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."

Comments

maybe a little too far

[Vilim]

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

Re:maybe a little too far

[ackthpt]

but i wouldn't go as far as suing :p Well, maybe if you were in a tight labor market and/or the job offer was something you were really focused on.... but still, shouldn't you get a phone call, rather than email, since email is so unreliable anyway (with the possible exception of 100+ spams a day, which is quite reliable, thank you very much) Heck, I'd be on the phone myself, trying to see how things were going. Maybe even request confirmation via FAX, since fax, unlike email, generates a confirmation it was received at the other end.

Any ISP should have a disclaimer anyway that email and other account matters are provided as is, etc.

Re:maybe a little too far

[schon]

They are accepting your email

No, they're accepting their email (since they own the domain, it's not yours until you collect it.)

not providing the senders with any way to know whether it got to you or not

Hate to break it to you, but how is this any different from the way email works normally? Email delivery isn't guaranteed - it makes a best effort, but there is no guarantee that email will reach you. Just like there is also no guarantee of security - if your email was read by a third party, would you sue then too?

even after your account has been *cancelled*

Speaking as an ISP, if you cancel your account with us, we delete your mailbox. I don't know any ISP that doesn't work this way.

If you use email as your only method of communication, you deserve everything you get.

that really sucks, but...

[no reason to be here]

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.

Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[Picass0]

This ISP better get ready to fork up 65k + damages.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[daeley]

65K * numYearsWorkedPotential.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[digitalsushi]

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?

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[scott1853]

Maybe she/Discovery should have been smart enough to use an alternate high-tech method of communication, like those new fangled telephone thingamajigs.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[zrodney]

well said -- this person should not win the lottery at the expense of the other isp customers just because she lost some email

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[fmaxwell]

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.

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:

When I opened them, one jumped out immediately; it was from the producer of a national daily magazine-style television show asking me to call her about a job opening on her show (I'm a freelance television journalist).

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.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[fmaxwell]

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.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[cheezedawg]

The Acceptable Use Policy does not include billing for service, accepting payment and then not providing that service.

That has nothing to do with this case. There was no payment here- she went 14 months without paying. Her complaint is that after the ISP suspended her account because she hadn't paid, they continued to accept email to her account. There was no way for her to access that email, and there wasn't any notification to the sender that she couldn't access it.

Basically she tried to free-ride for over a year, and it came back and bit her in the ass.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[Just Some Guy]

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.

How this wasn't marked "Flamebait", I'll never know.

The poster could just as easily respond that "you're one of those left-wingers who thinks that a single bad event should allow you to retire on the legal proceeds". For what it's worth, do you know that the ISP is a major corporation, and not a mom-and-pop shop operating on a shoestring budget? Is it OK to sue the ISP out of existence then?

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[Myco]

That's not insightful, it's idiotic. What's wrong with email? It usually works. There's a reasonable expectation that when a professional publishes her email address, that's an effective way to get into contact with her.

Do you follow up every email with a phone call?

You say maybe "she/Discovery" should have been smart enough... she didn't even realize they wanted to talk to her, precisely because she didn't get the email! Did you read the article?

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[cheezedawg]

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.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[Myco]

$65,000 is not sued out of existence, nor is it something you can retire on. It is the amount of money this woman would have earned through honest work, doing her job.

Now, since she didn't actually have to go to the trouble to do that work, and can spend that time pursuing some other opportunity, then perhaps a full $65,000 reimbursement would be excessive.

It doesn't matter how big the ISP is. They went into business; that involves risk. They had the opportunity to limit their liability via the language in their user agreement. They could have insured themselves against such things, perhaps. If they failed to take any precautions, then why do you defend them from having to take responsibility for losses that are a direct result of their own incompetence?

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[trentfoley]

I've got to take exception with your point #6:

6. There is no indication that the potential employer even had the woman's phone number.

Reading the cnet article points out the following fact:

Carter and her potential employer had exchanged telephone messages about the position. Unbeknownst to her, the e-mail would have been the next link in that chain, but by the time she got it, the position had been filled.

So, had the message bounced, the potential employer would have been able to contact her by telephone.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[cpt kangarooski]

Christ. Aren't you forgetting Hadley v. Baxendale? Even if you breach, you do not owe unforeseeable damages.

This amply qualifies. The ISP owes here whatever the cost of a replacement ISP would've been. That's it.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[Citizen of Earth]

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.

Keep in mind that Canada isn't the same personal-injury lawsuit-lottery haven that the United States is.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[fmaxwell]

Even if you breach, you do not owe unforeseeable damages.

I don't think that someone getting a job offer via e-mail is "unforeseeable." It's commonplace and much business is transacted that way.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[cpt kangarooski]

No, it is.

As I said, Hadley v. Baxendale, 9 Ex. 341 (1854) is basically the seminal holding on the subject. The plaintiffs had a mill in Gloucester. A crankshaft broke, and in order to get a new one, the millers had to ship the old one back to the engineers in Greenwich so that they could copy it in making the replacement.

The plaintiffs gave the crankshaft to the defendants, who were couriers. They said that it needed to be sent immediately. However, there was a mix-up and it wound up being rather late, obviously reducing the profit of the plaintiffs, since their mill was totally out of commission during this time.

BUT the defendants only had to pay damages as to the speed of the shipping, and not as to the lost profits. This is because while it was obvious to them that they needed to be fast because that's what the customer insisted on, it wasn't obvious WHY. There was no way that they could have known the full extent of the damages that would result, nor is it commonplace for couriers to know that if they are late delivering _a_ package that someone will lose a fortune as a consequence. That's only true with regards to certain _specific_ packages, or a business that _mostly_ carries critically important packages, such as organ couriers.

The case is even more clear cut here. While people _do_ conduct business over email, a very large quantity of email is spam or personal mail that does not harm people if there is a problem with the non-performing party to the service contract.

Unless the ISP was specifically informed that this PARTICULAR email was of the gravest importance BECAUSE it was worth many thousands of dollars, then they should be able to treat it as though it is any generic email and not worth special care. After all, how could they have possibly known? Are they mind-readers? No. It's unfair to punish them for something that's unforeseen.

If we adopted such a rule, then the possible liabilities of entering into a contract would be so high that we would discourage people from ever so doing, or from doing so affordably in the general case. This is because the party subject to the liability has to predict uncertain and perhaps uncontrollable matters, such as the liklihood of outages caused by someone in a different country running a backhoe through a major fiber line, DDOSes, email viruses, etc.

Since we would rather have lots of transactions occur, we default to the general case, and do not make parties subject to unusually high liabilities unless they are specifically forewarned of them, and can opt not to enter into a contract such as that, knowing the risk they're being asked to take.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[Yet Another Smith]

Read the article next time ...
(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. ... 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.

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 ... -- and since no one sues, his incompetence doesn't come to light.

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.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[cpt kangarooski]

Sorry man, I doubt British rulings still apply to Canada, even if they happened before the BNA.

Heh. The ruling was made almost 80 years after the American Revolution, and yet it is still good law in the US.

You forget: precedent merely means that a case touches on the same subject and can be followed because it is convincing. BINDING precedent is of the type that must be followed because it comes down from a superior court.

In US students are taught mostly US cases, but also cases from other countries that follow the English Common Law tradition. Hell, Hadley itself cites Justice Storey, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Unless Canadian contract law has radically diverged from its roots, which I doubt, the case is still likely to apply. Besides, they likely didn't abandon their law upon the BNA. America did not, and pre-Revolution binding precedents are in fact still good unless since overridden. Property law refers back to a ton of old cases.

Cases involving loss of limb or life would likely fall under different rules....

Well duh. The limitation on remote damages rule from Hadley is from the law of CONTRACTS. The law of TORTS is totally different. But this is not a tort!

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[fmaxwell]

Unless the ISP was specifically informed that this PARTICULAR email was of the gravest importance BECAUSE it was worth many thousands of dollars, then they should be able to treat it as though it is any generic email and not worth special care. After all, how could they have possibly known? Are they mind-readers? No. It's unfair to punish them for something that's unforeseen.

Since the recipient did not know that the e-mail was there, how was she to notify them of its importance? And the point of this was that the journalist's e-mail was not treated like "generic e-mail." They regularly delivered generic e-mail while intentionally witholding e-mail addressed to her.

While your example of the shipping delay that left the mill out of commission is an interesting case, it does not prove to be totally analogous to this one. In Hadley v. Baxendale, the courier made an error. In this case, the ISP was intentionally holding personal correspondence as a way to force the woman to pay a bill that they thought she owed. In essence, they were holding her property (the e-mail messages) and refusing to release it until she paid them. The ISP did not create the messages and those messages were private communications that had both tangible and intangible value.

It would be like your neighbor signing for a package while you were out of town and then refusing to tell you about the package or give it to you until you repaid some debt that they thought you owed.

This is, by the way, a common and despicable tactic employed by ISPs. When I stopped using Erol's/RCN, they refused to deactivate the e-mail account for some number of months. Why? So that subscribers would think twice before changing services, knowing that possibly important e-mails would languish in a mailbox that they could no longer open. (I just sent messages until the "mailbox" was full and bounces started coming back -- but it pissed me off, nonetheless.)

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[fmaxwell]

But a male journalist might not? Please, pulling the sex card is insulting to men and women alike.

Right. Men and women are different. Men are, as a group, physically stronger and more often able to defend themselves. They are seldom, as adults, victims of sexual assaults and rapes. The vast majority of stalkings are men stalking women, not vice-versa or same-sex. Sexual predators are almost always men and their victims are almost always women (or children). Your belief that men and women face the same threats, dangers, etc. just shows how little you know about women.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[scott1853]

It usually works.

Hello McFly, you proved my point in your own effort to discredit me. And with only three words. And you call me idiotic?

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[Cruciform]

Wow, whatever happened to IANAL?

Did the bar finally discover the internet? :)

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[fmaxwell]

Didn't the original story say the ACCOUNTING SYSTEM screwed up? Why not sue the programmer who made the accounting system? Oh, I know... because he probably doesn't have deep pockets.

No, you don't know. She has no contract with the programmer[s] who created the accounting system. Her contract is with the ISP. She has no legal standing to sue the programmer. The ISP might be able to, though.

Absolutely not, but in this case the ISP wasn't screwing over a customer, a system failed.

No, the ISP willfully continued to accept e-mail for the woman and held it hostage to make her pay a bill that they thought she owed. They had every right to shut off her service for non-payment, but to accept e-mail destined for her and then hold it is wrong. That e-mail is her property. It's like an apartment manager accepting UPS packages for a resident and then refusing to deliver them until the resident payed a late rental bill.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[mpe]

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.

Plenty of case law to establish that such clauses do not have unlimited scope. Most likely they would be considered null and void where negligence was demonstratable.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[mpe]

Many ISPs today are LLC's (Limited Liability Corporation). Assuming these are, it would mean that they are ONLY required to refund her monthly bill during this period, nothing more. Now, if they're not an LLC, I guess this will be up to a judge or jury, but personally, I don't see how they could be forced to cough up this $65.000.

Except that it dosn't (or at least didn't originally) mean this. What it ment was limited liability for investors if the corporation went bankrupt then the creditors could not demand that the stockholders made good their debts. Nothing about protecting the corporation from the consequences of it's own actions or protecting it's executives (even if they held stock) from their actions.
They may have a contractual agreement with their customers that they would only pay X amount, but a court judgment can easily rule such a clause not applicable. The contract dosn't apply anyway, the supplier has failed to uphold their part of the agreement.

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? In my opinion, absolutely not. They are only responsible for the SERVICE you subscribe to. They are not responsible for any outside problems you might incur if they fail to provide that service for some reason.

The term involved is "consequential loss" or "consequential damage".

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[mpe]

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.

If we are going to insist of the legal fiction of pretending that corporations are "people". Then they certainly should be held liable for the consequences of their own actions.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[cpt kangarooski]

What, you didn't see my .sig? I am not a lawyer. I am deeply interested in law though, and I found myself discussing it enough that it just turned out easier to have it automatically on my posts.

But again -- IANAL. If you really want a legal opinion, go consult a lawyer licensed to practice in your area.

Re:Acount system screw up=ISP fault

[Cruciform]

Ah ha. :)
I have .sigs blocked, that's why I missed it.

I was still surprised though at the number of responses in this thread that seemed to have more than an inkling of what they were talking about.

Not only did she lose the job offer...

[brianvan]

... she also lost the chance to get a low interest mortgage, purchase cheap airline tickets, and enlarge her penis!

Re:Not only did she lose the job offer...

[spatrick_123]

I think the ISP is lucky that she isn't suing them for the 25 million that she lost out on by not being able to assist Mr. Nagumbamboa sneak his family's wealth out of Nigeria.

The ISP's terms and conditions?

[26199]

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?

Re:The ISP's terms and conditions?

[NineNine]

No. Just because something is in a contract doesn't make it legal. Happens all the time. You can sign a contract agreeing to kill someone, but obviously, that contract is null and void. Those trucks with the stickers plastered on back that say "not responsible for broken windshields"... they're responsible.

In this case, a judge is gonna say that the spirit of the contract was for x amount of Net service over x period of time. A lawyer obviously didn't even look at the ISP's contract before they started using it.

Re:The ISP's terms and conditions?

[26199]

Hmm... I would love to see how something like this is dealt with in court... anyone know of any examples?

(i.e. specifically regarding 'we don't guarantee any service' terms for ISPs, software, or other computer-related matters?)

Re:The ISP's terms and conditions?

[WEFUNK]

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.

Re:The ISP's terms and conditions?

[jpmorgan]

Well, if you sign a contract to kill someone and the other party actually pays you... the contract isn't just null and void, you've both just committed conspiracy to commit murder. :)

Re:So if...

[cperciva]

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.

Re:So if...

[NineNine]

No, it isn't reasonable. But that's not what happened here. She continued to pay her bill. They screwed up. Jesus, jsut read that article.

too bad -- she doesn't have a telephone

[zrodney]

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.

Re:too bad -- she doesn't have a telephone

[zrodney]

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.

Re:too bad -- she doesn't have a telephone

[rusty0101]

I presume that you pay your ISP a monthly bill. Additionally, they provide you access to your e-mail. All part of the understood contract between you and your ISP. Should you decide not to continue to pay your ISP, they have every right to suspend your account, or even add a .forward file to your account that redirects all your mail to /dev/null if they wish.

The question here is if your ISP messes up your accounting, whether it be failing to register the fact that you paid your bill, or double billing you, or billing you the wrong amount, should they then be allowed to prevent you from accessing your account.

This is why many businesses require written notification to cancel subscription accounts. That way they have a paper trail allowing them to take the actions that are required.

Of course you sometimes experience situations like mine where the ISP thinks I haven't been getting my e-mail so they put the .forward file redirecting my e-mail to /dev/null in my user directory. A quick sanity check noting that I receive between 20 and 100 messages a day, including spam, and they ain't sitting in the account, and I didn't have a .forward file, should have shown that there is something wrong with the system tracking whether I am logging in to get my e-mail or not.

With the other things that have been happening this week, I have no idea who may have sent me e-mail. Well, ok I know about the spam, but don't really care about that.

-Rusty

Re:too bad -- she doesn't have a telephone

[tx_mgm]

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??

Not really.

[aepervius]

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.

Re:Terms

[scharkalvin]

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.

rtfa

[Cyno01]

it was the ISPs fault, she was still paying, their accounting department screwed up, it even said that in the post

Did I read this wrong?

[Corporate Drone]

She's not mad because she was without an email address; in fact, she had already changed email providers.

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...

Re:Did I read this wrong?

[gmack]

It's entirely possible the potential employer had her email address from before she had the problem.

So yes that does cut it. The fact that it was a mistake in her ISP's accounting system in the first place only makes it worse.

Re:Did I read this wrong?

[AvitarX]

It doesn't cut it for $60,000, but it is worth soemthing. And if you sue someone you start at the highest and work down. For example, in a car accident if you are sharking you start with pain and suffering for $250,000. Then end up withmax insurance coverage, (hopefully still around $80,000).

She will start with max contract length, but will probably wants a month or two pay to cover finding a new job. Obviously if they paid the whole year it would be absolutly unfair. She does not get to sit on her ass for a year because they screwed up, but possibly she gets money to cover her bills while looking for a new job.

Re:Did I read this wrong?

[mindstrm]

How does that not cut it? When you move out of your apartment, it's a crime for the new occupants to open your mail, or to keep your mail, or to throw your mail away; they are obliged to put it back noting it was misdelivered. It was NOT for them.

When your account with an isp is cancelled, they should not be collecting email on your behalf.

When paypal freezes your account for investigation, they should not be accepting payment.

etcetera.

Come on people think about this a moment

[cyberlotnet]

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.

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[FreeLinux]

This is EXACTLY what they did to her, but only in the "virtual" world..

So she should virtually win the case. The ISP should virtually pay here large amounts of virtual cash for her virtual damages. Seems virtually fair to me.

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[scoove]

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

Sure, and you're going to pay $0.35 per message for the protection. Oh, and that's only for non-guaranteed protected email. If you want a guarantee, we'll charge you $3.50.

What? Did you protection comes free? (Need to watch more Sopranos if you did).

Think about why email is free for a moment - you're paying for Internet transport (essentially layers three and four of the OSI model), and you're free to do whatever you want above that.

But now you're asking for application-layer guarantees. Here's what comes with your demand:

- specification of how you may and may not use your application layer. Count on Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express as the only permitted email client. Do you think we have time to support your Linux system when 90% or more are happy with Outlook?

- creation of rules on what kinds of messages are permitted; e.g. attachments may not exceed 1 MB, must be known and permitted media types (no MP3s or ZIPs since the RIAA will quickly get into this game)

- a fee per message and per month for your "guaranteed email."

- government rules, regulations and restrictions on the whole business.

Understand that the USPS salivates at your demand for safety/protection/guarantee in a world that doesn't have them. They've prepared numerous proposals for guaranteed email (including my favorite that would make my email address something like sam_scoove_1234_north_elm_street_mycity_st@usps.co m ).

So make sure you're ready to pay the price (in dollars and freedom) before you demand big brother makes email "safe" for you.

*scoove*

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[jasonditz]

The problem is that in the virtual world Digimon and the like routinely eat your email messages, the only justice system is the noble system of slashdotting.

and the only way out... is suicide!

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[anthony_dipierro]

They tell you "No not until you pay us what you owe".

This is a FEDERAL OFFENSE, punishable by jail time..

Damn, and I thought we had freedom of speech. I'd like to see the U.S. Code that makes this illegal.

In any case...

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.

No, they shouldn't. The internet is not real life. There shouldn't be any laws whatsoever about what I do over the internet.

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[anthony_dipierro]

What defines "REAL" life?

A place where people can get physically injured and/or die.

The Us Post office used to be a small group of people on Ponys, Im sure the first time someone mentioned any type of "law" to protect these people it was shrugged off.. "Why do they need any more protection then anyone else.

Why do they? IMO people on Ponys who work for the U.S. Govt don't deserve any more protection than anyone else.

TV isnt real life is it? Yet there are laws that govern TV...

Yeah but there shouldn't be.

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[gl4ss]

freedom of speech? you think holding mail for ransom is an issue of freedom of speech? how about robbing a bank, i got freedom of speech to threaten the accountant with a big honkin gun?

extortion(sp?) is illeagal in usa afaik.

the local mall i go to isn't real life either, i should be able to eat for free at the grocery store.

also the phonecalls i make aren't real because i can't touch the essence of the message.

the routers that route internet aren't real either.

also my talking isn't real.

also this post isn't real.

that's just as weak as saying my religion doesn't allow for intrest rates i should get my loans for zero intrest.

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[JWSmythe]

That would be somewhere in:

18 U.S.C. 1700 Desertion of mail
18 U.S.C. 1701 Obstruction of mail generally
18 U.S.C. 1702 Obstruction of correspondence
18 U.S.C. 1703 Delay or destruction of mail or newspapers
and/or
18 U.S.C. 1708 Theft or receipt of stolen mail matter generally

http://www.usps.com/websites/depart/inspect/usc18/ welcome1.htm

I have to agree with the victim in the story, it's very bad policy to just collect Email for their own uses.. If I'm an ISP, and you're a customer, when you're no longer a customer, should I collect and potentially read your personal Email? No. When you're no longer a customer, I should delete your account, and let the SMTP server handle the bonuce-backs..

This says the receiver isn't valid.
---
>>> RCPT To:
>>> DATA
550 5.1.1 ... User unknown
---

This says the receiver *IS* valid.
---
>>> RCPT To:
>>> DATA
250 2.1.5 ... Recipient ok
----

I would accept the second to receive my message and respond if they were interested. The first will generate an error in my box, where I'll know to contact them in other ways..

As far as the job opprotunity was concerned, she didn't respond because she wasn't interested. And that's the ISP's fault for accepting the Email for a closed account. I don't know that it should be a law, but if that's what it takes to get ISP's to fix their flawed policies, so be it.

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[Reziac]

And imagine all the lawsuits over charges for "safe" spam. "I'm not paying for this garbage, you should know better... whaddya mean, you couldn't tell the spam from my regular porn newsletters??"

All sarcasm aside, I do think you're right on how "guaranteed" email would work. Just as express snailmail has size, weight, and packaging restrictions, and can only be dropped off at express-mail pickup points. There is ALWAYS a cost for guaranteed service, and I think most email users would find that cost extortionately high.

[hefting calculator] At post office regular mail rates just for my average volume of NON-spam email, I'd have to cough up... good gods, over $4,000/year!! Eeep!!!

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[Permission Denied]

- specification of how you may and may not use your application layer. Count on Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express as the only permitted email client. Do you think we have time to support your Linux system when 90% or more are happy with Outlook?

This is called "Delivery Status Notification" and has been a standard for some time now.

Before the Internet was big, I worked with proprietary (non-SMTP) inter-office mail systems. I remember one system in particular had this feature where it would display the status of a message to the message sender or administrator. A message would be marked "read" if the user lingered on the message for some configurable amount of time (remember, this was non-standard mail, so the vendor wrote both the client and the server).

I'm certain you can see the problems with this system: it's something of an invasion of privacy. Boss sends user a mail, user doesn't complete task in mail before lunch, boss confronts user, user claims he only had time to skim over the message, boss tells admin to pull out the logs.

Anyway, this can result in some pretty nasty situations, so I'm guessing the reason this hasn't been widely-implemented is because users actually don't want this (I just read through the standard and I can see a number of other technical problems which have possibly delayed its acceptance). I certainly don't want anything like this (even without that evil MUA behaviour described above, this sort of raises the bar for email, making it a "more serious" medium, and that changes the nature of what goes through email (consider what goes through email and why you would never receive a subpoena or summons through email)). If I had to complete every hair-brained idea sent to me through email from management, I would never get any work done. Without status notification, I can postpone this for a couple of days until I actually speak with the person involved and they've already forgot about the idea or we have a chance for a two-way conversation and I can convince them how bad their idea is.

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[anthony_dipierro]

freedom of speech? you think holding mail for ransom is an issue of freedom of speech?

No, I think saying "No not until you pay us what you owe" is an issue of freedom of speech.

extortion(sp?) is illeagal in usa afaik.

Extortion is "the act or practice of wresting anything from a person by force, by threats, or by any undue exercise of power." The scenario you present does not involve wresting anything from a person.

also this post isn't real.

You're arguing semantics. I think it's quite obvious what I meant by the "real world".

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[anthony_dipierro]

If physical injury or death where the only valid reason for a law or lawsuit then legal systems all over the world would have to disagree with you.

So?

It is a Federal Offfense to Assult or otherwise mess with the Mail or a Mail Man.

So?

And no law regarding TV? Sounds to me like the only law you would approve is one that says "Do not harm or kill others, anything else is fair game"

Well, I think laws should be more specific than that, but yeah.

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[anthony_dipierro]

Regarding the laws you cited, I don't really have the time to try to guess which one you thought would apply and how. I don't see how any of them apply.

If I'm an ISP, and you're a customer, when you're no longer a customer, should I collect and potentially read your personal Email?

Unless you contractually agreed not to, I don't see why not.

When you're no longer a customer, I should delete your account, and let the SMTP server handle the bonuce-backs..

OK, now what if someone else wanted to use the same account name? Are you under an obligation to not allow them to? What if you decide you want to use the same account name for your own purposes? No, if you didn't contractually agree to continue providing bounce service after account deletion you're under no obligation to do so.

550 5.1.1 ... User unknown

But the user is known. Besides, I see no reason why RFCs should be enforced by the U.S. government.

Re:Come on people think about this a moment

[gl4ss]

**Extortion is "the act or practice of wresting anything from a person by force, by threats, or by any undue exercise of power." The scenario you present does not involve wresting anything from a person.**

actually, they were. they were wresting money, weren't they?

Come on, guys....

[cybermace5]

I can't believe, what, three-quarters? of the posts on here are people going "OH WELL SHE SHOULD HAVE PAID THEN DUH".

The accounting system screwed up, ok? She was already paid up and they wanted more money.

Now, the ISP terms said they wouldn't guarantee error-or-interruption-free service. BUT...this isn't covered under that. It was an accounting error, and they suspended her account. This is not the same as if, say, their DNS servers borked.

I'd say she deserves compensation. Definitely. I have had my share of burns from ISP's with OUTRIGHT SHODDY accounting and business practices. Fortunately, nothing so serious...yet. About the only problem was paying THREE TIMES at their suggestion because they said the transaction didn't go through....and then receiving a bill for all three charges. That was an immediate cancel, and lucky for them they credited back the amount.

I hope she wins the case, I'd like to see some of these ISP's get a little more professional. It is a business after all, not a geek club.

Re:Come on, guys....

[compwizrd]

"According to Carter, Inter.net presented her with a $214 charge for 14 months of service that had gone unbilled because of an accounting error."

Sound more like she wasn't billed, and for 14 months kept using the service, even though she
knew she wasn't being billed.

"Carter said she agreed to pay half, an arrangement the company initially accepted but later rejected."

And then on top of it, when they realized she wasn't paying, she tried to get out of paying for what she owed.

Re:Come on, guys....

[cybermace5]

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?

She wanted to keep her service going, but at the same time didn't want to clean up the mess that was their own fault. I wouldn't have even offered to pay the 200 bucks, and would have canceled the service since they obviously couldn't handle the business.

Many ISP's have a credit-card auto-deduct service. I imagine she didn't pore over her credit card bill every month to look for something that wasn't there.

Re:Come on, guys....

[The Kow]

"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.

Re:Come on, guys....

[cybermace5]

You're an idiot.

If a company makes a mistake, it's their fault. More specifically, the person within the company who initially made the mistake.

Imagine for moment, you sign up for ISP service. They have a handy auto-deduct setup, so you don't have to worry about the monthly or tri-monthly fees.

Also imagine, though unlikely, that you have a life and are very busy. Are you going to pore over your credit card statement, hunting to make sure the ISP charged you? If they bill every three months, it would get pretty easy to lose track of.

The company made a mistake, either by hiring careless workers or faulty software. They have to eat the loss.

Re:Come on, guys....

[slarabee]

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.

Re:Come on, guys....

[mrmag00]

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.

I'm going to sue Hotmail

[Lxy]

Without even so much as asking, they just deleted my account with no backup of my inbox. Because of MSN/Hotmail, I've now lost these amazing oppurtunities to:

Enlarge my penis
Enlarge my breasts
Meet Singles in my area
Meet Sexy singles in my area
Meet my former classmates all over again
Refinance my house at a low, low interest rate
Consolodate my debt
Copy DVDs
Lose weight while I sleep
Work from Home
Accept written guarantees of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars
Get my .BIZ or .INFO domain while it's still available.

Watch out Bill Gates... I've got about 100 million dollars in lost oppurtunity because of you, and I'm going to come and get it!

Similar thing happened to me

[dnight]

I wasn't paying for the account, though.

I swapped ISPs for a couple of years, and when I went back to the first one, they had never disabled mail and I got 2 years of mail in one download.

Email is a primary method of contact, and I had people that thought I was ignoring them, and they got pissed off. I also had initial contract offers (big ticket items, too) from 2 consulting companies. Since I had moved twice, the old email was the only contact info they had. Oh well...

More power to her...

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

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...

Re:So if...

[frleong]

She just assumed too much that e-mail would bounce off. In fact, once an account is suspended, ANYTHING can happen to her email account.

You know, some ISPs refuse to bounce email back to fight spam (it confirms the existence of a certain account).

Re:So if...

[frleong]

According to the article, she paid less than usual during the 14 months of service. Yeah, the ISP was stupid to have raised this error, but doesn't mean that she doesn't owe the ISP that $214. She is still obligated to pay, but somehow things got messy starting from this point.

sounds a little iffy

[GoatPigSheep]

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.

Re:sounds a little iffy

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's 65k canadian, which works out to about $3.50 US. The cost for the long distance call would have been greater than the salary.

Re:sounds a little iffy

[snatchitup]

I work for Discovery. Contracting here is very competitive. Headhunting firms don't sit around on their asses relying on email to get through.

This won't go far.

Re:Terms

[wilburdg]

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.

So, she lost a *chance* at $65k ...

[dougmc]

And what was the chances of her actually getting the contract?

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 --

... and adopt instead the practice of deflecting such e-mails back to the senders with notification to the effect that the messages could not be delivered.

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.)

Re:So, she lost a *chance* at $65k ...

[WEFUNK]

Beyond issues of mandatory bouncing and bad reply-to addresses, there are more than just technical problems with her goal of "barring ISPs from collecting e-mail sent to delinquent accounts and of forcing them to notify e-mail senders when an account they have tried to reach is inactive."

It also means that ISP's wouldn't be allowed to recycle e-mail addresses and might even create privacy issues (ironic because she originally filed her complaint with the Federal privacy commissioner). For instance, the CNET article mentions how AOL sends out different notifications to members and non-members, as though this is a bad thing. I think the intention of this type of policy is to prevent outside users from being able to determine between an account that is nonexistent, cancelled, inactive, full, blocking certain addresses, or just temporarily unavailable. Changing these policies could make things even easier for spammers to build accurate lists and to track the status and behavior of individual user accounts.

She raises some valid issues with the reliability of e-mail in general, and some that might even have solutions, but overly dramatic or poorly thought out "solutions" might also create issues far worse than the existing problems. I hope the judge or jury will understand this, even if they side with her individual case.

Re:So, she lost a *chance* at $65k ...

[Skapare]

While the Postal Service is obligated to make the same effort to return mail that is undeliverable (I've had this happen both as sender and as receiver), this is not the case for mail that has already been delivered to a PO Box. If I decline to renew a PO Box (and this is the closer analogy to a case where an ISP hosts a user email box for POP/IMAP/Web pickup), once they finally close out the box (some number of days after the payment is due), they are allowed to destroy (rather than return to sender) the contents of the box. I've actually had this happen twice when I moved (but it wasn't a problem for me). Let's not confuse the service of delivery and the service of hosting a mailbox (even if the same provider does both).

Re:So, she lost a *chance* at $65k ...

[dougmc]

Email is unreliable? The email system in general is desgigned NOT to lose email.

And airplanes are designed not to crash. But it still happens ...

Note that recent advances in spam fighting/filtering have greatly reduced the inherent reliability of the email system. It used to be that every box would happily relay your mail if it accidently ended up in the wrong place, for example. And nobody filtered their mail to /dev/null because it wasn't needed. And certainly people didn't hit `d' two hundred times in a row deleting spam.

And return-receipt-to is generally sent by the mail client.. not the daemon.

Incorrect.

Certainly, my mail client (mutt) doesn't send them out. And I don't want them sent out, certainly not without my knowledge. This would be great for spammers to verify addresses ...

sendmail used to send them out, but there were security issues with that, and so it's been disabled by default. For many years now, it appears. But there was a time that they were sent out as soon as your message was received by the destination sendmail.

Here's a reference for you. Return-Receipt-To: was a sendmail thing, not in any RFC, except for RFC-1865 (which only mentions it in passing.)

Re:So, she lost a *chance* at $65k ...

[dougmc]

Well.. my mail client pops up and asks me if I would like to send a return receipt to those who ask for it. So do most others, or they simply ignore it. Most ignore it. Because they should.

Return-Receipt-To: was originally introduced for/by sendmail. sendmail stopped doing it, and so a few clients decided that they'd do it -- but only a few. You cannot rely on it for anything (not that you ever could.)

ISPs think the internet is a toy

[Vinnie_333]

ISP still aren't acting like real businesses. In a time when a huge chunk of the world has gotten to the point of relying on their internet account, this is rediculous. Phone companies and utilities, hell even TV cable companies, have better checks and balances before they yank your service. And a notification that the service in unavailable to people trying to access it is pretty damn easy to do.

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.

Re:ISPs think the internet is a toy

[Shelled]

And a notification that the service in unavailable to people trying to access it is pretty damn easy to do.

Telus, my ISP, found this the best way to notify me when the credit card I was using to pay for the service expired and they needed the new end date. First they disabled my account, then they sent an e-mail to the Telus address notifying me it was disabled.

Re:So if...

[UberOogie]

Think about it though and put yourself in the ISP's role. A customer is deliquent on their bill.

RTFA. Hell, RTFH. She was never deliquent. The error was in the accounting department of the ISP.

Back to the Main Point

[Henry V .009]

The /. herd has gone off on lawsuits and what not--but the real issue is much bigger. According to the article, the problem is ISP's continuing to accept emails to closed acconts, storing them, and then using them as leverage to force customers to pay disputed bills.

In his report, Canada's Privacy Commissioner said Inter.net's policies are standard practice in the ISP industry that need to be changed.

The commissioner recommended that "the ISP immediately cease collecting, storing, and denying access to e-mails addressed to holders of accounts under suspension and adopt instead the practice of deflecting such e-mails back to the senders with notification to the effect that the messages could not be delivered."

This is exactly why

[SuperKendall]

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!

Re:This is exactly why

[caveat]

...to read my email over the web.

erm, why pay for that shen you can get it for free fom hotmail/yahoo/etc? sure, the service is shit, but at least you're *guaranteed* that the address will always be up and you can always get to it.
i actually have a hotmail address that's close to random garbage, which i use for important stuff - the spambots that just mail 100,000s of hotmail usernames never hit on it, and i don't hand it out freely, so it's actually a pretty usable. anyway.

Do it yourself...

[jcostantino]

After being jerked around by a former ISP with email problems due to their incompetence, I decided to roll my own email.

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.

Re:Terms

[NorthDude]

Well, you wait for 2 months and if they don't pay, then you cut the service 100%

And you send their file to EquiFax or the like...

This is good business practices, extortion is not.

As a person who works for a large ISP.......

[SiliconJesus101]

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!!

Re:As a person who works for a large ISP.......

[destiney]

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.. :)

Re:As a person who works for a large ISP.......

[Skapare]

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.

Re:As a person who works for a large ISP.......

[elemental23]

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.

+1 Funny. Oops, I mean -5 Stupid.

According to Carter, Inter.net presented her with a $214 charge for 14 months of service that had gone unbilled because of an accounting error.

Please note that nowhere does she claim to have been over- or double-billed. She offered to pay half the money she owed for service that she knowingly used without paying for over a year. Work on your reading comprehension some, ok?

Lost job offer

[duren686]

She lost a chance at a $65,000 contract job at the Discovery channel because of this.

I'm sure that they would have been glad to welcome her to the team when they read a "This email address has been suspended" auto-message.

Filmmaker Peter Hall vs Earthlink

[no_such_user]

Take a look at the information for filmmaker Peter Hall's lawsuit against Earthlink. He's been fighting them since 1997, after they wrongly identified him as a spammer and shutdown his account. His film Delinquent was just about to be released, and Earthlink's refusal to release his account from (incorrectly identified) "spammer" status caused him to miss a number of critical emails related to the film's release and distribution.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 30, 1998 --- The Law Office of Andrew Grosso announced today the filing of a civil complaint against EarthLink Network, Inc., an Internet Service Provider headquartered in Pasadena, California. The complaint charges EarthLink with breach of contract, libel, negligence, and a violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in relation to the company's abrogation of electronic communications services it provided to the plaintiffs, as well as to its subsequent appropriation of these subscribers' e-mail. The complaint was filed today in Manhattan, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Check out his film while you're at it...

If you use your e-mail for business...

[tyrelb]

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)

Dead wrong

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

The user did absolutely everything right. She paid her bills on time, called when there was a problem. The ISP did absolutely everything wrong. Due to an error on their part, they cut her off, and it did not specify in their agreement what their policy is on non-payment.

Surely, you can write down your policies when you run an ISP? And when a new situation arises, or someone points out the deficiency, you can give the person the benefit of the doubt, can't you? Is it that hard?

Re:Dead wrong

[Reziac]

Ordinarily the courts will give you credit against your directly-lost services from that company only -- so she'd be due some prorated refund of the monthly ISP fee for the time her service was out. But courts don't normally hold a service provider liable for incidental damages, so the ISP would not have to pay for her "maybe" job. Now, if she'd lost out on a *confirmed* job and not just an *offer*, there might be some finding of consequential damages, but even that's iffy.

Try suing the Post Office for late fees incurred when your bills take the scenic route, and see how far you get.

Obviously the ISP's billing dept. screwed up, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're liable for lost mail NOR for the consequences of lost mail. And that's not a can of worms you want open and crawling around. Imagine how quickly web hosts would all be sued out of existence if they were liable for lost "predicted" sales during downtime (which may not even be directly that host's fault). Once you start extrapolating this concept, it never ends.

In fact, I think I'll sue slashdot for the time I lost to write this reply ;)

Re:Dead wrong

[dougmc]

She paid her bills on time, called when there was a problem. The ISP did absolutely everything wrong. Due to an error on their part, they cut her off, and it did not specify in their agreement what their policy is on non-payment.

Yes. They should refund her money for the period that her account was disabled. In the interests of good customer service, they should do even more than that -- give her a few months of free service , for example (except that she's no longer a customer, of course.)

But no, they shouldn't give her $110k.

Free Cable TV

[dbCooper0]

My take on this is along the same lines as yours, but it jogged my memory back to a similar situation:

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 :)

Re:Free Cable TV

[compwizrd]

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.

Re:Free Cable TV

[cybermace5]

As I said before, who checks their credit card statement for things that aren't there? Many ISP's auto-charge your card, and I believe that was the situation here.

Blame: Stamped, Addressed, and Delivered

[Crash Culligan]

For starters, I can't see anything the woman did wrong. If it was a well enough written resume that she could land a $65K contract with a media conglomerate, then she probably included her phone and smail (snail-mail) addresses too. (Side question: does this mean she can sue the Discovery Channel for not trying to contact her some other ways?)

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?

Re:Blame: Stamped, Addressed, and Delivered

[Electrum]

Clarification noted, and I concede it. But I believe they forward the mail without any extra charges, don't they? And they will sometimes send out notifications if smail is marked "Address Correction Requested."

Most email providers will not forward email for free, and rightly so. With snail mail, the post office has already been paid for the delivery. It costs more in bandwidth and CPU time to forward an email than it does to store it.

Google Cache

[thebabelfish]

The google cache of the cryptome page.

Inter.net is a horrible service provider

[systemapex]

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.

Stupid users and stupid ISPs...

[Elyktron]

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.

Use Common Sense

[LighthouseJ]

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.

It's a "self-help" issue

[Animats]

The ISP is attempting to collect a debt here, and is limited in the tools it can use. Sueing is OK, turning off services may be OK, "self-help" to the customer's property is not. Generally, you can't put a clause in a contract that allows "self-help", either; that's illegal.

I wouldn't be so sure

[cybermage]

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.

Re:I wouldn't be so sure

[cybermage]

Oh yeah, forgot one other thing:

Not all bounced mail gets returned to the sender. If the account holder has a contact form on their website that emails them the results, there's a good chance that bouncing those messages will result in lost messages (e.g., sent back to nobody@webserver.)

Email gets relayed from point to point and sometimes is a oneway thing (automated error messages would be another example.) Most one-way messages, like spam, you don't want anyway; but what about the lists and ezines you subscribe to? If someone's mail is made to bounce, many lists will remove failed addresses automagically; or the list operator will receive the bounce and remove the address manually without any follow-up.

Re:I wouldn't be so sure

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If you called someone who was negotiating a contact with you and got that message, would you still award the contract? I think not.

Maybe not, but I might try their mobile number.

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.

And what if, as in this case, the problem isn't your client being overdue at all, but your own ****-up? This ISP's costs should spike, by about the amount of damage that they did to this customer by screwing up.

Re:I wouldn't be so sure

[Myco]

Not all bounced mail gets returned to the sender. If the account holder has a contact form on their website that emails them the results, there's a good chance that bouncing those messages will result in lost messages (e.g., sent back to nobody@webserver.)

Generally, when an account is suspended, the ISP doesn't keep their website up. Kind of lacks teeth when you do it that way.

Re:I wouldn't be so sure

[cybermage]

And what if, as in this case, the problem isn't your client being overdue at all, but your own ****-up?

We weren't immune to billing mistakes. I think it's a matter of how you handle them. Without exception, we resolved every billing dispute during the initial phone call. I think the longest any one took was an hour.

This ISP's costs should spike, by about the amount of damage that they did to this customer by screwing up.

Mistakes are a fact of life. It's how you handle them that makes the difference. If the ISP in question dragged out resolving the issue, then maybe they opened themselves up to liability. They should have fixed the mistake as soon as she questioned the billing; or, at the very least, restored service while they researched it.

However, you'd be surprised at the high percentage of billing issues that arise from the customer not understanding the process. 95% of our billing issues resulted from customers not understanding that the first month was pro-rated even though it was explained during the sign-up proceedure.

Re:I wouldn't be so sure

[commodoresloat]

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.

Let's just say that a lawsuit like this will spike your costs too.

Re:I wouldn't be so sure

[cybermage]

Generally, when an account is suspended, the ISP doesn't keep their website up. Kind of lacks teeth when you do it that way.

That's all fine and well, I guess, for a personal site; however, if the person is running a business through their website, you're asking for trouble by taking down the site for an unresolved billing issue.

Imagine the phone company turning off a business phone the day after payment was due. They could be sued for that. Not because they have a right to a phone, but because they'd lose business. Suspending access to your account only affects you and if done properly remains a private issue between ISP and consumer. Had the issue been resolved promptly, she'd have gotten her email and the contract without the Discovery Channel ever finding out.

Also, you're assuming that the access-providing ISP hosts the site, which is often not the case. Many ISPs no fsck-all about hosting; which is a shame since ISPs that host can charge double for the same bandwidth: Hosting and access bandwidth tend to go in opposite directions. Hosting should be nearly all gravy to an ISP.

Re:I wouldn't be so sure

[cybermage]

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.

Re:I wouldn't be so sure

[elemental23]

And what if, as in this case, the problem isn't your client being overdue at all, but your own ****-up? This ISP's costs should spike, by about the amount of damage that they did to this customer by screwing up.

RTFA. I quote:

According to Carter, Inter.net presented her with a $214 charge for 14 months of service that had gone unbilled because of an accounting error.

The ISP didn't mistakenly over-bill her or suspend her account for non-payment due to an error on their end. She hadn't paid for her service for 14 months. Their billing error was not billing her in this time. Meanwhile, she was enjoying the free ride. The fact that it went on for over a year clearly shows that she didn't bother bringing the error to their attention.

She got what she deserved, IMO. They should counter sue for the money she owes them plus court costs.

Re:I wouldn't be so sure

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

RTFA yourself. After that screw-up, the two parties agreed to the woman paying half. The company then started going back on that and messing her around. Now, without having been there, neither of us can know what exactly was said by whom and when, but in the meantime it seems her access to her e-mail was off. That being the case, they should have been bouncing incomings immediately or, better, sending some sort of automated notification that the mail temporarily could not be delivered and they will keep trying for X days (after which time, if she hasn't sorted things out, they bounce the mail, and everyone knows where they stand).

Re:I wouldn't be so sure

[cybermage]

You boast about it took someone an _hour_ on the phone to kill up a mistake you made?

Actually, I boasted that all billing issues were resolved in the initial call. The longest I remember took an hour (instead of days of phone tag and evasion.)

IIRC, the long one was the result of someone paying with a third party check who hadn't bothered to identify their account. The payment wasn't, for obvious reasons, credited to their account, so it was suspended. For extra fun, the third party had his own account (to which the payment was credited.)
It took a few minutes to unravel that.

Re:I wouldn't be so sure

[Kintanon]

It is entirely possible to be unaware that you aren't being billed. I put all of my bills on automatic payment when I sign up. If there is a mistake on the utilities end and they don't bill me, who is at fault? I made a good faith effort to pay them, but they screwed up. Should I be liable for their mistakes?

Kintanon

Virtual Impersonation?

[friartux]

Let's see... people had been accustomed to send email to the account to contact the legitimate account holder.

Now, with no notice, they can still send email to the account, but the only ones able to read it are the employees of the ISP (who may or may not have done so; that's irrelevant). By insisting upon a fee (whether truly owed or not), they assert ownership over the messages as if they were the legitimate recipient.

Thus -- is the ISP in effect impersonating the account holder by not providing notice that they, not the intended/expected recipient, are the only ones receiving the email?

Slashdot missing the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

I've used this ISP

[myov]

Inter.net was created by PSINet (read: Pissy-Net) after buying a number of smaller ISP's. I used Interlog which was an amazing ISP until it was bought by PSI. After that point, service declined until it was completely useless - the dialup lines didn't work properly, the web/mail servers started having problems, the news server was replaced with a useless machine. The final straw was the elimination of shell access, at which point I switched providers.

Although I don't know the complete story, I would tend to blame Inter.net unless they have made some drastic changes to their organization.

Whatever.

[SuiteSisterMary]

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.

Once closed, why should she have access to mail?

[cewatts]

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.

Re:So if...

[MrResistor]

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.

But should the rules be changed?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

She just assumed too much that e-mail would bounce off. In fact, once an account is suspended, ANYTHING can happen to her email account.

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).

Re:But should the rules be changed?

[BRUTICUS]

Its about time someone is making some noise over this.

This has been the trend for far too long. There needs to be more standards in the way ISPs handle peoples personal email much like postal mail. If postal mail can be returned to sender why can't e-mail? If I cancel my account with my ISP because I am unhappy with the service why do I not have the option to have my email forwarded to my NEW email address, just like postal mail. Why? Becuase this is just a method of keeping you stuck with that ISP. How difficult would it be to offer this service? Seriously, it would be EASILY done.

I dont know if she should or could win this case but I hope she does. I think she is right and I think there definitely needs to be standards and laws in place for this effective ASAP.

Re:But should the rules be changed?

[DrMaurer]

"If I cancel my account with my ISP because I am unhappy with the service why do I not have the option to have my email forwarded to my NEW email address, just like postal mail."

Some ISPs do this, however, there is a slight difference.

Forwarding the postal service's service to your new address is simple because it's one provider no matter where you go.

Here are a couple reasons why an ISP may or may not fwd a message on:

1) It eats the bandwidth.
2) It takes up CPU time.
3) Why the hell would you want to provide a service that costs you to a non-paying customer?
4) Why the hell would I leave another way for an old buisiness I associated with to contact me?

Yes, 1 and 2 are small, but how many users does an average ISP have? If you're going to be fair, everyone, including AOL (a huge one with more people leaving every day than most small ISPs would ever dream of having total) would have to do so.

Imagine the redundant e-mail messages and the bandwidth they would consume? How many e-mail addresses have you had that you used regularly, that you gave your friends and put on your resume and so on? I've had 12 in 15 years. Currently I check 3 e-mail (valid, non-spam) boxes when I get my mail. How long should they continue to forward messages?

I am not sure if you're being sarcastic, but there don't need to be any laws. Plenty of places offer accounts that you can use to forward to a present e-mail account, causing absolutely no issue at all.

Should she win the case? I don't know, the ISP should have bounced a message, IMO, spam prevention or not. She should have called Discovery and found out her damn self if she had a chance.

Re:But should the rules be changed?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

They do provide the service that is offered.

Sure. And if you read the small print of their Ts&Cs, you'll probably find they don't guarantee jack anyway. Of course, whether that would stand up in a court is a different matter. Just because it's in the Ts&Cs doesn't exempt them from the normal rules about misleading advertising, commitments made when they take someone's money, etc.

if you had read the relevent RFCs, you'd know that _email is not a reliable means of communication_. People that don't understand that concept have no business being on the net in the first place.

That's lovely, and completely wrong. I have actually read several pertinent RFCs at some point, thanks. For example, RFC 2821 (on SMTP), section 1, "Introduction", begins:

The objective of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is to transfer mail reliably and efficiently.

You might also care to look up things like the SMTP VRFY command, which is used to confirm that the e-mail address specified does identify a genuine mailbox, and the various reply codes defined to show that a mailbox was unavailable for various reasons.

Even given the above, the vast majority of people now using the Internet unfortunately do not have the level of technical expertise required to appreciate the finer points of these documents. They don't always know what good netiquette is, they post off-topic to Usenet groups, they forward virus hoaxes, and they expect things to work properly when some company takes their money. I'm all for educating Internet users in the ways of the on-line world, but their lack of awareness is not an excuse for ISPs to do something that's just blatantly damaging.

ISPs are under no obligation to bounce email, or accept it, or forward it.

I wouldn't care to defend that proposition in court if I were an ISP advertising e-mail as one of the services I provide and I'd taken money on that basis.

Re:But should the rules be changed?

[0x0d0a]

I really hate this whole "regulate the Net" thing. I *like* it being an environment where you can implement whatever neat tech ideas you have.

If you want guaranteed mail service, use a system designed with guaranteed behavior as part of the spec and have it *technologically* enforced, not as a matter of policy.

Trying not to "beat a dead horse" here, but....

[King_TJ]

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!

This is a PRIVACY ISSUE, wake up

[trance9]

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.

The ISP should generate better error messages

[defile]

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).

Humanity solved this problem in 3.0BSD

[defile]

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.

Re:Humanity solved this problem in 3.0BSD

[silentbozo]

Finger was great when everyone with an account was a shell user at an academic or corporate research facility. You could check office hours, get someone's extension so you could call them, check to see if they had come in today. Soon after spammers started abusing every RFC on the books, and security became an issue due to the continuing hordes of wanna-be hackers, Finger disappeared.

Maybe you could get people to re-establish a limited directory service, but there are a lot of downsides to giving spammers a tool to check whether your e-mail address is legit or not. Even worse, I'm sure those database miners would have a field day tying your phone/address/e-mail/name to the records they can get from county, state records (think property taxes), and the credit bureaus. I had a tough enough time convincing the shitheads at Lohemanns that I was not a customer of theirs, and the crap they sent to me over a 6 month period was pure aggravation - even worse was the idea that they bought a bad database merge that happened to tie my e-mail address to that customer's name.

Re:Once closed, why should she have access to mail

[Todd Knarr]

No, as far as I can tell what she wants is either a) the ISP to start bouncing e-mail to closed accounts as soon as they're closed/suspended/whatever, or b) the ISP to allow access to the e-mail for as long as they choose to accept and not bounce it. What she objects to is the policy of accepting the mail as if everything's OK (thus not giving the sender any clue there's any problem) while simultaneously not allowing the recipient access to it (thus not giving the recipient any way of knowing who/what to respond to). To me her position seems emminently reasonable.

Analogies are for sucks.

[underwhelm]

If someone provides me a service with no contract stating terms of payment, they're free to try and bill me, and I'm free to try and not pay it.

She isn't entitled to free email, but nor is it clear the company is entitled to extort payment from her. If they chose not to bill her for 14 months, that's their loss. See: estoppel, laches.

Sounds like she was playing with fire and got burned. I imagine, though that she'll have her way since she's willing to assert her case in court. She never would if she just sucked it up and paid.

Re:EasyDNS

[BiOFH]

You're not seriously putting this idea forth as a 'solution' to the topic at hand... are you??????????????

Also...

[commodoresloat]

Just think of all the files people sent her asking for her advice! There might be a class action suit in the making....

Virtual cash?

[Nf1nk]

Is that like those "beans" thing that Whoopy Goldberg was trying to sell a couple of years ago?,
or would it be more like evercrack plat?

just curioud

Ok People...

[El Camino SS]

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't be held liable

[Cranx]

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.

From A Technology Standpoint...

[Macgruder]

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?

Re:From A Technology Standpoint...

[usually quiet]

At the ISP I work at, we simply change the shell in the user's password entry. The new shell will display a message explaining why they don't have access (non-payment, suspended, etc...), sleep for 10 seconds, and exit (disconnecting them if they are on a dial-up). Then we have pop3/imap modified to check /etc/shells to see if the customer is allowed to access their email.

Re:From A Technology Standpoint...

[Electrum]

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?

Very easily. Create a .qmail file in the home directory with the following line:

|bouncesaying "This account is temporarily suspended."

Handle as a temporary problem

[jhines]

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.

Get Rich Quick!

[Kaboom13]

Just think, how many times have many opportunities to aid rich Nigerians in distress (for a 20% cut) because of your isp's spam filters? I demand reperations be paid for the money I might have earned on these unique opportunities!

Whoever modded this guy up...

[Pollux]

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.

Re:Whoever modded this guy up...

[fmaxwell]

The "job offer" presented to this independent worker is not set in stone!

Yes it is. If I offer you $100,000 to perform a service, the ball is in your court. If you say yes, we have a legally binding contract. If I want to rescind the offer, I must do so -- unless the offer has a particular time limit (e.g., "the job is yours if you want it -- let me know by Friday if you accept").

It is merely an "offer" which she could "apply" for.

When did you last hear of someone applying for an offer? This was not a case of someone saying "you can come in for an interview if you like." It was an offer of employment. Those are two very different things.

She has not lost anything but an opportunity.

Money was not taken away from her.

Untrue. If she intended to accept the offer, she lost $65K. Period.

Re:Whoever modded this guy up...

[fmaxwell]

By the employer giving the job to someone else, that would imply that the position was never "hers" to begin with and was only a lost opportunity. There was no guarantee that she would get the position.

IANAL but I have worked in managerial positions long enough to know how it works.

I, too, have been in managerial positions and if I'm leaning towards a particular candidate, but just barely, a failure to answer an e-mail might be reason enough for me to prefer the other candidate. Or it might just be a coin toss as to who the better candidate is. Not returning voice mail, not answering e-mail, etc., might well be taken as a warning sign: Okay, I might track this person down, but is this what I should expect on a regular basis? Is the person just not that interested in the job?

So what if they did bounce it?

[Skapare]

So what if they did bounce it? She'd still not get the job, only this way they'd think she was a cheapskate who wouldn't pay her ISP bill, or didn't care because she changed ISP without telling them (the people who might have hired her).

The message should be bounced

[maynard]

What normally happens when an email addressed to a bogus account attempts delivery? Traditionally, the mail is bounced back to sender with a "Message undeliverable, User Unknown". Try a vrfy: bogus-username@FQDN at sendmail sometime. Well, at least with older sendmail versions. OK, so these days to deal with spammers and crackers vrfy is disabled normally, and often times sendmail is configured to accept all inbound mail and forward that which is undeliverable to root. But it used to be common that any mail addressed to a bogus username would be bounced to sender and left undelivered.

My point? Once her account was disabled it the mail daemon should have stopped accepting inbound mail for her account. This could have been done by any number of means, from changing the username, removing the account, to setting up a special alias for disabled accounts. As a former 'NIX administrator for a small ISP I can tell you that is exactly what we did. And in all other organizations for which I've worked we did similar things, usually amounting to disabling and bouncing. I'm not suggesting that the ISP should be responsible for forwarding to a new active email address.

IMO: The ISP, and all ISPs who follow this standard, should be held liable for interfering with reasonable communication, particularly if it's business communication with the potential for financial damages. While the ISP had no responsibility for forwarding the mail to another active account, they certainly should not have accepted inbound mail for a canceled account. This is akin to a landlord(*) keeping postal mail for a previous tenant, and if opened would constitute mail fraud and invasion of privacy (a felony). The only legal recourse is to send the mail back "Return to Sender" and let the post office sort the mess out. Which is exactly how most people expect email to work.

Cheers,
--Maynard

(*) As a current landlord I'm well aware of these things.

Autoresponders and the initial problem

[phorm]

Haven't you guys ever heard of autoresponders. Geeze, a lot of companies I know are smart enough that as part of the default action on a suspended account, an autoresponder is tagged on.

All it takes is a simple response email such as:
Re: Message header
Sorry, this person's account is temporarily disable and he/she will not be able to read this email until the matter is resolved

This would have notified the sender, while still retaining the emails for the customer until the account is re-enabled.

As for bouncing the email, if I'd just talked to somebody, probably already gotten emails from them, and then got a subsequent bounce... yeah, I'd probably call them.

I've dealt with ISP's who screwed up the billing for months on end (hello Shaw cable, are you reading this). After several phone calls each month, I finally got a bill that didn't have double-charges coupled with back-charges.

I think the main point of this is, the problem is not just due to the disabling of the account, but a flaw in the ISP's billing system. If that flaw hadn't happened, no disabling, no problem. Therefore, it is their screw-up, regardless of what happened later with billing resolution
To throw in another (on top of many others) analogy:
If the power company screwed up in their billing system and cut a business' power, and the business lost money or business... I would guess that it would be much the same scenario.

Also have those

[SuperKendall]

You said it yourself - the service is crap. I like being able to at least use POP3 to easily transfer messages locally.

And I also like to be able to have the option of redirecting mail elsewhere for whatever reason, if I'm at a conference for example I can have all my normal mail going to a throwaway yahoo account.

Basically, $40 is nothing - and I can be pretty sure it will be around. Free email might be around forever, and if your email isn't that important it's a good option. But I think if you are angling for $65k deals you might want something little more reliable that yahoo, not to mention what it looks like to the people you are dealing with!

Re:Also have those

[caveat]

if i were angling for a $65K deal, i'd leave /three/ emails, my paper address, any my cell #. don't have a landline, but if i did i'd leave that number, too.

So you don't pay and they cancel the insurance.

[Otto]

Seems simple enough. I mean, if you're not going to pay the bill, then you're quite right in that they have no real way to make you pay except to resort to a collection agency, and even then you could get by without paying, most likely.

But once they discover their error and you laugh at their demand for payment, where's the rule that says they must then continue providing you service?

As I see it, this woman was quite free to not pay. But the ISP was quite free to cancel her account and decline to provide her further service as well. They could tell her to get stuffed, delete all her piled up email, and remove her name from their system entirely.

A company is under no obligation to provide service against its will. As it probably says in their TOS: "We reserve the right to cancel your account for any damn reason we please." (paraphrased, of course).

Re:EasyDNS

[BiOFH]

Oi... perhaps it's time for O'Reilly to publish that "The Real World for Nerds" book...

I'm willing to bet that the woman in the story wouldn't even understand his post, much less know how to do it. Just because the story was on Slashdot doesn't mean this woman is some Debian rat who lives for kernel releases and talks about Ogg.

Oh... never mind. Go play some Everquest and forget I said anything...

Not all "bounces" are fatal

[Fastolfe]

Most MTA's allow for "non-fatal" error messages. These could be due to DNS problems, connection problems, etc. It would be trivial to extend this to include access problems for the user and would essentially amount to a warning being sent in response to an e-mail message saying the e-mail may not actually be delivered immediately.

I would even take this a step further and insist that proper SMTP "fatal" bounces be generated for all unread e-mail left in a user's mailbox if that user's account is finally cancelled.

I know first hand how this happened

[JasonBee]

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

Re:It's been pointed out before, but...

[cybermace5]

...remained silent when she realized (and for that long, she had to have realized) that something wasn't right.

I don't see where she had to realize something was wrong. If anything, the longer it went on, the less likely she would pay attention to it.

This is something you seem to have trouble getting: many people don't think about something if it's not there. People set up credit card auto-deducts so they never have to worry about paying a dozen different bills. I can easily see where someone wouldn't realize the ISP wasn't deducting the money.

You may say there's no information saying that it was an auto-deduct account, but I say there's equally no information saying she knew about it before they came up with a $214 charge.

She tried to help pay for their mistake and the ISP agreed to accept half the back charges. And then they reneged on their agreement, held her emails hostage, and demanded the full amount.

I don't see anything good in any of the ISP's conduct.

Maybe you're so smart that you will never miss a detail. But in case you do, your mom will doubtlessly help you out with a gentle reminder over dinner.

Re:It's been pointed out before, but...

[cybermace5]

See, people forget little details, like closing their italics tags

An apology...

[fmaxwell]

Actually, no, I'm a very liberal Democrat (probably a little bit left of Martin Sheen)

Then I owe you an apology for accusing you of being a "right-winger." Next time, I'll try to be more careful before calling someone such an offensive name. ;-)

That works great... until you move.

[StupidKatz]

I'm in the same boat; got my own DNS/mail servers behind a static DSL link, but I'm moving within the year. You DO know how long it takes to get DSL hooked up, right? Well, then you're borked.

Only alternative I can see is getting hooked up with a good managed hoster like rackspace or rackshack or something.

Law and the Internet

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I agree that, within reason, technological solutions are better than regulation. OTOH, you never need the legal system unless things go wrong, and it is there to protect damaged parties if and when that does happen. There is always the possibility that a technological solution will have loopholes, and that someone unscrupulous will then attempt to exploit others using those loopholes.

The Internet really shouldn't be anything special as far as the law is concerned, IMHO. There is no whole new virtual world where normal sensible behaviour is radically different to what's gone before, contrary to what certain evangelists might argue. However, clearly the immediate and widely distributed nature of the Internet, and the amount that people have come to rely on it, raises new issues about how things like IP, privacy, harrassment and finance are handled. I think it's important for the legal framework to be there to protect people's rights in these areas robustly, even if the primary means of doing so is a technological solution.

Re:Yes, actually.

[Electrum]

When I move out of my apartment, and the new occupant moves in, I don't "OWN" the mailbox.

HOWEVER... any mail addressed to ME at his address is still mine, and it's a crime for him to open it, or hijack it, or what have you.

Email is different: email is addressed to the box, not to a name. An SMTP envelope recipeint is an email address.

More of your bullshit

[fmaxwell]

And your statements show how ignorant, sexist and bigoted you are towards men. If a man tried to kill [sacbee.com] his wife he'd get more than one day in jail.

In the case to which you refer, she was sentenced to five years for the use of a gun in a crime plus one day for the assault. The sentence was later overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, who ruled that the judge had sentenced improperly. So you see the actions of a lone, rogue judge in imposing too short a sentence as proof that women and men face equal threats? How the hell did that leap of logic take place?

When a woman rips her boyfriends testicles off [tennessean.com] she gets three months in jail.

And I suppose you are going to tell me that is standard practice and that all judges would have sentenced the same way. Face it: You chose articles that sensationalized extreme rulings, not intelligent studies or statistics.

And people like you will cheerfully rattle of statistics on how many women are abused while ignoring what happens to men [washtimes.com].

Regarding the article from the right-wing, lunatic fringe newspaper (The Washington Times), the only thing cited in there was frequency of violence, not the results. I hardly think that husbands whose wives hit/smack/etc. them show up to work in casts, limping, covered in bruises, or end up beaten to death. I've seen female victims of domestic violence. I know how much stronger men are than women (on average).

I'll ask you this: When was the last time that you heard of a male jogger being overpowered, raped, beaten, and left for dead by a group of women?

Given your writing, it is apparent that you live in fear of being beaten up by women, but I assure you that such fears are uncommon among most men. I also note that you posted anonymously -- possibly out of fear that you wife/girlfriend would see it. Please, if your wife/girlfriend is beating you up, go to the police and talk to an attorney. Don't assume that it's normal.

I thought

[macdaddy]

...that email was considered an unreliable, non-garunteed form of communication that has no legal bounds?