatened to sue us for 60 billion dollars because he didn't understand how to do FTP. We setup his website and while awaiting delegation of the domain sent an automated form letter with instructions for uploading the web pages which said something like:
And the guy didn't understand what if/then means and went positively apeshit.So anyway I can understand their policy. 99% of these threats aren't serious, but the ISP doesn't want to stuff up the 1% which actually are. This policy stops the baseless ones in their tracks, because the really want technical support, not the legal department.
I think that $5000 is resonable to make a company go "hey we did something wrong" and yet not actually damage the company in any serious way. This is a .com type company though maybe $5000 is more than thier profit this year :) Really though $5000 is almost nothing to a resonable business and I just hope its enough to get the attention of the provider and let them know that when they promise a level of service they must live up to the promise or compensate users for the loss. If nothing else they need to get a customer support staff that is competant, caring and fast.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
See, this sort of comment is why Canadians like to distinguish themselves from Americans. Nuke another country because they disagree with you? Especially one that you share a border with? Ever hear of fallout? Hardly the behaviour of a rational group of people, now is it?
We don't make Americans out to be *bad*. We don't consider you the evil empire to the south. Believe it or not, we like you guys most of the time. It's just that the rest of the world considers Americans to be incredibly self-indulgent. The average American would have a hard time locating anything that isn't an American city on a map. I was actually asked by a 4th year university student in New York if Canada had a democracy.
BTW: We'll explain the attraction of curling to you, if you can explain the attraction of the NRA to us.
I'm glad you feel that way. Care to tell me your mailing address?
California used to be very quick to exclude people from jury duty. You could get an exemption for being a officer of the court, a peace officer, being closely related to one of the above, if your employer didn't give jury duty pay, or for any one of a number of other reasons. So many people were exempt that there were serious worries about juror shortages. For a while the response was to make service longer and more frequent for the people who were eligible, but this wound up being counterproductive, as service was tough enough that everyone was looking for excuses to get out. Now they've seriously cracked down on the exemptions (to the point that the Supreme Justice was called and served on a jury) and things have gotten somewhat easier.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Surprisingly, this actually works. There has been significant jury duty reform here in California, and the leading proponent is the Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court. He was called for jury duty and actually wound up serving on a jury. He was so pissed off with the way he was treated that he decided that poor treatment of prospective jurors was a serious threat to the judicial system and started leading the charge for reform. Not all of the things that he's advocated (specifically decent jury duty pay) have been implemented, but it has made a big difference.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
maybe " Reade keeps being" is the judges full name ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What, me worry?
You're an idiot
What, me worry?
What, me worry?
What, me worry?
I just made a move and was trying to get cable internet installed as well as cable TV and it took me about 4 weeks to get them to actually show up. Not to mention the hours and hours I spent on the phone searching through menus. Also they give you a FOUR HOUR time period during work days in which to have your cable installed. Who do they think we are that we can just take off work and sit around waiting for them, why dont they just have hours outside normal business hours? Then they didn't even show up the first time I was scheduled to have installation and I had to miss more work. Then they get you with installation fees $150 for installation of cable internet. That is ridiculous. I could set it up myself if they would just activate the line. It really wasn't that hard and took about ~15min. seems justified to charge $150 right? They don't even offer self installation anymore, for those of us who know how to configure our TCP-ip settings. Oh and installing regular cable is soooo tough too.
okay thats my rant. But seriously someone needs to add more competition or something so that we don't have to put up with horrible and ridiculous service.
Fight Spammers!
>Sounds to me like mrs pirsnickety got a little miffed because she couldnt get online a few times.
Yeah. You are so right.
I mean, I should stop getting bitchy at the vending machine company when those green donuts aren't actually Christmas coloured (well, that'
s what the expiry date says). I wouldn't want to bug them about it and increase the price of them! I mean, they are *just* donuts. I'll just buy the bag of chips below them instead.
Mmmm, purple.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
'She also says her kids have agreed to testify in court about the deprivation of missing television -- particularly this year's Survivor show -- and its effect on their lives.'
Yes, I can see it now
Please, tell the court how you were affected by Rogers's Actions...
I started reading. (through sobs) I got though an entire book! YOU BASTARDS!
--------
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
I think a judge would have better smarts and common sense than to launch an outlandish law suit like that. Come on, $5800 is a LOT of money for lack of internet access for a couple days.....
Sure, Mr Rogers, now just apologize to the lady or pay up.
Witness: ...and then I had to find out who won Survivor from a newspaper! [Witness breaks down sobbing]
Plaintiff's Attorney: Yes, I'm sorry...it must have been very hard. INow you know I don't want to do this, but I need you to describe for the court, in your own words, what kind of depraved, foul-smelling, leech-like --
Defense Attorney: Objection, your honour! My client is not leech-like!
Judge: Overruled.
Plaintiff's Attorney: Thank you, your honour. As I was saying -- leech-like, hideous, indescribable monster you think could possibly deprive you of the wholesome, innocent joys of childhood by taking away television.
Carousel is a lie!
Damn straight it is. I hope she wins... then maybe that cable service "yeah, it sucks, but sorry, it's out, and forget it, your bill will be the same" attitude will quickly go away!
____
Skivvy Niner? Email me!
HEY! Look left just ONE MORE TIME!
maybe they could see what we (the massive) consumers have to put with
and so maybe we could get court decisions voted *our* way for once ...
Sunny Dubey
First we don't wish to meddle in EVERY country's business... unlike the US of A, Canada is known for it's peace keepers... we try to stop wars not start them. We don't have the egotistical view that western culture is the only culture... nor is the "American Way" the only way... that is also why we are a multicultural mosaic instead of a "melting pot". We won the only war that was fought within our borders ... but mostly we are not a warring nation... we don't practice the imperialistic ideals that statements such as the one above me tout.
We do however protest when we are mistreated... but more to make a point than to necessarily make a quick buck... we do laugh at your class action lawsuits which do nothing but enrichen the lawyers who thought of them... we laugh at your pick of president and how he won with such a small margin of error because his brother was the senator of the state... though we also feel sorry for you as well having such a winner takes all political system... but that is also a reflection of your society... never searching for the win-win.
That's enough ranting for me now... I support this judge and her actions because I know I've had trouble with cable internet, in fact a few times I thought I should setup a dial-up account for all the time that the service is down and it does literally take weeks for someone to repair it... then they won't reimburse you unless you hound them... and even if I don't have the money, the time or the guts to go up against big corporate power... I understand her motivations and her frustrations and fully support her stance.
This depends on the consumer laws of the state. Under your rent theory, the law in Texas is that if the leased property is not habitable you can file a complaint with the landlord. The landlord has I believe one week to fix the problem or you can get out of the lease, get your deposit back etc. . Many states have consumer laws that protect people from unfair business practices.
http://www.windmeadow.com/
Note to self: Start forwarding all my spam to local Judges.
Or was it before he became Chief Justice?
While the average american wouldn't recognize his own chief justice, I'd bet the presiding judge would. Just imagine looking at the prospective jurors...
Firethorn
I don't read AC A human right
Why is she not trying to get a class action suit together, seems like a better way to win..
Go Girl! err... your honor.
I know that if you really NEED Internet access 24/7, you should be using something more expensive than a $30/month cable modem
That philosophy runs contrary to contract law. Price is irrelevant when a contract binds the relationship -- if you really NEED Internet access 24/7, and a company advertises their access as 24/7 then you can reasonably expect them to fulfill that, regardless of price.
interesting, but not suprising, that she is a small claims judge. my experience (from when I once litigated against an old landlord) is that the small claims judges are actually more in touch with the people. They will help you out and make suggestions in court. They are used to big companies mauling the little guy, consequentially they don't put up with it.
This is why one of the first actions a company will take if you small claims court them is to have it moved to circuit court (a "higher" level court) rules of evidence are harder and the judges more "impartial" (lawyer friendly, not layman friendly)
Hopefully this will start to break us free from the cable company monopolies, my area allows only one, I would love to see equal access enforced like it is for long distance carriers. (at least in the US). Maybe then they will stop this bait and switch crap they like to play with bandwidth, 120K the first month, then 90K , then 60K etc...
On a final note I would also like to say, that must be one of the most shagable judges I have ever seen...
Papa Legba come and open the gate
The judge is obviously trying to make a point. If she just wanted the money from damages she would not be prepared to settle out of court for an apology from the Founder.
Whether she walks away with the money or not becomes a matter of the presiding judges decision and which side has better representation to argue the case.
No matter what the outcome of the case, whether she settles out of court or not, she has already accomplished what she set out to do. Rodgers now has bad press, they have been exposed to the public for what they really are.
Whether the judge walks away with $5800, $500 or just the credit to her outstanding bill, Rodgers has already suffered many thousands of dollars in bad publicity.
I personally hope she does well with the case, but I'm just glad to see someone standup to Rodgers this way. I know people who have had to deal with their BS, and Rodgers deserves it.
The new EULA will force you to do an audit at your own expense. I believe its for WindowsXP final version. So likely, Microsoft will terminate your agreement to use Windows if you don't Cooperate and then sue you for stealing Windows because you had no right to use it after termination. Or will sue you for lack of license compliancy since you agreed to be audited on your own expense. Either way your screwed.
http://saveie6.com/
- a book on how to use the Ontario Small Claims Court system
- a link to some useful information, including a PDF document on the Small Claims system
Is that enough?Of course, if there are enough people that have been pissed off by Rogers, we could go for a huge class-action lawsuit, but I have a feeling that a grassroots small-claims onslaught will be much more effective, and put more cash back into your pocket if you've been affected.
Hope she wins
Of course. But given the patience the judge showed in dealing with Rogers support, I'm fairly positive she would've let it slide had Rogers been more forthcoming in acknowledging their faults and providing some kind of refund. They instead chose the warpath and are now reaping the bad publicity they deserve.
:)
Then again, nothing like a good lawsuit to tame some of the more egregious offenders. Both my ISP and my credit card company have gotten a lot better since being slammed with multi-million dollar class action suits.
--
Violence is necessary, it is as American as cherry pie.
H. Rap Brown
The judge's expectations of receiving a refund for downtimes on her cable line are not out of line at all. If Rogers were smart, they'd do what Verizon does on their (rather shitty) DSL lines - a free day of service for every hour of downtime. I've managed to get several weeks of free service so far without having to put any pressure whatsoever on the Verizon support reps. They won't bring it up, but their guidelines must state that if a customer asks about that particular policy, the rep must go ahead with crediting the account with the requested hours. They probably do check their logs to see if your claim of a down router - biggest problem, especially on the weekends - is true, so don't push it too far. :)
--
Violence is necessary, it is as American as cherry pie.
H. Rap Brown
I thought she was fairly reasonable. She asked for a credit for the time the service was unavailable. She was told she would get a credit, but not how much. She canceled her service and refused to pay until an appropriate credit was issued.
Just how would you have her solve this problem? I think withholding of payment is about the only things that gets a mig company's attention.
Sean.
Actually they make $12/hr CAN, or less than $8 US.
Oddly enough, I have, in the past, argued with both the local telephone and local cable companies and gotten credits on my service. And they were pretty polite about it, even when I requested that the $300 in calls to New Guinea be taken off (no one at the my place made them), and they accomadated my request. With the cable company, they were incredibly polite about it, to the point where they gave me three free months of digital cable because they had screwed up the installation (although it wasn't obvious at the time).
Sure, Time-Warner has a monopoly in the area on cable and digital cable, but they aren't abusing it as far as I can see. (Of course, I only pay $10/month for cable now because of the apartment complex's deal, but still, they're incredibly efficient...)
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
What if it goes over that amount? Can you sue for that too?
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
we like to think that they get lots of bad press... but really, your average local 6pm news, or your average city newspaper, doesn't give them that much coverage.
remember, slashdot takes a good chunk of the bad press from things like the NY times, the register etc. and puts it all in one place. but j. random luser does not read slashdot. he reads usa today or xyz smalltown paper, or in canada trash like the national post (gah. i detest that paper).
so despite what we, as readers of /. may see as a lot of M$ coverage, people don't normally see it in as concentrated a form as we do.
Why don't you leave the poor ISP's alone and start targeting the spammers?
I wouldn't say no way right away. Although our civil law system isn't quite as lucritive up here as it is in the states I wouldn't dismiss this right away. Our civil court system, and especially our ontario system, tends to be a little liberal and it is not unheard of that the court favours the individual over big bussiness; even if legally there is no bases for the suit.
I believe that that's a lot of cash for no Internet access. But personally speaking Rogers service sucks and it's about as reliable windows. And we all know how good windows is. I have had one time were it took them 1 month to fix the problem. Why don't I go to another service provide? None for high speed in my area. But at least now someone is saying hay, Rogers, stop messing around and make the cable Internet work.
my 2 cents plus 2 more
"It might set an interested precedent if the judge wins. As another poster mentioned, there's probably one of the usual "we disclaim any liability for it not working" sort of clauses somewhere in the agreement. (While the agreement for signing up with the cable company may not have been an actual "click-through" thing, the "it's not our fault if it doesn't work" is a common feature of such things)"
I seriously doubt that in such a case, that kind of click thru agreement is legal to begin with.
No commercial contract can overrule civil or criminal law, and it's against the law in most places to take money for services you do not deliver. IMO, such agreements are there more to make the consumer feel like "We're the PHONE company, we dont' fucking care, and you can't do SHIT about it!".
Most likely, this cable company is advertising their internet service, and the claims they make in those ads ALONE makes them liable to provide the service. I doubt they have a "we take no responsibility but will happily charge you if because of our negligence, it doesn't work" disclaimer in their flashy copy.
I've been lucky with RoadRunner so far. The service was connected promptly, the speed is excellent (my download speed has more to do with how fast the server on the OTHER end is!), and other than a couple of brief weather-related outages, has been reliable as hell.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Shaw recently took over the cable service here in Vancouver. I must say, the sevice has been pretty good. The only downside is that they now have implemented DHCP, whereas Rogers was so cheap that we got static IPs at no extra cost!
There is a contract in the B to B space called a....ready for this....Service Level Agreement! These contracts typically define permitted scheduled downtime and response times for unscheduled downtime. Violating the SLA usually means you pay! Consumers need to demand SLA's from their ISPs! My cablevision sales pitch went something like "always on 24/7 service". It has been everything but. Had this been an SLA, i'd probably be getting my cable modem for free!
Apparently this needs to be cleared up still...
Unless the laws are so totally different in all parts of North America, the basic law is simple: you can't just not pay a bill. Here's a great analogy from my past: I was renting an apartment from a company that didn't have the building up to code. Sure, I could have just refused to pay my rent until the problem was fixed, right? Wrong. Had I done that, my landlord would have every right to charge me late fees, declare my account delinquent, whathave you. Simply put, it wasn't my right to deny payment, because it had not been a finding of law that stated I didn't need to make payment. It is up to a court judge (note: not just a judge who's acting as a citizen as in this case) to decide the fate.
Faced with this, I am in a hard place. I don't want to pay my bill because that makes me feel like I'm saying it's all okay--and things certainly are not okay. So what am I to do? Simple. I file suit. Another option would be (if I intend to file suit) to send a formal complaint to the clerk of courts with a check for the disputed amount. The court will keep hold of the funds until things are sorted out. The clerk will also notify the defendant of the funds that have been sent in as well as the complaint. This will effectively "lock" the account so that it does not become delinquent.
I really wish people would better understand that this is a very important point: one cannot go without paying off a debt. It doesn't matter how right you think you are; and it doesn't matter if the other party isn't living up to its end of the contract. If you wish to show that the defendant hasn't lived up to its portion of the contract, the absolute worst thing you can do is break the contract yourself. It is imperative that if you are going to make a claim that you haven't made a single breach of the contract. It's almost always the plantiff's burden to show proof, and by breaking the contract by withholding payment you have started off on the wrong foot.
Last comment: if you are ever thinking about withholding payment, call your lawyer first. Don't get yourself screwed by doing something that's just going to hurt you. The courts here simply throw out cases where the plantiff withheld payment. This is because it looks like the plantiff is trying to get away with free products or services. You can either pay the bill and then file suit for that money back (and yes, that's a great idea at times) or send the money to the clerk of courts. But doing neither of those things will cause bad things.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
This is obviously excessive. There is no way this judge, nor anyone else, could get that sum of money from any ISP. It just isn't going to happen.
Now, what the judge is trying to do is make a point. She doesn't want Roger's Cable to get away without major negative press. She probably doesn't care much about whether she wins or loses, and I can't blame her. Sometimes finding a way to tell potential consumers to stay away is worth a loss in court.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
First, if Rogers is anything like every single consumer ISP I've ever used you don't actually SIGN a contract. They tell you that this is how things are going to be, but you don't sighn anything. Well, that means it's not a real contract and they can't do anything they like. For example, let's say I ran an ISP and I put a clause in our terms of service that said "By using my service you agree to allow my employees to come in to your house any time we feel like it for any reason." Well if we tried to do that, the cops would still arrest us and we'd still get charged with breaking and entering. Acompany can claim many things in their "contract" or "terms of service" but if you never signed it, they'll have trouble making many of them stick. Also, companies DO have an obligation to their consumers to make their products work. How much and what kind of obligation varies, however there are legal precidents. If Rogers advertises 24/7 tech support and then fails to provide it, that can be seen as false advertising. Now of course the court may not agree.
So far as connectivity goes, I've been fairly lucky with Rogers. It seems to work reasonably well almost all the time. The e-mail service, however, has been a different story. There's been times when e-mail hasn't worked for three or four days. I understand that particular problem was with the @home people in California rather than Rogers but still, it was quite annoying. I'm rather surprised that the judge got taken to collections, actually. I used to work in Rogers customer service and we gave out delays in collection activity like candy, for all sorts of different reasons. She must have really pissed someone off there.
I said @home tech support are morons and the judge is a moron, and so are the assholes that fired our staff. I never got fucked by Rogers, the judge did. The cable service I have recieved ( Shaw - Vancouver) for the last two years is without reproach. I hope that @home trounces her in court because her lawsuit is frivilous. I hope my company goes down the tubes, and I will apply at Rogers/Shaw so I too, can sit on my soft ass and make stupid money without a doing a single fuckin thing, and saying. "linux, what's that? No I cannot tell you your IP address".>
I 'm not getting paid shit because I have no talent, I'm getting paid shit because know-nothing customers whose business models rely on a residential email account need me to help them doubleclick the pretty pictures and they don't want to pay for the service. Everyone here is ranting about the shit service they get from Rogers. Fine, do what the judge did, shut up and put all your "illegal" servers back on a dial-up account.
Puuull-eeze. Pray tell, what effect would that be? YOU cancelled your television service. The issue was the cable internet service, not TV.
As for breech of contract etc, waiting for hours is standard practice for @home tech support, and they can't wait to get your ass off the phone. I would not classify it as breach of contract, i would call it their standard service policy, along with every other ISP's (see below). Waiting is part and parcel of the game lady. If you want a tech at your beckon call, 24/7, be prepared to pony up the dosh to pay for it, cuz your paltry $40/month don't cut it.
And now for my OT tantrum about @home:
Those know-nothings at Shaw/Rogers make $17.00/hr to basically leave you on hold, and tell you to reboot your computer, or run winipcfg. GAWD! They have none of the shit-work of a normal ISP and yet my company (may they rot in hell) that pays me $9.50/hr just layed off our ENTIRE office.
Phew, I *really* needed to get that off my chest.
if there are enough people that have been pissed off by Rogers... a grassroots small-claims onslaught will be much more effective
The article said Judge Reade was considering restarting her litigation practice for this. I think there's definitely a market for it.
I subscribed to AT&T@Home for a few months two years ago. Reliability was poor. When a technician finally came to investigate my cable modem which had lost sync a week earlier, I told him to take it away; I'd had enough. I still wonder if I could have sued for lost wages from all the service appointments I kept before that.
Now a friend of mine has announced that he's switching to @Home. I don't know what to tell him.
What do you expect!? :)
...that I can sue my ISP for not giving me a 2mb/sec speed average all the time? I don't think so;)
How fast i went once --- really proud of that speed!
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That's how the class-action-suit industry works. Lawyers work hard, and should be compensated accordingly.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I, too, am a Rogers customer. When I moved to Toronto, they were the only High Speed ISP that provided to my area (and I live on the subway line, minutes from Downtown Toronto). Bell is supposed to be coming in August, but I will probably have moved by then. I tried every other option having heard many Rogers horror stories (plus I had Bell HSE/Mpower in Halifax, NS and was very pleased with it). Rogers has been a problem from day one. I generally experience a day of downtime every week, sometimes more. The worst part is that this almost always occurs during my free time (Friday after work and Saturday). Usually the problem is with obtaining an IP address from their flakey DHCP servers, but there have been a number of other issues as well (I forgive them for the severed line mentioned elsewhere). I don't bother calling their tech support anymore (if necessary, I have my unemployed room mate call them, as he has the 1-3 hours necessary to deal with them) because it's a waste of time and their help desk staff are utterly clueless (just FYI - their HR people want 2 years of experience for these jobs, but they don't check references or even attempt to see if your resume is accurate - I've had qualified friends with no experience turned away, only to hear that the less honest ones made up two years of phoney experience and were hired after breezing through the tech interview). The kicker of all this is that I've worked with their IT department in a professional capacity. One of their IT guys was unable to change the TCP/IP settings on a WinNT 4.0 workstation from static IP to dynamic, though he had the permissions to do so. These are the 'best and brightest' of their HD staff who get promoted into actual IT jobs. As for the case - I'd rather see Mr. Rogers make a public apology, though the punitive damages are certainly justified if a credit agency was involved. They aren't regulated to the extent they should be and can damage your credit rating (with no recourse for you) simply by making a call - even by mistake.