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ISP Sued Over Suspended Email Account
Saint Aardvark writes "A Canadian woman is suing her former ISP over their suspension of her email account. Their accounting system screwed up, and they suspended her account while they sought payment from her. What she didn't realize was that email sent to that address continued to pile up, without any notification to the sender that she had no access to it. She lost a chance at a $65,000 contract job at the Discovery channel because of this. Read the article at CNet, the complaint she brought to the Canadian Privacy Commisioner, and further details from the woman herself on Cryptome.org."
i woudl flip out on my ISP, possibly parade outside thier office wearing a sandwich board filled with a few choice words, but i wouldn't go as far as suing :p
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
she should have been notifying people that might send her e-mail to send it to an alternate address. if all the e-mail had bounced back instead of going on to her inbox, i imagine the end result would have been the same.
my pet machine
A telco cuts someone's telephone line because she didn't pay, then she sued the telco, claiming that she missed an important phone call costing her tons of money. Is this reasonable?
If your telephone line is disabled, callers receive a message telling them that "this line is out of service" or suchlike. The complaint here is that her account was not disabled, but she was refused access to it -- email continued to pile up, outside of her reach, while people assumed (from the lack of a bounce message) that it had reached her.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
She was already in telephonic contact with the person. So if ther email had bounced back, there would have been chance that the person CALLED her. It did not so neither the Sender , nor the receiver were aware an email was sent/not read.
And as such , the telco is responsible to either completly block the service or completly allow it. Not an half way.
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visit randi.org
They can suspend the account. They CAN'T hold email hostage, they must close access at BOTH ends of the pipe. If they closed her account properly anyone sending her email would have it bounce and would know the message did not get through, and perhaps try another means of contact. Sorry guys, I think she has a case. Just because she isn't smart enough to get better service does not give this isp the right to fuck with her.
so, even though the email was sent to her old address (in which case you gotta ask -- did she use an old resume? did she even give out her new address?), she's mad that the old ISP didn't bounce the email?
in other words, she's suing because she would've wanted the potential employer to notice the bounced email, and try to contact her to find out her new address???
Sorry... that just doesn't cut it...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
Lets put this in terms that anyone should be able to understand..
1. You live in a apartment.
2. They evict you for what ever reason.
3. You never had time to forward/tell people new address.
4. Mail goes to old address.
5. You ask for mail.
6. They tell you "No not until you pay us what you owe".
This is a FEDERAL OFFENSE, punishable by jail time..
This is EXACTLY what they did to her, but only in the "virtual" world..
Email is becoming so important to our everyday lives that maybe laws should be passed to protect email, just like they where passed to protect normal mail.
Personal Website
I know that many people are probably going "WTF?!" at this, but I can see how she's justified. Anyone providing a service, especially a paid-in-advance service, should be required to actually maintain their services properly. If this doesn't happen, and it causes damages, I belive that the problem should be sorted out legally.
The woman might not be entitled to $65,000, but if she is working right now, she may be easily entitled to the differences between her current job's pay and the new one, for a court-determined period of time (like, a year, or maybe even two or three if it is determined that this amount of time will be required to get back 'on track'.
just my two cents...
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
no -- that's not what I meant. If the contract owner had really wanted to hire this
person, they might likely have called her sometime over the 4 weeks that she didn't
reply to the email they sent.
What I am saying is that this $60,000 contract was nowhere near a final deal which was
lost because of this email message. She simply wasn't prepared to do the job if she
would let this lead be missed so easily, and her
only connection to the business world is a sketchy email isp account.
The $100 she owed comes from the link she wrote. Here's a quote:
I demanded the email back, but was told I had to pay the $106.87 they said I owed them in order to get my messages.
It really doesn't matter if she owed that or not, if she thought there could be job or contract offerers worth thousands in there, she would have
been happy to pay and then switch the email to somewhere else.
You know, some ISPs refuse to bounce email back to fight spam (it confirms the existence of a certain account).
¦ ©® ±
This is simple, folks. ISP's should not accept email and then refuse to deliver it. They can either deliver it, or bounce it. Anything else is extortion.
She lost a chance at a $65,000 contract job at the Discovery channel because of this.
I don't know about you guys, but that seems a little bit odd to me. Normally an employer would call you if they were offering a 65k contract job. Maybe if she left them her phone number it would have worked out.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Most (read: any ISP above moron status- doesnt mean all of them by any means!) have the dreaded "Acceptable Use Policy". Somewhere in the AUP, or some other disclaimer, ISPs have a blurb where they state they cannot be held accountable for financial loss due to system downtime and misconfiguration. I equate this to people who sue doctors out of business because in that inevitable mathematical instance of them screwing up (or not screwing up, just being out of luck) where they lose a life, and the family makes sure they dont come back. There, another good doctor who messed up a patient which will be replaced by some n00b who bats .650 but no one knows that cause he hasn't had a screw up yet. Tough luck lady- if you were clueless enough to make email your ONLY venue for contact on a 65k job, you deserve what you got. This is common sense people- would you hire someone who couldnt leave a phone number on their resume? Now for the rest of you who think she should get that 65k from the ISP- the ISP probably is going to be angry, but it's not them who will pay for it- their customers will. Either that or the ISP goes out of business and you just screwed up contact points for thousands of people, at the price of vindicating one. Sure, you can argue a flawless transition, but let's be honest- when's the last time an ISP level migration worked? When's the last time one that worked had people who were still OK to be bothered with it?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
A hot girl tries to pass you a note in class. I seem to be in a position to relay the note to you. But rather than pass the note to you, I eat it [burp].
There are special laws regarding delivering mail...but not email as far as I know. Does a relay even have to send an error message to the sender, if the ISP decides it's not their problem?
-Russ
I see that she's suing for 2x that ... sounds like a great deal -- sue for double what you might have gotten, 1/3rd goes to your lawyer, netting you more money ($87k) than you would have gotten in the first place (assuming that you even got the job!), and you don't have to even work for it!
Nice to know that the US isn't the only place that's sue-happy.
From the C/Net article --
If my mail is having a temporary problem, and it can be queued up for me until I can access it again, that's what I want -- I don't want it bouncing. Bouncing email is bad bad bad!Are these people aware of what they're asking for?
The ISP's contract appears to be pretty clear -- they don't guarantee that everything will work all the time. Pretty standard, I think. It'll be interesting how this turns out (personally, I hope that this goes to court, and the woman loses.)
I wonder what the next step is -- suing your ISP because their spam filter blocked/flagged an email offering you a $65k job? Or even worse -- suing them because they didn't filter your spam for you, and so you accidently deleted the $65k job offer yourself, think it's spam.
People, email is unreliable (and so is postal mail, for that matter.) If you don't get an email (or postal mail receipt) back that acknowledges receipt of that mail (Return-Recept-To: doesn't quite cut it), or your friend doesn't call you and say `thanks!', you cannot be certain that it's been received. Period.
(Return-Receipt-To: isn't good enough because it's sent by the receiving mail daemon when the mail is received, not when the mail is actually read. After receipt, it could be lost to a disk failure, system problem, spam filter, or just accidently deleted.)
Maybe she/Discovery should have been smart enough to use an alternate high-tech method of communication, like those new fangled telephone thingamajigs.
the whole "loss of a 60 grand contract" part of this sounds a little fishy to me. granted, this IS THE ISP's FAULT since their accounting fucked up and her service was suspended thru no fault of her own, entitling her to damages caused by the loss of service, BUT i think this claim of losing a contract is stretching it a little. i know that we live in a technological age, but people still do put phone numbers on resumes. if the discover channel was serious about offering her a contract for 60 grand, you think they'd do more than send her an e-mail or two and give up when they dont get a response. e-mail is not a crutch for communication (maybe not yet) but telephones are still essential, so i ask her: why didnt they call you about this contract if they were going to give it to you??
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
I have had problems with most of the IPS I have tried, and I have never been late on a payment for anything! Other businesses love me (except credit cards, which want you to be late).
This case may be a little frivalous, but it will be a kick in the ass to ISPs to be more professional with their service.
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
RTFA. Hell, RTFH. She was never deliquent. The error was in the accounting department of the ISP.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
As usual, they don't guarantee to offer any service at all. Surely that puts them in the clear here?
Except, perhaps, that her ongoing lack of service was due to an explicit suspension after an accounting mistake, and was not due to an inadvertent or accidently dropped e-mail, temporary outage, or virus.
Parking lots typically post disclaimers indemnifying them from any responsibility for stolen or damaged property, but that shouldn't protect them if their own attendents start smashing the windows of parked cars or even if they turn a blind eye to blatant abuse.
Also, her actual complaint has more to do with what happened after she tried to cancel her account (they left her mailbox active and didn't bouce incoming mail) than with her temporary lack of service.
I don't think her case is necessarily that strong or that it falls under these terms and conditions, but even if it did I don't think that such waivers would necessarily put the ISP in the clear.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
I use both a mail redirection service (Pobox) and a seperate mail service (Runbox), so I don't have to rely on my ISP for ANYTHING. If runbox has a problem I can direct the Pobox mail elsewhere. If my ISP has a problem at least I can go somewhere else to read my email over the web.
Email is important enough to justify $40 a year to make sure it's going to work when you need it!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1) Register a domain. If you change ISPs, you will not lose your e-mail address.
2) Notify ALL of your clients if you change your e-mail address.
3) If you are changing, expect to receive e-mail at your old address. You may want to hold onto that old address for a short while (6 months?) and ensure the bills are paid (pre-pay if you have to)
Now, as for the ISP...
Some say that email is free, which makes it different from smail. This isn't entirely true; while smail requires "stamps," email works on a subscription service. Pay your ISP, the ISP provides you with an address which you can send to and from. Because they have costs too -- supporting the lines and hubs you dial in on, connecting to other hubs, etc.
If you change addresses, and start getting mail sent to a different address, what happens?
In the case of the smail, you get the stuff forwarded from your old address to the new address -- and that's perfectly fair because the sender paid to get the letter or package to you. This is helped considerably by the fact that all the post offices are owned by the same company. BTW, this is probably the only case I can think of in which a monopoly helps the consumer.
In the case of email, what happens? One person pays a fee to send the email, which goes out onto the network. (This is a recipe for disaster in some peoples' minds -- we promisenot to read it. Really!) All other systems agree to pass it along, until it gets to the other end.
The receiver pays as well, to send and receive messages. This would seem to last as long as the user pays. But some of that time is wasted at the start because people have to publish or otherwise get that new email address out, same as if you changed your smail address.
And when the user changes services, what happens to the email still inbound to the box? Some people will say that the email should be shut off, any new messages bounced. Anyone with any sense of fair play would also say that since there was a lag time before the address could be used that anything new that comes into the address should be bounced to the new address, with a message back to the sender that a new address is being used. These are ethical solutions that may be overlooked because we are talking about "business" here, which seems to work by different rules.
The article on C|Net is clear enough on the point: ISPs' handling of email under special circumstances is not merely twisted but actually sprained.
And I consider it a very good point.
Much of the Internet is still frontier-grade in its rules, with its share of rail barons and robber barons and common horse thieves and a government that lives very very far away and has little hope of understanding this wild frontier for the next several generations.
What's missing here is not legislation but common sense.
I think that when a user stops service, old and new mail should be forwarded if possible for two to four weeks, and then simply handled like any other bounce. I consider this ethical and sensible. Other peoples' common senses and ethics may say other things.
Which leads to the questions: a) How do we decide on an optimal solution, and b) how do we make the non-ethical, non-sensible people follow suit?
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
I got the perfect bounce message! "We're sorry, we at dipshit ISP couldn't send your message to the degenerate recipient looser because she is too stupid to use a computer or pay her bill. Yes we fucked up but its not our fault cuze our computer did it."
Yes the ISP was at fault for the accounting error and they should have simply dismissed the payment crap because they screwed up and didn't notify her(its called customer service), BUT the bitch is stupid for conversing over email for important matters such as a new job. Ignorance maybe bliss but it doesn't give her the right to sue. If that were the case, I'd sue every damn fast food restaurant everytime they hand me a drink and it spills on my $15 crap khaki's from Walmart just because they got my nuts wet. If the job was that important to her then she should have made it a point to tell the dumb fuck who was going to hire her that she had a new email address.
I don't want the government to step in and start passing laws that ruin the internet(like they do with everything else)....but I'm just an anarchist sum'bitch.
So what? You are not absolved of responsibility for your actions simply because you create an AUP that states that you are not responsible for your actions. Ski rental places have the same thing: You sign a form saying that they are not liable for any injury even if they botch the equipment. That agreement isn't worth the paper that it is printed on. If their screw-up causes you injury, then you have a right to damages.
This is common sense people- would you hire someone who couldnt leave a phone number on their resume?
Read the article next time instead of simply slandering the victim:
Some points:
1. She is a freelance television journalist.
2. She was approached, via e-mail, with a job offer.
3. There is no evidence that she solicited the offer by distributing her resume.
4. When she did not respond in a timely manner, she apparently missed out on the opportunity.
5. Because the ISP continued to accept mail for the woman but hold it hostage, the potential employer received no bounce and, thus, had no reason to phone.
6. There is no indication that the potential employer even had the woman's phone number.
7. A female journalist might have very good reasons for not widely disseminating her phone number.
8. When there are multiple qualified people available, the potential employer may have simply chosen to contact another one rather than trying to track down someone who did not even answer the e-mail that was sent.
Now for the rest of you who think she should get that 65k from the ISP- the ISP probably is going to be angry, but it's not them who will pay for it- their customers will.
If the ISP's rates go up, then customers switch to more responsible ISPs -- an example of the market punishing incompetent providers. More likely would be that the ISP would change their policies such that they would only turn off e-mail as a last resort and/or that they would bounce messages sent to disabled e-mail addresses.
I equate this to people who sue doctors out of business because in that inevitable mathematical instance of them screwing up
Perhaps you will be that "mathematical instance."
It seems to me that you believe that no one should sue anyone. A doctor can kill patient after patient through malpractice but no one should sue him -- and since no one sues, his incompetence doesn't come to light. Lost a loved one? Tough. Lump it. Lost out on a job because your ISP actively, and wrongfully, shut off your e-mail? Too bad. Don't you dare sue them. You should run for office. You'd get lots of campaign donations from big companies that want to be able to f*** over the consumer without fear of reprisals.
More people need to use common sense these days. Our laws are based on ethics and morality but when I hear about companies like this ISP basically putting in the TOS clauses that indemnify against every conceivable act (acts of God not withstanding) then I gotta wonder. If their accounting software is at fault, and I mean truly at fault, and she genuinely lost a $65,000 contract from it, then they have an obligation (not legally, but morally) to repair what happened. They messed up and they gotta pay.
The problem here is that this company, like other companies with a contract try and use legal clauses to excuse them out of moral responsibilities because of "their own fault" and "shit happens" attitudes. We need Terms of Service that say basically "if we screw up, we claim responsibility and make repairs". People don't want to take the wrap for anything, they just want to pass the blame on to someone else.
Another problem that arises is that customers don't shop around for the best term of service agreement that ISP's that service their area have. They don't have printouts and organize the agreements saying "ah ha, this one has expressed oral consent whereas this one has implied written consent". All they do is become influences by commercials, colleages and friends as to "what's the cheapest and best (as in least busy calls if by analog modem, or however you define best) ISP out there.
Let me know what you think about this.
The phone company screws up, and disconnects your phone, during which time your phone number is pulled from a hat on some radio show and you win a brand new toaster. According to the competition rules, if they can't reach you on the phone, they pull another number from the hat, so they do and that person answers and wins. Now, would you have a case against the phone company?
Yes. It's called "consequential damages."
You like analogies, so consider this one: You buy a new car for your wife. It suddenly comes to a dead stop on the freeway at night with a total electrical failure. She is killed and your son is maimed when a tractor-trailer plows into the unlighted vehicle. You discover that the problem was that the factory left the positive battery cable lying against the exhaust manifold, it melted through, and started an electrical fire that left the car powerless. Do you think all that the car company owes you is a replacement car? Do you think that they should not have to pay out anything for killing your wife and leaving your son permanently disabled?
It's not the ISP's responsibility.
If the ISP is not responsible for their screw-up, who is? Oh, I see... You're one of those right-wingers who thinks that all corporations should get a free pass. Now matter how badly they screw over the consumer, they should be immune from lawsuits.
Bouncing someone's email is the equivalent of the telephonic error: "The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service." If you called someone who was negotiating a contact with you and got that message, would you still award the contract? I think not.
I ran an ISP with the same suspension policy. Email was allowed to pile up because to bounce it might damage the credibility of the account holder more than their not responding.
If a suspended customer wanted mail bounced or forwarded, we would honor that request; but the default was to simply lock the account. Nearly all suspended customers resolved their situation within hours (poor, addicted L-users), and many of the unresolved suspensions were the result of clients moving or dying (really.)
I feel for her, but the only alternative for ISPs is to pursue collections of overdue accounts. This is simply way too expensive. Bill in advance and suspend non-payers is the only efficient model. Anything else spikes your costs.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
This woman requested to close her account, and then wanted access to E-mail at that address?
..."
"... At that point, she terminated the account and signed up with an alternate provider, Carter said.
The old account, however, was kept open under suspension without her knowledge, she said, and e-mail continued to pile up. Carter eventually was able to retrieve 24 e-mail messages some three and a half weeks after the cancellation
She does not have some sovereign right to that E-mail address - when she closed her account, the ISP was free to do whatever they wanted with their resources.
If I close "bob@example.com" at Bob's request, and then Robert comes in my ISP and wants "bob@example.com", I'll give it to him.
If I close "bob@example.com" at Bob's request, and then TAKE IT FOR MYSELF, I haven't done anything wrong.
She paid all the bills she was sent, so yeah, it is unreasonable for them to cut off the service.
Then they discovered their mistake and contacted her, saying "We fucked up, you owe us another $214". She complained about what is essentially a surprise balloon payment (and rightfully so), and the ISP agreed to reduce the amount she had to pay them by half. Let me emphasize that this was the arrangement agreed to by both parties! This is the only part of the whole thing that is reasonable.
But then the ISP changed their minds about that, and decided she had to pay the full amount. This is obviously unreasonable, since they had already agreed that she only owed them half the charge for their screw-up! She, rightfully, responds with "Fuck you guys, cancel my account." But they don't, and they subsequently hold her email hostage for payment they have already agreed that they are not owed.
Had they actually canceled her account, as they said they would, the email would have bounced and Discover would likely have tried to contact her another way.
So, yeah, it is totally reasonable that she sue the ISP, who, through it's dishonest and unreasonable behavior, has cost her a large amount of money. In fact, it would be unreasonable for her not to sue.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I haven't read all the facts in this case, but it sounds as though what you say here is indeed common practice in the industry. The question is, should it be allowed?
E-mail has rapidly become a very important part of many people's daily lives. Everything from bills to job offers is sent by e-mail, and it is assumed (rightly or wrongly) by many organisations that mails they send are received by the addressee, even though there is no equivalent of registered mail.
Under those circumstances, it seems reasonable to mandate that service providers must either perform the service they offer, or inform someone trying to use it (by sending mail) that the service has not been performed. Leaving everyone in the dark, as appears to have happened in this case, clearly can be misleading and cause significant damage to parties involved, as also appears to have happened in this case.
If the service provider is allowed to operate on this basis, and this woman can't get compensation from them having been harmed by their policy, then the law governing the validity of the service provider's Ts&Cs should be reviewed, IMHO. Allowing this behaviour to continue is potentially very harmful to the small person/business, and does no good to anyone, except possibly a service provider holding their customer to ransom (and over their own mistake, at that, in this particular case).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The only part of this story that really bothers/concerns me is the idea that an ISP may suspend one's account, yet leave their mailbox active.
I had this happen once with a local ISP I tried out for a couple months, and then decided not to use. (Luckily for me, I didn't keep them long enough for it to create BIG hassles for me.)
They actually left my email account fully functional, but they simply deleted my password allowing me to establish a PPP connection with them. I had no idea they did this (assuming, of course, they'd delete my mailbox to save disk space and all), until months later. A few people were asking me why I never replied to their email.
I finally realized they'd been sending mail to my old account all this time, and it wasn't bouncing back because it *was* delivered successfully, onto the server I no longer connected to.
By this time, I'd almost forgotten my password, but managed to remember it - and connected to their mail server via my current ISP's connection, and pulled down well over 1500 emails that were piled up in there.
I think everyone important knows my current address now, so I haven't worried about it again -- but for all I know, that account is *still* active on their system today!
The ISP was holding her personal private data and not granting her access to it--that was the issue.
They would have been OK if they had destroyed it.
They would have been OK if they had bounced it.
What they did was silently accept more email after the suspension but refuse to let her access it.
The court is saying the email is her private personal data and she has an "access to information" right to see it.
The ISP had every right to cancel her account. But why not bounce her email at that point?
They kept her email because they believed that holding her personal private data hostage was a way to force her to settle the dispute.
That's wrong.
Most of the large ones do already, and some smaller ones do these, but it'd be nice if these became common practice:
Your message has not been delivered because...
We do not have such a user. Maybe you made a typo? Have the wrong domain?
The user's mailbox is full. Please use alternative means to contact them -- and do everyone a favor and tell them to empty their inbox? Thanks.
The user's account is suspended temporarily -- please use other contact means.
User is having technical difficulties. They have provided forwarding information. Contact them at $(OTHER EMAIL/PHONE NUMBER/POSTAL ADDRESS).
Mostly I agree with you.
It is alleged in this case that the problem is not that she failed to pay for services, but that the ISP's accounting system overcharged her for services, which she refused to pay, and that the accounting department failed to address the situation. Having been on both sides of the border between customer and running an ISP, I do have to say that this is a very real problem, and can make ISPs liable.
I have too many times encountered people who simply assume that computer systems are 100% correct, and that if the computer says it, it must be so. And the sad fact is such concepts seem to be the rule in customer service and accounting departments. More often, accounting issues are directed by customer service to a different accounting department phone number or email address. My first such experience was with Netcom (before the Earthlink merger) where they had double charged my CC for one month. Customer service (which could never be reached any sooner than a 45 minute wait, though fortunately on a local phone number) referred me to a long distance number for accounting, which I wasted 30 minutes in long distance charges trying to reach and never could. I left a message and they they never called back. I emailed them several times and got automated responses about half the time, usually after 2-3 days. The problem was not resolved so 3 months later I tried to cancel. Customer service then said that I had to call accounting to cancel. I emailed my cancellation notice several times but the CC charges kept coming. Finally I called my CC company and they not only reversed all the charges all the way back to and including both postings of the double billing, they also blocked that merchant account on my CC account so future charges would not be posted. So NOW I get 2 messages left on MY answering machine from Netcom. I just never called them back.
So, *IFF* she can make the case that the ISP is at fault in having caused the account to be canceled or closed when it otherwise would not be, even though she switched to another ISP because of being unhappy with the situation, due to a failure of the accounting system combined with a failure of the staff to realize a problem and override the accounting system, then I think the ISP should be liable. But the ISP also has a defense depending on when the email regarding her potential employment was sent. If that email was sent sufficiently later than when she opened another account intended to replace her prior account, then she should have been responsible for notifying the sender that her email address had changed, as long as she had prior communications with that sender.
If the problem is in the accounting system software, the ISP then may be able to sue the provider of that accounting system for the losses, including customer losses and lost staff time dealing with it all. More often, I think, it's simply incorrect administration, setup, configuration, or the underlying OS.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I can't believe the number of people who think they know what the story said and get self-righteous about how they understand the truth.
She was NOT paid up.
She had not been billed for service for fourteen months. Yes, that was the fault of the ISP. Perhaps they could have been merciful and eaten some or all of the bill, but she did use their service for fourteen months without paying a dime. Did this never seem strange to her? Or perhaps she was just happy that she had slipped through the accounting cracks and was getting free service?
The ISP discovered the lack of billing and decided to send a bill for the service she had already used. She paid only part of what she legitimately owed. The ISP was not in any way asking for more money than they deserved -- only for what fourteen months of service was normally billed at.
To review: Yes, the accounting error created the environment, but her refusal to pay the bill was the reason the account was suspended.
If the ISP is not responsible for their screw-up, who is?
I think most of the responsibility lies with this lady. She knowingly used the service for 14 months without paying. When she refused to pay, they suspended her account. BTW- she doesn't dispute any of this. Her only complaint is that they didn't bounce the emails to her account after it was suspended so people thought the emails were being delivered. Boo hoo- she should have paid her bill then.
The accounting department does share a little responsibility because they screwed up by not sending her a bill, but she is still responsible for the charges. She agreed to pay $x per month when she signed up for the service and she didn't pay it.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
You agreed to pay a month to month bill when you signed up. Everything was fine and dandy, but the ISP messed up and stopped billing. You are still using the service assuming everything is fine.
IT SHOULD be your responsibility to pay for the service. This is simple moral principals, and people are trying to say, "well, he did this so I don't need to pay" is a bunch of bullshit and an example of what our society has turned to. Pay for what you use.
As for the lawsuit, this is pretty cut and dry too. Did the ISP inform her that her account was suspended and she would no longer be able to recieve email, access the web, and use other services the company provided? If so, then she is at fault. If not, the company needs to settle somthing out because they really goofed.
Read the article next time ...
... the email was to be the next link in the chain." Sauce for the goose, eh? That sentence was in the same paragraph as the one you quoted.
... -- and since no one sues, his incompetence doesn't come to light.
(snip)
6. There is no indication that the potential employer even had the woman's phone number.
From the cnet article: "Carter and her potential employer had exchanged telephone messages about the position.
Perhaps you will be that "mathematical instance."
Or me. How does a lawyer protect me? The point here is that infallibility is impossible, even for doctors, and certainly for ISPs. Every doctor who sees sick people will make a mistake. Sue them or not, you can't make a perfect doctor.
A doctor can kill patient after patient through malpractice
A review/oversight board brings it to light. If a patient or patient's family makes a compaint, it gets investigated. The courts, and jurors who have no experience or education from which to evaluate the facts of a case, are ill-prepared to handle such cases.
Lost a loved one? Tough. Lump it.
Everyone loses loved ones. People die. Bad things happen. But its not a free ticket to sue everyone who had contact with them.
This ISP made a mistake. She should certainly be compensated in some form. But to hold the ISP responsible for the salary she might have made is pushing it too far. How many others were also in contention for the spot? When my company has been looking to hire people, we don't contact them one-at-a-time. We'll try and interview as many as possible. Also, if we really wanted somebody, and they didn't respond to an email, we'd follow up with a phone-call; we wouldn't give up unless we had somebody else just as qualified that we'd give the job to. My guess is this was far from a sure thing. At most she should be compensated for the value of the contract (it was not a full-time job) divided by her chances of getting it.
Even then, I think its a bit of a stretch to hold an ISP responsible for the potential monetary value of each email going through their system. She should not be paid 65K because of one email. I assume (ICBW) that this was a personal email account, not a business email account. Most ISPs have more expensive services for small businesses. They're more expensive because they have to be mission critical. If you're doing business by email, and if one email could lose you $65k, you should be paying more than me, who's not really doing anything critical with it. I'd just as soon pay the lower rates and take my chances. But since I'm knowingly doing so, I also shouldn't get my drawers in an uproar because I then lose out if I get in a tiff with them and refuse to pay my bill.
Now that said, I do think that the other element in her lawsuit, the change in policy to have emails to suspended accounts bounce rather than stick makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, most of the 'facts' in this case are coming from the aggreived party, so there may be some spin. One question is wether she had told Inter.net that she was cancelling the account, or had simply stopped calling them. That's not clear from her account of the situation (or I missed it). It makes a big difference. It's plausible that their thinking was that the billing dispute would eventually be resolved, and that the account would be re-activated. In which case she then gets all the email that she'd recieved in that time. Some people would probably prefer that, although I wouldn't.
On another note, not all ISPs do the black-hole thing. I've got at&t broadband, and managed to forget to pay a bill while I was on vacation this summer. When my account was suspended, my email account started bouncing messages. I found out because I'd sent an email to my roomate (different address on the same account) and it'd bounced. So I was able to settle up and not lose any emails, although I was still incommunicado til then. They suck other ways, but that's not one of them.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
You can't hold an ISP liable for the cost of the loss of a contract because of a time constraint on email response. That would be like being offered a job at $65k if you can be there in 30 minutes and then suing the cab company you rode with because they took 45 minutes to get you there and you lost out.
Mistakes and outtages occur. If your email is THAT mission critical, take action to acheive that level of service somewhere. Don't just expect your ISP to provide you with a level of service that you aren't contracted for. They provide email...email is not 100% guaranteed, period. It doesn't matter if it was an accounting error, or an outtage or a configuration error...email is not guaranteed, period.
Needs to do a little research when it comes to civil court.
There is a big difference between consequential damages (aka liability) and potential damages. In your analogy, you give a great example of product liability...car company is neglegent in constructing their vehicle -- faulty car leads to accident -- accident leads to deaths -- deaths lead to liability lawsuit -- lawyers get rich. Ford and Firestone have already experienced it first hand.
But, the case here is completely different. The "job offer" presented to this independent worker is not set in stone! It is merely an "offer" which she could "apply" for. The fact that she lost the opportunity to apply for the job does not AT ALL equate to $65,000 worth of damages. The difference between this case and a liability case:
She has not lost anything but an opportunity.
Money was not taken away from her. Her significant other / child's / family member's life was not taken from her. Nothing was taken away from her but an opportunity to earn money. I can't sue my roommate for keeping the phone busy when a radio show randomly picked my phone number to award me $1,000. All I did was lose an opportunity to earn money. Civil courts can not and do not put a price value on lost opportunity. It's outrageous that she even thinks that she's entitled to a full $65,000 when, if she was awarded the contract, she would have had to work to earn the money.
Bottom line: she should be awarded three months of ISP fees for the ISP neglecting her the services they were holding hostage, plus a possible $1,000 in punitive damages. Nothing more.
I have several clients who I am trying to "wean" off of Inter.net.
The problem largely has to do with the succession of mergers that has taken place leading to Inter.net's ownership of companies like Interlog (Vancouver BC).
Last fall one of my clients was experiencing issues with invoices never showing up for their ISP service and web hosting. They work all over teh world so internet service is critical for them and they spend a lot per month. The office manager/treasurer of the client called to ask Inter.net for an invoice so they could pay them. Inter.net obliged and fixed their records, but the next day or so their collectiosn department callde up demanding payment within two days or their service would be cut. They paid of course, but it was insulting for them to constantly remind them of the problems, only to be called back by the collections people.
I moved them to Bell Nexxia within two months - internet connection, phone, IP services and web hosting in one fell swoop. Not a single problem since.
I imagine that they are so far gone on their client's records that they are desperate to get paid when a problem DOES surface with unpaid services...except that it's often been the client reminding them of this problem!
Anyone else know of these kinds of problems in detail? I'd like to know more if you do.
JB