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Get a Cable Modem...Go to Jail
Hari writes "
Here's a story I got linked to from the RISKS
forum. Don't just fear "Big Government", fear the "Big Stupid Corporation" too.
"Yes, apparently just having cable modem service, and not cable is not something America is ready to handle-maybe the absence of consumption confuses them? Mmm...I love starting my Monday morning with a big dollop of stupidity-it's like Bailey's in the coffee!
My company had placed me in a furnished apartment in a Chicago suburb which, among other things, included cable service. After seeing the flood of ads for MediaOne's broadband service, I signed up.
It is important to note that they mention at every possible turn that the cable service and the internet service are two completely seperate things.
Well, it came time to pay the install bill (plus a past month or so of service). I pay it on the credit card (approx $300). Next month, I get a bill in excess of $600. And very quickly, I was without MediaOne Internet service, and cable service!
Even if I was a deadbeat, they shouldn't have shut off the cable for two reasons -- one, the cable bill was paid by another party (the apartment complex). Two, it is a completely seperate service -- right?
After working with too many MediaOne people to name, an experience which is far worse than going through the government, they demanded proof from my bank that I made the payment.
Finally, given the proof, they admit that my ~$300 payment had been added as a charge to my account, and that they had also lost the credit card slip from my "folder".
The impressions I received is that their offices are not organized, and they have not thought out all the different cases of service. Like the author of the article, before that date, I was not their customer, but what was different is that I was legally receiving cable service from them.
I am supposed to have cable modem access in about two months. I was looking forward to it until I had my little problems with TCI.
I have always used Sat Tv ( either C-Band or DSS) and I moved to St. Louis about 8 months ago. The apartment complex I moved into stated that I can not under any circomstances install a Sat Dish. So I decided to get TCI's "Digital" Cable. Well it took them two months to coordinate a Saturday to do the install. TCI has a rule that you must be available for a four hour period, in order to get either a repair or install. Well the moron arrives and I tell him that I want three hookups ( Big Screen, bedroom and PC) He has to call the office to get permision to install to my pc. Eventually I had to sign a waiver to have him do it.
After the cable is installed the tech noticed that the signal is horrible and he states that the incoming line is bad. He said he will have to make a work order to have it fixed. A week later I call the cable company to see why my cable has not been fixed and the lady says that a work order has never been issued. So We arrange for a technician to come out a month from now ( another saturday.) The tech comes and says that the bad signal is due to all of my computer equipment interfering with the cable. I asked him to check from the access point to the house, he still insists that it is my computer equipment. I get pissed off and demand that he removes all of the cable equipment, I want it turned off. He couldn't, I had to arrange for the cable technician to remove it. I finally grabbed the decoder and cables and dropped it off at the cable office, and after three months I got a refund.
Now here is where the fun starts. I called my apartment manager and told her what happened and asked her if she could make an exception on the Dish rule. She said if I could make it look nice she would allow it. So I made a nice non-permanent install. She was happy, I was happy, end of story.
About a 2 months ago, I was watching ZDTV and my signal droped, I went out side to see if the wind moved the dish and I saw a cable technician and a Suit removing my dish. I asked them what they are doing, and the suit replied "Under the contract with the apartment complex, we are confiscating this equipment." I told them to stop and they would not. So I went inside and grabbed my shotgun. Well they decided to leave really quick. About 10 minutes later about 5 police officers show up, along with the cable guys to arrest me. I explained what happened to the cops and they agreed with me and asked me if I wanted to press charges for property damage. I declinded.
About a week later I get a letter stating that I have been charged with cable theft. I called up the cable company and explained to them that I have a DISH! I finally talk to a manager that said I was using the access point to the house, thus I was stealing cable. The access point is the hole they drill in your house.
I got the complexes maintaince guy to remove all of the cable, and I reinstalled my dish.
I faxed the cable company a copy of an FCC ruling stating that a renter can install a dish. Now I get a letter every few weeks asking that I get cable.
So after I went through all of this there is no way in hell, I am going to get a cable modem. Adsl is supposed to evenually be here. I will get that.
Society seems to be really down on people who don't have a TV. In the UK we have a TV licence(£80 or $130 p/a) which is great because this pays for the BBC which is pretty good. It also means we don't get 100% commercially driven c***. But...
;)
There are a heck of a lot of incidents where people have been harassed by the TV detection people becuase they didn't have a TV. Folk have had their doors broken down...even though the TV detecto people have zero right by law to enter your house!!!
It used to be even worse when these people had older monitors that had an RF profile that looks like a TV...even though is was just a plain olde PC or Mac. Thanks to new monitors I think it is probably safe to not have a TV and have a PC instead....just watch those TV capture cards
Shortly after I moved to Lake Zurich, Il, and had telephone service from Ameritech, I got a nasty letter that said, in effect, pay your overdue bill within two days or else.
Now, I had moved here from Canada (a temporary high-tech NAFTA import) and was very anxious to quickly establish the equivalent of my excellent Canadian credit rating (funny, I could get a mortgage right away, but no credit card for 8 months).
It appeared that Ameritech had lost last month's payment, and in fact, credited a strange (but far too small) amount to my account that didn't match any cheques I had written recently.
I immediately contacted their acocunts department, and verified my cheque number and the fact that I had written my Ameritech account number in the memo field of the cheque (I keep duplicate cheques). However they wanted payment today or a cancelled cheque as proof. This was a problem.
First, I couldn't pay them "TODAY" because their offices were closed, though I didn't know this until after going to what their rep said was their office -- turned out it was a collection agency. Second, while the cheque had cleared the bank, I hadn't yet received the cancelled cheque back from the bank, and couldn't request it for another two days, it being Saturday afternoon. It later took the bank a week to send it to me earlier than my statement, and they (rightly) charged for the priveledge.
With the threat of disconnection of telephone service within 24 hours (for some reason Ameritech's notice was dated quite a while before it was postmarked), and a damaging entry in my credit file, I had no choice but to cough up $200 "under protest" to the collection agency. I was not pleased that my receipt was from them and not Ameritech (despite their assurances that they would issue me a receipt from Ameritech, acting as Ameritech's agent).
It took another two months for Ameritech to "find" my payment (and, for a while, even my copy of a cancelled chqeue was considered insufficient proof of payment: they insisted on the original, which I refused to surrender), and credit my account for the extra $200 I sent them.
Now, in all fairness, I have dealt with some very nice people at Ameritech, who even showed me how I could save a couple bucks on my regular bill.
But, businesses take note, it's the bad apple that spoils the bunch, and buggy procedures combined with rude customer representatives do not give rise to customer satisfaction. To this day, I have not received an apology for Ameritech's error.
In Liberty, Rene
While not directly related to this person's unfortunate incident, I have been keeping a log of my @Home service and have it published here. If you already have a cable-modem, or are planning on purchasing cable-modem service, chances are good that you want to read this. I have submitted this to /. as a frontpage story... it will be interesting to see if it makes it.
-phillip
As buisiness' become larger and larger, errors such as these will become more and more common place. And this from a company that isn't even truly recognized as a UTILITY. Imagine the power the phone company or power company could exert if it erroneously reported you were breaking the law due to some `glitch'.
I don't relish the thought of our law enforcement and political powers relying on technology that is buggy and prblematic. Would you let an NT box be your defendant in a trial? Ugh.
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
Having worked for a Tel Co and ISP's.. and having delt with (but never worked for) a number of Cable Co's.. I can say a couple of things.. firstly, Cable Co's don't seem to have the nessecary mind set or infrastructure to provide allways-on service. A Tel Co (at least in Canada) is bound by federal law to have less then a certain amount of down time a year in there Public Switching Network (like 99.8% uptime) and because of this seem to have gotten use to the idea of making things work all the time.. never fail.. or at least never fail to the user. When was the last time you picked up your phone and didn't have dial tone (due to the phone company), when was the last time your cable went out?? Kinda scary.. :) I think ISP's and Cable Co's are going to have to learn how to provide services comparable to Tel Co's. Not that I'm saying that Tel Co's are perfect.. but from a service availability stand point.. they seem to have a better track record.. for now.
--Hired Net Grunt
The main lesson I get out of this articles is: "Avoid being served." This seems to speak more to the ineffiecency of the beauracracy surrounding the legal system than any maliciousness on Comcast's part. Then again, (a) if this would have happened to me, I wouldn't have sweated one minute, because if you can legitimately explain such a low low low level offense, there ain't gonna be no big deal in court; (b) If you get dismissed in the first two seconds of court, you really haven't been hassled.
The whole story doesn't surprise me in the least. I had my own wonderful experience with the US justice system.
I had a car stolen. Oh well, life sucks, what's new? I reported it and forgot about it (in a while). About a year after that I get some piece of paper in the mail that says that my driver's license has been suspended. wtf? I made some phone calls and found out that it's been suspended because my car insurance has been terminated. WTF?? After more phone calls it turns out that my insurance was cancelled because I have an outstanding ticket against me. Huh? What's the ticket for? Abandonment of car on public property?? What the fuck is going on???
It turns out that the loser who stole my car eventually got tired of it (it wasn't all that hot, I must confess) and left it in a municipal parking lot. After some time the car was towed away and, as far as I could tell, was junked. I was still listed as an owner, so I got the ticket. For some still unknown to me reason, the ticket was never sent to me. O-Okay. I call the cops, explain the situation. They check their records, find the car listed as stolen, and tell me that yeah, it's all a mistake, but since the trial date has already been set for my ticket, the case has to go forward and I just have to appear and explain everything to the judge.
Well, a first courtroom appearance for me. Armed with a printout of the stolen vehicle report I arrive. The hearing of my case takes 30 seconds and goes as follows (and yes, that's the literal conversation):
Judge: Is the car yours?
Me: It was stolen from me a year ago.
Judge: But it's your car?
Me: But it was stolen, here's the report
Judge : But this is your car, right?
Me: But I had no control over it, it was stolen...
Judge: Guilty. Next case.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I got to pay a $140 fine and was reaffirmed by the Philadelphia Traffic Court in my faith in truth and justice for all.
Epilogue: I filed for appeal, but because at that time it would have cost me ~$500 to come to Philadelphia on that day, I didn't go. The ticket wasn't a 'moving violation' so my car insurance didn't go up. Basically, I paid $140 plus a week of major hassle for an educational experience. I wouldn't say it was fun, but now I can post to Slashdot and say "Been there, done that!".
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I don't own a TV, and don't plan to, but fast internet service appeals. If I tried to get cable modem without cable, I think any American jury would probably send me to jail for not owning a TV. I am probably a communist, they would figure, or perhaps another unabomber. (His lack of a TV was actually used as evidence in his criminal case)
Just wanted to pipe up and say that I've been very pleased with Time Warner's Road Runner service here in Austin. We called and ordered the service and were told exactly what hardware we needed to have in the computer. The technician came out on the day and at the time scheduled and quickly got us connected. Setting up email, web browsing and newsgroups was painless. My Quake2 pings are in the 60s, my wife's Ultima Online pings are in the 70s.
Now for the kicker. We recently got a hub so that we could network our two computers together and I wanted to get both computers access to the cable line. I called Road Runner sales (not support, now, SALES) and was quickly set up for an additional IP address. The salesman also quickly walked me through resetting my modem and setting up the second computer. Can you imagine that? The SALESMAN knew how to set up a second IP address.
I now have two powerful computers on a LAN that both have God's own internet connection. I have pulled 40+ meg downloads on one computer without my wife even noticing on the other. My friends (all of whom also have cable modem access) and I throw files back and forth at 500k+ per sec. It's Nirvana, people.
I have always been against cable modems. Not because I have experienced bad service, but simply because I never believed in the philosophy behind them. There is something about "shared" access that has never quite appealed to me.
Like many theories with logic holes (pyramid schemes come to mind), the idea sounds great on paper when looked at from a limited perspecitive, but once you examine more factors, the idea quickly becomes a bad one. The idea of shared access is used at every node of the internet, but cable has warped the meaning of it.
When you use a dialup connection to your isp through a regular POTS modem, you get ulimited internet access for something around $10 a month. Now, the ISP knowing that the average customer on the service will be online for less than 1/10 of the day, therefore makes the assumption that only 1 modem for every 10 customers is necessary, and as long as nobody gets busy signals, it will be adaquate. If the capacity on the modems gets full, you simply add more modems the the pool.
Some users might stay connected 24/7, some might only log in for 5 minutes to check email, but it will average out and its in the ISP's best interest to prevent problems.
Cable tries to work on this same concept, but with a tragic flaw. The simple fact of the matter is that people who want speed increases don't want it because they are impatitient with waiting for downloads, they simply want MORE, meaning that with the increase in speed, there will come an increase in bandwidth usage. Since all bandwidth is a trickle down cost, each customer pays for the average bandwidth used by the total customer base.
Nobody gets a cable modem so they can check their email, its not realistic. A regular dialup is more than effective for that. You simply don't have the bottom of the food chain using cable modems, you get all the bandwidth hungry users, and they're being charged rates which are far less than the average cost of the bandwidth they consume. This will eventually lead to a problem. Either the price of the service must go up, or the average bandwidth must be reduced. Eventually, you'll be lucky if your cable modem can achieve ISDN rates reliably.
Also, consider where you get your service from. When was the last time that a cable company was considered the creme de la creme of service providers? Do you really want to get internet access from a company that can't keep their services working during a thunderstorm?
In the end, you get exactly what you pay for. Nothing DSL or cable can provide will ever beat a nice T1, even though they may boast about it. Its simply not a viable economic option to offer something for less than the cost. Eventually, these companies will want to start making a profit, and that will be a sorry day indeed.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I periodically go through the same thing with TCI/@Home. It seams that about once a year they change their billing system so it bills me twice. Then it takes 4 months for them to straighten it out.
TCI/@Home is totally screwed up. Here in Fremont, CA. it got to the point where we (the users) have organized and appealed to the city council. They also are quite annoyed with @Home's terrible customer service (typical hold times are measured in hours, not minutes) and terrible performance (20% packet loss to @Home's NAP connections).
Things have improved recently, but for a while my 28.8 was a *MUCH* faster than my 10Mbps cable modem.
As to the city council I went to the meeting. It was really fun watching @Home squirm. TCI tried to claim that they fixed the customer service problem. The city council then had the city manager call TCI/@Home customer service right there during the meeting. They couldn't get through. TCI had fun trying to backtrack and wiggle out of that one. TCI/@Home offered to donate $40,000 to the city for any program the city chose if the city agreed not to fine them (the fine was $18,000 for lack of service). The city council was ready to accept until the customer support fiasco and went ahead and fined them.
It was a very entertaining city council meeting and I hope to go to the next one. The city gave @Home 120 days to fix their problems or they'd get a new fine. The city council is also going to pass legislation requiring minimum standards. This will be the first city in the country to do so. All this because of TCI/@Home.
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