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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.
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
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."
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."
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]
Or rather "Hell hath no fury like a woman denied access to the internet.".
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
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.
Actually, that is the common mis-quotation.
The correct quotation of William Congreve is "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
Exactly. The GP said "You know what they say", not "You know what William Congreve said"..
In any case, I can see why it is misquoted...
Yeah, but you do need a working internet connection. Which she ain't got.
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.