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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."
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?
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Hmm, from their terms and conditions:
4.1 Inter.net makes no guarantees as to the continuous availability of the Service or any specific feature of the Service. Inter.net reserves the right to change the Service at any time with or without notice. Features of the Service that are subject to change include, but are not limited to: access procedures, commands, documentation, hours of operation, menu structures, and vendors. Inter.net cannot and will not guarantee that the Service will provide Internet access that is sufficient to meet your needs.
4.2 THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. NEITHER INTER.NET NOR ITS AFFILIATES WARRANTS THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE OR THAT ANY INFORMATION, SOFTWARE, OR OTHER MATERIAL ACCESSIBLE ON THE SERVICE IS FREE OF VIRUSES, OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS.
As usual, they don't guarantee to offer any service at all. Surely that puts them in the clear here?
So, she gets one email message and no phone call and decides that she's out 60 grand, so sue?!
If it was really all that important to her, she would have paid the $100 she owed the company,
or find a company that hosts email properly.
The free email that comes with the isp package is usually not very good.
Most people figure that out without losing $60,000.
But really, if you are using email for work you should pay and get a good service, or better yet,
set up your own email host, so if something goes wrong, you have someone to fix it.
Usually an ISP doesn't actually close the account when billing issues arise. The logic behind this, would be so that people won't lose any important e-mails. They simply pay their overdue bill, and then have access to all the e-mails they received. I think this is a rinkle they never really expected.
However, having worked for an ISP before, I believe more people would be angry if you suddenly started bouncing all their e-mail if their credit card expired. It is more courteous to just prevent them from accessing it, until they pay up.
Static IP address, email server software, domain name, free DNS hosting and a PC running all the time. Now, either the DNS is screwed up (rare) or my DSL is down (even more rare). I can do whatever I want, which includes relay with authentication.
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
This whole thing is pretty sad. I hear from people on a daily basis that don't pay their bill and wonder why their service is disconnected. I hear complaints to the effect of: "I'M LOSING $10,000.00 AN HOUR BECAUSE YOU &^%$@*&%^ DISCONNECTED ME!!!", "I HAVE IMPORTANT EMAIL THAT I NEED...I'M WAITING FOR AN IMPORTANT CLIENT!!!!", "I AM MISSING A CLASS THAT I HAD TO TAKE ONLINE FOR THE LATEST UNSKILLED STOOGE TRADE PSEUDO COLLEGE I AM ATTENDING!!. Well, the bottom line is simply pay your damned bill. If you refuse to pay your bill and decide to go to another ISP just email your contacts and inform them of the email address change.
The reason why the email accounts still accept mail and are not deleted immediately is due to the fact that some people may at times simply forget to pay the bill or have an outside entity (main corporate office) that pays the bill for them and may be a wee bit slow paying some months. This gives them the time to pay without having to lose their email accounts or any email that may have been delivered to them in the up to 2 months+ that they were in non-pay status. I can only imagine the hell there would be to pay if all accounts were deleted instantly at the time of nonpayment. As far as her storefront analogy goes....it doesn't even make sense. She is comparing apples to oranges here. The ISP is NOT operating her business and acting as her agent in obtaining contracts. Lets say at her store that customers were mailing payments to her using the good old fashioned US Postal Service. It would NOT be her landlords responsibility to notify all her clients that her store was now closed....It would be HER responsibility to do this via a change of address notification to all of her clients. Also, how are we sure that the ISP was in error?? Most people seem to have a hard time grasping the concept of their bill being payed for services in advance and not in arrears. Also, when people get late charges...they tend to think that they can simply pay the bill and not pay the late charges which can and DO accumulate over the months. I for one am waiting to see proof that the ISP was in error and it was simply not her own ignorance that caused the account to become delinquent in the first place. She should be happy that the ISP keeps her email for her for long enough to pay her damned bill or notify her contacts of her new address!!
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
"Not sure what you're getting at...they made an accounting mistake. If they didn't bill her when they were supposed to, what gives them the right to go back and demand 200 smackers out of the blue?"
Companies do this rather frequently. If you're using a service and not being charged for it, I would imagine you're still liable to be charged for it. Especially if you want to continue your service with that company.
Moo
About 15 years ago I ordered Cable TV when it just became available. For the first three months I didn't receive a bill, which was also supposed to include my HBO guide. The office was 4 miles away, and each month I stopped by and picked up the guide, and notified them that I wasn't being billed.
Then I just subscribed to TV Guide, and never bothered with this fly-by-night outfit. I continued getting premium cable TV for about 7 years.
During this time the company changed hands about three times, during which I never received a bill. A physical audit finally caused the current company to catch up with me.
So I ordered basic cable from them, which really sucked. Had they demanded payment for all those years, I would have laughed them off.
The next month I cancelled the basic service, and got DirectTV :)
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Cig:
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Inter.net represent everything that could have - and did - go wrong with ISP mergers. It's a hodge-podge collection of former "mom & pop" ISPs that were bought out or merged into this new entity Inter.net to attempt to keep up with the competition. But they did so too fast and too haphazardly. A classic case of the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, ensued. I used to be a customer of Interlog which was a great Toronto-area ISP that became part of Inter.net. All the people I know who were with Interlog and are now with Inter.net have had nothing but problems with accounting and such. Either Inter.net doesn't even know they're a customer and they're getting free Internet, or Inter.net doesn't believe they're a customer and refuses service. Moreover, I handle a web site that was provided by Inter.net until this summer. I had to jump through hoops of fire to get them to even realize who the heck we were and that we wanted to cancel our account. To this day I'm not even sure if they think we're a customer but one of the directors of the company's website offered to handle the situation. The last I heard was that he just didn't care what they thought; that he'd given proper notice of our account termination numerous times and that he expected them to send an invoice anyways. To sum it up, I'm more surprised that this woman is the first person trying to sue them rather than the fact she wants to sue them.
As i read this artcle and then the threads here it seems slashdot readers have completely missed the point.
She was not a delinquient customer who didnt pay her bills. They just never charged her and then expected a lump sum payment. Im sorry but this is totally AGAINST her contract with them. She agreed to pay the x dollars a month. Whether they collect that money or not is their problem not hers.
Secondly they didnt terminate her service they held it in limbo. In canada if you mail a letter without postage the post office still has to mail it back to the sender. If you send it to an address thats someone has moved from then the law states that that person must put that peice of mail back in the mailbox with Return to sender on it. It is not legal for them to sit there and hold onto it ESPECIALLY as a tactic to make her pay their fucked up lumpsum bill.
This violates so many canadian laws that her case is extremely strong. When an isp account is disabled. It will go back to replying there is no mailbox name at this address and send it back where it came from. Thats an internet standard protocol. In this case they just happily collected all the email. Thats bogus.
I for one hope she wins this lawsuit because inter.net is a really shady company that uses every dirty trick available to them.
What they should have done is accepted her offer to pay have (i wouldnt have made that offer personally) and they should have dropped the whole charge minus the last month. As the letter of the contract goes this is all they're entitled to and suspension of her account alludes to a breach of contract.
good luck
Yes, and if this woman's account had been 'killed' as she suggests, she'd be complaining that important emails got bounced, and if they'd just accepted them until she could call up with a new credit card number, she'd have gotten them, so it's all their fault, and they didn't have the right to deny service, and blah blah blah.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Too bad most people are totally oblivious to it, and most ISPs no longer bother to provide the service due to oblivion.
Of course I'm talking about finger! Five years ago most people I dealt with had accounts at ISPs that provided finger services. Among other things, it'll tell you the last time they logged in and checked their email. Plus it is a nifty medium for figuring out what someone has been up to -- .plan, the original blog!
If all accounts provided (opt-outable) finger information and people were used to checking it, maybe this woman wouldn't be out $65,000? And people could stop sending obnoxious messages to their whole address books telling them they're going on vacation?
We seriously need to start a conspiracy to protect and revive UNIXisms.
Which do you want - the Internet as a toy or an effective, attractive, and respectable utility that people use for everyday activities and important business?
If you've worked in the industry for more than five minutes, you'd know the answer lies in between. NO ONE wants the Internet to be a utility if they understand what that means.
Remember the telephone calls in 2001? People actually believed that the telephone would get to be ludicrously cheap.
If the Internet were to reach utility status, it would become highly regulated. Complying with telco-like regulation would double costs. Small ISPs couldn't even afford the lawyers to keep their filings up to date. Net result: Massive consolidation, much higher prices, and terrible customer service. Working at ISPs, I've dealt with many telco's to resolve technical issues and I can tell you that I'd rather chew on broken glass than have to do that anymore. Currently, it takes some looking to find a good ISP, but atleast you can find one. Give me the name of a utility that's so good, you'd like them to run your ISP...
Make ISP's a utility and instead of getting your Internet service from Bob down the street, you'll be getting it from Ted in Atlanta.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Since when was missing an opportunity a reason to sue for $65K? I thought that you had to prove in a court of law that you had to have real and NOT PERCIEVED grievances that accounted to damages to collect in a court of law.
What? She didn't have a phone? Can't phone someone? I know of precious few producers in any form that wait around for E-mail when they can call someone and get to the bottom of the work at that moment. Producers might spec on E-mail, but I don't ever remember hearing about them finalizing any details on anything other than the phone.
A missed opportunity is not the fault of an ISP. If she had played her cards right, she should have used the telephone. And by the way, I am a journalist, and know a TON of freelance journalists. SO she might have been up for some Dixcovery Channel work. SO WHAT. If they want you for a gig, they will call you directly... that is the way it has always worked.
Can this even be done?
I have an active account on my *nix box. If I disable logins ("suspend the account") the user can't login to shell, ftp, e-mal, whatever. The only other tactic is to delete the account. Now, the mail is bounced, but all current messages are gone, as well as any other files they may have on the server.
How would someone implement a suspended account and bounce e-mail, AND leave their current files there in case they wanted to reactivate their account?
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
Rather than suspending the account, an account in a billing dispute should return the temporary condition of "disk full", for which a standard MTA will back off and retry.
Since the condition of being out of space, or some other transient condition, isn't un-common, it won't be viewed as a problem, like this case was.
And semi-intelligent MTA's can notify the sender, that their email is being delayed, so that they can check via alternative means like voice. An ISP that notified the intended receipient would be great, and best done once when the account is flipped to "temporarily unavailable".
A problem that is resolved in a few hours would be transparent to the end users, other than the delay.
Carter said she agreed to pay half, an arrangement the company initially accepted but later rejected. At that point, she terminated the account and signed up with an alternate provider, Carter said.
Carter says this, Carter says that... I work in a cell phone service provider, and if I got a penny for every people that *think* their account is closed only because it has been suspended by non payment... Did she REALLY call to deactivate or just assumed that the compagny she was pissed about would do it?
There is no comment from the ISP. I cant form an opinion on that lady, who goes 14 months using a service that she didnt pay. And then starting an holy crusade cause her ISP is not ethical...
I worked at Nortel before, and I know co-workerS who don't pay their Inet service for the last 2 years (after the huh... crash?). They SURELY won't complaint if they get caught will they? The girl is PISSED about being caught and now CNET give her a tribune to be pissed on. Sure she will be objective and tell it how it happened.
"You can't interfere with the mail. The post office has to return a letter even when it doesn't have enough postage." (Carter says)
Hrmm Well as the employer paid SO much to send her that email, I dont see how its comparable. Post Office *DO* lose mail anyway, hey they "lost" my Stuff magazine 3 times in the last year now... Will we push the analogy if an ISP lose an e-mail? If a byte of downloaded file get lost between you and the server?
It may be bad faith from the ISP but dont tell me its not bad faith from her part. She had 14 months to change her e-mail address, instead she act all surprised when her account get suspended... DUH LADY! Accounting departements DO catch up, its their damn job!