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Comcast Blocks Yet Another ISPs E-Mail
Nom du Keyboard writes, "Last week Comcast shutdown e-mail forwarding from NameZero entirely. People who have bought private domain names (i.e. yourname@yourdomain.com) and have e-mail forwarding to their current Comcast e-mail account through NameZero aren't receiving it any longer. No warnings — no e-mail. Now, again without warning, they've blocked out The Well, one of the oldest ISPs on the net. And nobody can get through to the Comcast people in charge of this to discuss the issue with them. Not the ISPs being blocked. Not the customers who pay Comcast to deliver e-mail to them. Comcast says they're protecting 10M customers from spam. I am a current Comcast broadband customer and I feel I should have the right to whitelist and receive e-mail from whomever I designate. I don't want as much protection as Comcast is giving me. Is it a basic right to be allowed to receive e-mail from whomever I desire, or does Comcast have the right to censor as they wish?" Last week Comcast was also blocking mail from alum.mit.edu. I (probably among many others) left a complaint on the phone line identified in bounce messages; the block was eventually lifted.
Yet another guy here who had the same experence with Comcast installers.
I saw the comcast guy pull up so I go to the door but he ran upstairs to another apartment..
I'm thinking ok he'll stop by when he's done up there.
Nope.. 5 min later the van was gone..
I called comcast and they said I wasn't home.. ARGH!!
I finally got them to come back 3 days later and a free install..
Then to top it off, the install was on my bill the next month then a credit the month after..
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
A contract is an agreement whereby two parties exchange consideration. One party's consideration might be a promise to pay money now or in the future. The other party's consideration might be a promise to provide a service, such as email.
When you form a contract with another party, you earn a "right" to receive the consideration from them that you bargained for.
Amazingly enough, courts will actually enforce this right. I'll be around in case you need any more corrections of your obviously wrong assumptions. Thank you.
At least they credited you back for the install. When the rep came over, he didn't even hook anything up. He dropped the equipment at my door. I got charged for 3 outlet installs (over $100). Then, to top it all off, one of the boxes was DOA. When they came to replace it, they told me my TV was bad. I simply took the box to their office the next week and had it replaced there, and lo and behold, it worked again!
But as far as the charges, they've charged me 3 times my normal rate every other month since this happened, and I've actually been told by a tech support person that I was stupid, and that the billing problems are my fault...
and with net neutrality issues. If they are not blocking it for a bonafide technical problem like DDoS or spam, they lose their common carrier status until everything is resolved to perfect legality. Then, let the lawsuits and prosecutions of the ISP commence in the mean time.
That will teach them to play king maker.
As the sysadmin of an outfit who provides email news letters for sports teams and leagues, the blockheaded nature of "spam control" major ISPs implement these days is quite frustrating. On a daily basis, we deal with Subscriber Subset A who decide they no longer like their hometown's minor league baseball team and click the "This is Spam" button in their pretty little ISP-GUI inboxes (AOL, *cough*). This, in turn, causes ISPs to freak and rate limit us until the cows come home. Meanwhile, Subscriber Subset B missed last nights game and is irate that they did not receive the Game Notes and Box Score. While we are dealing with our clients complaints, the ISP has already contacted our upstream provider who is now threatening to unplug not only our SMTP box, but our entire WWW pool.
And, hell if I'm going to pay GoodMail for beans. Sigh...
Google up what you can find on the old Usenet Death Penalty.
Get the affected ISP's admins, and who ever is sympathetic to their cause, and black hole * from Comcast.
Don't just do it, tell them you're doing it, and tell the press. When the press gets word that an ISP is being shunned as a bad neighbor, they climb all over it.
It took a dozen people issuing cancels for all messages originating from UUNet, and 3 people talking to the press about it, 4 days to force Worldcom to change their corporate policy with regards to their downstream customers' behavior. I'll always treasure the 10 minute fabulously obscene rant I got from John Sidgemore over it. Nor will I forget his VP and cheif scientist literally crying on the phone asking us to lift it. Sidgemore must have been a bitch to work for.
That was a 4.5 G$ US company. They live on their profit and loss statements, and how those affect their stock prices. Those stock prices are extremely sensitive to loud blasts of bad news.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The problem isn't what Comcast does, it's what they don't do: Provide humans.
Every try reaching someone with any authority at Comcast? It's impossible.
Not difficult: Impossible.
I'm beginning to suspect Comcast some sort of outsourced Vogon corporation and their offices are full of large green lumbering creatures, and anyone human is simply a hired shill, I mean, lobbyist.
Want to test? Try calling and asking a support monkey for the address of their ntp server(s). Not "nntp" (they have that in their keyword scripts), not usenet news, rather ntp as in time. It's a whose-on-first comedy routine trying to convince them that ntp != nntp and when you do, they escalate it, say someone will call you back, and nobody does. Ever.
That's a trivial geeky example but emblematic.
Every aspect of Comcast: Front line without power, whose only recourse is to ditch and run, and no second level. Nobody accountable, nobody responsable, just useless monkeys.
Heck, for two years after Comcast bought out ATT BI my net address from Comcast resolved to "maggard.ne.attbi.net". Who to call to get this updated? Nobody knew. Ever. Utter clulessness, absolute uselessness. Eventually my vanity setting went away entirely with nobody to talk to about reinstating it under comcast.net (so much for an easy VPN address!)
Email routing problems: Nobody to report to. False spam blocking: No recourse. Wonky DNS servers: Tough luck.
If anyone ever does get a phone number of a bipedal hominid at Comcast, with some degree of authority, please post it!
In the meantime the next time Comcasts license comes up in this town I'll be there recounting my stories with them, the outtages, blocked ports, the service people who never show up, the email problems, their own spam, etc. Oh, and 2 weeks ago Verizon ran fiber to my property line. At least I'll have a choice of scoundrels now - who it worse, the cable company or the phone company?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
The 'net users who are experiencing Comcast's silly blocking of email from perfectly mainstream ISPs are getting a taste of what the Internet will be like if Net Neutrality laws are not passed immediately.
For all we know, Comcast is just fed up with people who are getting their 'net access from a less powerful competitor. They are saying "Sign up with us or this is what happens". Do you know who's the biggest ISP in the area that is served by The Well? Comcast, that's who.
An Internet without Net Neutrality protections would be like letting the auto manufacturers own oil companies. We'd start seeing Fords not able to run on Saturn's gasoline. Or letting auto manufacturers own the toll roads. Drive a Chyrsler? Well, you can use our road, but you have to stay in the slow lane.
Let's let the telcos continue to make huge profits from monthly fees for 'net access. But please, PLEASE, let's not let them become the owners of the Internet.
You are welcome on my lawn.