Slashdot Mirror
Code Red Refunds?
bubblegoose writes "In Washington state Qwest customers are asking for a refund due to losses of service during the Code Red thing. Qwest is refusing to give the refunds.
Excite has a story about it here." I tend to think this is just complaining bull crap. My net connection when down too, and I don't run around demanding $5 back. I'd be more upset if I was a business and my server rooted by this. The irony is that this will probably end up just pushing subscription software.
Quoting from article:
Steve Larsen, who heads the attorney general's new Cyber consumer resource center, said in a message to Mangus: "It seems reasonable that a customer should not have to pay for service they can't get. If you can't watch your cable TV or your newspaper doesn't show up for days/weeks at a time, I assume you won't pay. I believe that is all your customers ask here regardless of fault."Scenario. Some idiot is driving a poorly-maintained car which was ill-conceived at the design stage. Maybe he didn't even know he was driving...
A wheel breaks off and his car plays Guardrail Ping-Pong on the turnpike.
The ensuing traffic jam shuts down the city's busiest artery, halting all commerce in the city. Your newspaper doesn't arrive as a result.
Multiply that by many, many cars at the same time.
Why don't we go after the bigger problem and charge the jackasses who designed perpetually failure-prone cars and the jackass owners who don't maintain them?
Going after them instead of the local highway contractor seems like a better idea to me.
Especially since these drivers have no excuse for not knowing how dangerous their flawed little cars are.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.