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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."
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?
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.
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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.
Someone please mod Mr. "I work for AOL, so you better listen to my massive years of experience" down, he didn't even read the story.
The lady did pay her bill in this case. It was the ISP who made the accounting mistake and wrongfully turned off her account.
If my internet service was wrongfully disconnected, I would immedietly call and get it straightened out over the phone with the ISP directly. I can't imagine the amount of time required to make that call being enough time to actually lose any email. Mail usually gets queued up somewhere when it can't be sent immedietly, and internet service accounts usually get suspended first, not shutoff. Someone was obviously being over-zealous in this case.
I also would add that people who rely on their ISP for 100% flawless email delivery are kidding themselves. Anything important should be sent to a domain name you registered and have hosted by an actual hosting company or co-lo service. There and only there will you find accountability for services.
I am destiney and I'm an IT Manager for a profitable dot-com who didn't die in the bust..
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.
And the key difference there, is that you made a diligent effort to fix their mistake.
It's like finding a hundred dollar bill on the ground that someone just dropped in front of you. You go up to them, tell them you saw them drop it, and it's theirs.
They insist it's not yours. You continue to tell them its theirs, and back and forth. Finally you give up after arguing with the guy for 5 minutes, and pocket the bill.
They see you on the street 6 months later, and demand their 100 dollar bill back, or they'll call the police.
In this isp's case, you took the bill, didn't tell the person in front of you, followed them around, and kept picking up the bills they dropped. When they reviewed security camera footage of the area later, realized you were the one that took the 100 dollar bill, you deny it, and then sue them when they tell you to stop following them.
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.
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.