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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/
Vendor lock-in.
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
What was wrong with her computer?
I mean, what was it in the end. To go through this whole song and dance just to realize maybe Cat5e patch cord went bad?
What was so beyond wrong with this computer that took 20 phone calls then to a site visit?
Are there no local IT company's in the town they can recommend to the women that can fix computers?
Wait, so up in Canada they have ISPs where you can actually get in contact with the employees instead of the automated phone system from hell?
Lucky Canadians.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
It happens
Just a retarded employee with a completely artless grasp of language. Public education sucks. Get over it. Move along, please.
The part of me that burned out on tech support oh so long ago is quick to jump on the side of the repair tech. I have known people who were crazy enough to do that sort of thing when they reached their breaking point.
On the other hand, it's possible that even if she was at her breaking point, the tech -- caught between the rock of the customer and the hard place of his employer's prior actions -- found he had to get out of there before the customer got REALLY angry.
On the gripping hand... I've found that in the vast majority of times that I've had internet connection problems, with the exception of Verison DSL on Staten Island, NY,* especially when I was the only one in the neighborhood with connection problems, especially after several weeks... the problem has almost invariably been with my computer.
So, wild-ass speculation here, but I think the customer vented her frustration a bit too firmly (she did say she was not going to be polite, always a bad way to start a session); the technician hit his own breaking point and rather than go off on the customer he found an excuse to flee and a story to lay on his supervisor; his story of a crazy customer with a gun who wanted to hold him hostage got blown out of proportion and the woman was taken to court... ... and in the end, it really will be something wrong with her computer.
While my sympathy automatically lies with the technician, rationally I'm certain the truth is going to be somewhere between these two stories. And in a larger view, this might kick up the tension between residential end-users and technicians by a notch. While residential end-users might be a bit more inclined to be more polite to techs, it might also raise their animosity towards same and the relationship becomes more hostile as a result. At best this will fade into a footnote.
* - Kids, not much is worse in a customer sense, than a telco who sells you DSL and then moves some equipment around the central office such that you are now further from the central office than they rate DSL for. You're not actually farther from the CO, but the wiring inside the CO is now long enough that you are outside the CO's radius. And then they don't tell you. Fortunately, Verizon did the right thing and finagled something so that they returned my DSL. Part of me is pretty sure I wasn't the only one who had this happen to.
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
of any technician to be bouund hostaagee to a laaady?
Maybe there is another sort, but I wouldn't like them to be near my peripherals!
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
The actress said she called her provider, Aliant, one last time, disguising her voice to sound like a man and telling the company she needed her connection right away because she was a businessman. "Lo and behold, they said someone would be over between 8 and 11 the next morning." This after the usual wall-of-please-holds she got earlier.
Sue their asses away.
"The time has come" the walrus said " for a GOOD swim."
When you are arraigned you are told you can't call up and cancel service! :)
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.
What a small world. She doesn't seem like the "hostage holding" type at all, and the local ISPs are known for their shitty customer service. Seems like quite a misunderstanding.
[Insert "so, do you know Bob/Joe/Cathy from Canada?" Jokes here]
She could have strapped him to the bed and taken a sledgehammer to his ankles. (or, if you're a bookworm: cut off his foot with an axe and blowtorch it to cauterize the wound).
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...is now free on conditions including that she have no contact with ... any employee from her ISP.
Granted, I'm used to trying to call an engineer out from US ISPs... But how is this different to what you get without a court order?
...squarely with the tech. I do field repair work for a smallish ISP myself, and it is absolute, zero flexibility policy that if any sort of threat, even in a joking manner, is made to our safety, we leave the premises immediately. Now to the best of my knowledge, the only circumstances this has actually been invoked under have involved unruly dogs, but were a subscriber to joke about holding one of us hostage, we're required to get the hell out, even if it means leaving equipment, up to and including entire vehicles, behind if necessary.
The policy does allow us to return to the customer's premises at a later time, at our discretion, but only when accompanied by another tech.
While I cannot vouch for the following, it is what has been described around the office here. "Back in the day" a subscriber apparently did use a shotgun to, ahem, "troubleshoot" a wiring ped right in front of a field tech. So, no, I have no doubt whatsoever that some people are more than capable of threatening what's implied in the article.
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
Seems to me that she was just being humorously dramatic. Summary says nothing about a weapon being presented at any time.
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.
Huh?
I've never heard that statement used in conversation, in any context.
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) --
Folks, in Canada it's one thing to be charged, it's another to be arrested. In the US if the police are convinced you've committed a crime, they arrest you. In Canada, if you're not posing an imminent danger to others, you just get charged. They tell you to come in, do some paperwork, and let you know the pre-trial date etc. She must have been beyond hysterical when the cops arrived, either completely shitfaced or holding a knife, or both. That's what it would take to get arrested in your own home under those circumstances.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
I've had, though over the phone, not in person. Sadly, tempting as it is, you can't really hold someone hostage over the phone ;)
ACT 1
It went like this: so at some point I activate my email at T-Online. They had a handy-dandy page that allows one to change their _email_ password, and I use it.
Suddenly I can't log in to the ISP any more. I figure, hmm, I bet the damned thing changed my ISP password too. I try the new one, it doesn't work either.
I'm pretty sure I didn't forget the new password, since it was one I had used before. But ok, it could happen. I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
So I call the ISP's tech support, he makes me try both the new and old password, neither works, ok, he says he'll send me a new one by post. But first he wants to know my invoice number, to be sure he's sending it to the right guy. I read the one from my phone bill to him. Says it's ok, all clear, he'll send me a new password.
A week goes by, I have no new password. I call again, different employee, makes me read him the invoice number again, assures me all is well and he'll send me the new password. Nothing happens.
The spiel continues for one and a half fucking months, in increasinly short intervals as my patience wears thin. Then I lose my patience entirely and escalate it to hell and back.
Turns out that when I moved, both the ISP and the parent telco gave me a new invoice number. Each. Different ones. But on the bill there was only the telco one. So the retards from support saw that the numbers don't match and _lied_ to me.
They fucking lied to me for a month and a half. They didn't even bother telling me what's wrong, or finding a simple solution like "ok, come to one of our stores to prove it's you." Nah, the bloody retards lied to me.
(At this point it's worth noting that (A) DSL connections are point-to-point anyway, (B) they can know it's me or at least calling from my phone number since it's a subsidiary of my telco, but most importantly (C) they're sending it by post to my address. What more confirmation do they want?)
ACT 2
My brother buys a new house informs the same telco and isp, is assured he'll get dsl in a couple of days.
It's worth noting that somehow he was flagged as VIP customer. Dunno why. Maybe because he and his wife are addicted to their cell phones, and get a phone bill comparable to some small companies. But anyway, he's a VIP customer and for that they assure him that it won't take more than a day or two to switch his account to the new address.
Short story: the same spiel as in my case happens. He's repeatedly assured that, yeah, verily, someone will take care of it by tomorrow. And nothing happens. Again and again.
What had happened? The drone who entered his new address made a typo. Let's say his new house number was 42 A (not the real one, for the obvious reasons), and the drone entered it as 42 S. Which didn't exist.
Ok, typos happen.
But again, they just lied to him again and again. If they do that even to "VIP customers", I rest my case.
ACT 3
After the previous incident, I was weary of doing anything to my connection any more. But eventually I'm dumb enough to say yes, when some salesman offers me (again) to upgrade my connection to 6000 MB/s instead 1000.
Life goes on for a month or so, in which time nothing happens to my connection, good or bad. As in, I'm still on 1000. Well, ok, I'm fine with that. At least I still have it.
Then suddenly I can't log in any more.
The call this time was a surrealistic carousel affair, where I'm passed around between 6 different departments. Each sees only his slice of the problem, so as soon as it even touches any other domain or aspect, he gives me a new phone number to call. And, as we'll see, didn't even see his own slice well enough.
It took me a whole weekend, albeit with large breaks to recharge my phone's batteries, of going round robin like that.
In that time, I'm
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Yes, we know. Welcome to the Internet.
i did - very interesting
To boldly mod where no one has trolled before.
Parakeet Anti-defamation league on line 4... something about libelous comparisons...
I've had a lot of experience with ISP support, with Adelphia (before they collapsed), Comcast (before I switched) and now Verizon. I'm a computer engineer, so if I call the ISP it's usually because I've figured out that the problem is at their end, and I can tell them what to do to fix it, yet I've found myself getting very, very, very frustrated and angry at the absurdity that I've encountered. In one case, after a half-hour of maneuvering through the maddening computer prompts (press 1, press 3, press 7 etc...) to speak to a human being, I got a support person who gave me the standard "reboot your computer and reset your modem". After a few minutes of first humoring him, and then another few minutes of walking through steps I knew were not the problem, I tried to explain to him what the problem was and what he had to do. He obviously had no idea about IP addresses, default gateways, DSN or what "ping" meant -- and after pretending to listen to me, he said that I needed to call "Lynksys". I said "okay", hung up, and immediately called back, went through the same scenario with another support person, who told me "you have to call Microsoft". I said "okay" hung up and immediately called back, and after maneuvering through the prompts again to get a human, I got a support person who (after suggesting that I reboot and rest my modem) listened to what I had to say, appeared to understand everything and had my internet running again in under 5 minutes. All told, however, I was on the phone for about 3 hours, and you have to realize how maddening it is when after to finally get to the prompt that says "press 7 if you are having connectivity problems", you're put on hold and every minute the recording tells you to try going to their website!! I know few people who have my patience or restraint (and it took every bit of that restraint to avoid letting out my frustration on that third support person[the one who finally helped] when she told me to try rebooting and resetting the modem) so I can just imagine what a layperson must feel. I remember having a technician come to my house to set up the internet service who kept trying different modems (saying "I can't believe all these are defective') before I intervened and set it up myself. I think that ISPs are overwhelmed with service calls, are understaffed, and suffer from a wide discrepancy of skill-sets amongst their personnel. The use of computer prompting to carry some of this burden is what gives computer prompting a bad name. I wouldn't be surprised if the actress actually did threaten the technician -- ISP support seems designed to coerce otherwise normal, well-adjusted persons to become homicidal, suicidal and paranoid.
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.
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
Awesome, I finally have an easy way to get some action!