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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
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
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.
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 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.
Because for me, and many, MANY people in this country, switching ISP's isn't just a matter of picking up the phone and calling the next provider. I I want to switch ISP's I have to sell my home and move elsewhere. My DSL is sold to me from the local phone company. It drops connection all the time leading me to call them over and over to fix it. I'm not at 20 yet, but I'm certainly over 10. I'm not going to switch though because dropping them means going back to dial up, and the only local access number for any ISP here is provided by guess who: THE SAME DAMNED COMPANY. So, I will continue to call them over, and over, and over, and over until they fix the damn thing because aside from moving (which I simply am not financially able to do, nor do I really want to), that's the only option.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain