I've never heard of anyone calling anywhere for technical or billing help and actually getting good support. Maybe back in the days before call centers and outsourcing, but it's pretty much impossible now. It's pretty much related to profit -- the companies are too cheap to allow agents to receive proper training, working computer systems, and time to properly research issues and call customers back. I actually worked in an outsourced call center for 5 years and the only contract that I worked on that didn't have this problem initially was HP computers. They did write me up for replacing a broken modem once (I checked into it later and the customer confirmed that was the problem) but at least they did try to let us do our job without too much harassment. It's just sad that we were probably overall doing a mediocre job at replacing the American workers, and they eventually replaced us with Indians that definitely were not qualified at all. Anyways, the problem is always the same -- communication between the local office or engineers or whatever and the people that answer the phones is always terrible. People answering the phone have more incentive to lie to get rid of you than to spend time fixing difficult issues. The difficult issues of course only exist because of poor communication and training. And of course management is done completely wrong, so nothing ever gets "better".
Example of Shaw sucking at communication: I had to replace my PVR twice because the first two came with a Western Digital drive that, due to a firmware bug, reported an incorrect temperature and shut down (froze) the box. The fact that I could find this out after searching on Google for 10 minutes, yet nobody at Shaw could understand this was quite pathetic. I talked to two people in "tech support" and the technician that came to my house. Finally lucked out and got one with a Seagate drive. I actually called them today to cancel my service because it's a rip-off, they seem to have local support. They were trying to convince me that they were adding new features to the box so I should keep it. "Soon you'll be able to add an external hard drive!". Funny because the box I just bought from Bell (satellite) for $300 less does that too, plus the Shaw box would have if they just left the stock firmware alone. Incidentally, they also apparently cripple the firmware on my modem so that I can't view the status page to check the power levels. God I hate them.
I have Rogers for my cellphone and they suck about as bad as Bell for billing issues. They once charged me $16 in data fees to download a game (doom rpg) from their website even after I asked and made sure they wouldn't charge data fees for a purchase from their wap site. Then they neglected to charge me the actual $5 for the game itself, so I assume id never got paid. Every time I call them, it's at least 20 minutes of holding and being transferred around between the same departments, and accidentally getting hung up on or transferred to closed departments. I'm pretty sure they also buy all Nokia's broken phones for their customers since the last two phones I got and unlocked with a stock firmware turned into crashing pieces of shit.
Telus? They're pretty dumb too. I got a box with a modem in the mail from them the other day, and nobody in the last 5 years at my address has had the name it was addressed to. My friend used to have their ADSL service there. They forced him to downgrade the speed because he wanted to try their TV service. That didn't work properly due to packet loss, so he canceled it, and then they wouldn't give him his faster Internet back because "they were out of ports".
Well if you mean from rogers having some competition, i doubt it. The phones are pretty expensive to buy without contract as long as they design them with expensive components. But maybe if everyone switches to GSM, the manufacturers can reduce costs by getting rid of CDMA production lines or something...
Uhh, you could try our only GSM provider...
Robbers
$600? could that be why?
I'm holding out for those cheap ones they're supposed to be saturating the market with any month now...
Yeah the expert-sex-change site is really lame, the 2 screen lengths of garbage is their "nice" format. If you arrive at an "answer" without google (ie browsing their site topics) you can't scroll down for the answers. They actually hide them completely. There's a nice firefox plugin called user-agent-switcher that, well, I'm not gonna say. I wouldn't want them to close that hole when they realize their security could be improved, so, I must have bought an account. I'm gonna trade all my points for another inch on my e-penis soon!
I guess that was pretty far off topic, so I'll just note that as a fellow canadian, google pisses me off too. Any search engine indexing forums really needs a generic way to detect if the topic is answered or replied to or whatever, and show those items above the others. Some forums indexed by google do show the number of replies and date of the last post on your search results page, so I guess they're at least working on this. Also, if you're searching for prices of things in Canada, google "price Canada" and you will find a bunch of Canadian price search websites that index various Canadian stores. These are much better than the "Canadian versions" of American price search websites, although they are mainly for computer related stuff.
No, I'm not quite colorblind. That article might be well written, but I certainly don't share the author's point of view. A lot of the "strange rituals" and dirtiness found while exploring the game shouldn't be viewed as some stereotyping or whatever. It's advertised as a fun a video game, not a realistic simulation of modern day Africa. The game is obviously way more interesting and fun if I can explore a primitive village, or ancient tunnels, and shoot spears and other weapons out of the air that are being thrown at me, compared to if I was up against, well, normal people in a modern setting. I suggest reading this article instead.
Because it's set in Africa, and there's black zombies! I saw one attack a white woman, so clearly the zombie was a racist!
Honestly, I played through the whole game, and I didn't see anything that seemed racist to me. But I thought it's worth mentioning because it's another recent case of video games that bother some tiny minority of overly sensitive people. They make a big fuss and somehow it gets picked up by the press, which apparently scares away retailers, publishers, parents, and whatever else.
I guess my point is that I don't really believe this game could be that bad or offensive. Maybe not quite what Konami is comfortable publishing, but I'll still check it out when it gets published. Or at least wait for a review of the actual game, not just listen to statements from people that are offended by war or that battle or whatever.
why does the phone company even send out the bill in this case? obviously, nobody would ever pay it...
this reminds me of the guy that got a $60,000 bill for downloading a movie while in mexico.
these companies need to learn to call their customers when their bill reaches, say, $1000
I mean did they really thing this through? What are they going to do with all the servers? Build their own data center in the crime lab?
I guess my point is that reconnecting even one server properly would be a pain, but obviously if it has raid or virtual operating systems or whatever, you can't just pull all the drives and read them individually... Maybe they thought since they can't narrow their problem down they will just collect everything and figure it out later, but they didn't realize they just made their problem way harder. I hope they blow the buildings power grid when they hook up all the servers at once or something similarly hillarious.
I do the level two tech support for road runner ('national help desk'). I can say that I've never, in the few years I've been doing this job, had to tell anyone they've been cut off for using too much bandwidth, and we (the outsourced call center i work in) have never been informed of any sort of limits for any of the divisions we handle (Hawaii to New York). So chances are, no matter where in the US you live, you're not going to get cut off for using too much bandwidth if you have Road Runner. It's quite possible I'm wrong, because we see accounts shut off for 'abuse' quite often, but AFAIK that is due to virus infections and things of that nature.
Slashdot Mirror
I see. I'd pick roadrunner, I've worked for Charter and Comcast and they were a lot worse.
It's not going through "phone wires". More like generic fiber that can carry anything.
I've never heard of anyone calling anywhere for technical or billing help and actually getting good support. Maybe back in the days before call centers and outsourcing, but it's pretty much impossible now. It's pretty much related to profit -- the companies are too cheap to allow agents to receive proper training, working computer systems, and time to properly research issues and call customers back. I actually worked in an outsourced call center for 5 years and the only contract that I worked on that didn't have this problem initially was HP computers. They did write me up for replacing a broken modem once (I checked into it later and the customer confirmed that was the problem) but at least they did try to let us do our job without too much harassment. It's just sad that we were probably overall doing a mediocre job at replacing the American workers, and they eventually replaced us with Indians that definitely were not qualified at all. Anyways, the problem is always the same -- communication between the local office or engineers or whatever and the people that answer the phones is always terrible. People answering the phone have more incentive to lie to get rid of you than to spend time fixing difficult issues. The difficult issues of course only exist because of poor communication and training. And of course management is done completely wrong, so nothing ever gets "better".
Example of Shaw sucking at communication: I had to replace my PVR twice because the first two came with a Western Digital drive that, due to a firmware bug, reported an incorrect temperature and shut down (froze) the box. The fact that I could find this out after searching on Google for 10 minutes, yet nobody at Shaw could understand this was quite pathetic. I talked to two people in "tech support" and the technician that came to my house. Finally lucked out and got one with a Seagate drive. I actually called them today to cancel my service because it's a rip-off, they seem to have local support. They were trying to convince me that they were adding new features to the box so I should keep it. "Soon you'll be able to add an external hard drive!". Funny because the box I just bought from Bell (satellite) for $300 less does that too, plus the Shaw box would have if they just left the stock firmware alone. Incidentally, they also apparently cripple the firmware on my modem so that I can't view the status page to check the power levels. God I hate them.
I have Rogers for my cellphone and they suck about as bad as Bell for billing issues. They once charged me $16 in data fees to download a game (doom rpg) from their website even after I asked and made sure they wouldn't charge data fees for a purchase from their wap site. Then they neglected to charge me the actual $5 for the game itself, so I assume id never got paid. Every time I call them, it's at least 20 minutes of holding and being transferred around between the same departments, and accidentally getting hung up on or transferred to closed departments. I'm pretty sure they also buy all Nokia's broken phones for their customers since the last two phones I got and unlocked with a stock firmware turned into crashing pieces of shit.
Telus? They're pretty dumb too. I got a box with a modem in the mail from them the other day, and nobody in the last 5 years at my address has had the name it was addressed to. My friend used to have their ADSL service there. They forced him to downgrade the speed because he wanted to try their TV service. That didn't work properly due to packet loss, so he canceled it, and then they wouldn't give him his faster Internet back because "they were out of ports".
What? There is no Verizon in Canada...
Well if you mean from rogers having some competition, i doubt it. The phones are pretty expensive to buy without contract as long as they design them with expensive components. But maybe if everyone switches to GSM, the manufacturers can reduce costs by getting rid of CDMA production lines or something...
maybe YOU can, I can't. I just got a hardware upgrade 10 months ago, I'm not eligible yet.
Uhh, you could try our only GSM provider... Robbers $600? could that be why? I'm holding out for those cheap ones they're supposed to be saturating the market with any month now...
how do i find the Iran IP space?
Yeah the expert-sex-change site is really lame, the 2 screen lengths of garbage is their "nice" format. If you arrive at an "answer" without google (ie browsing their site topics) you can't scroll down for the answers. They actually hide them completely. There's a nice firefox plugin called user-agent-switcher that, well, I'm not gonna say. I wouldn't want them to close that hole when they realize their security could be improved, so, I must have bought an account. I'm gonna trade all my points for another inch on my e-penis soon! I guess that was pretty far off topic, so I'll just note that as a fellow canadian, google pisses me off too. Any search engine indexing forums really needs a generic way to detect if the topic is answered or replied to or whatever, and show those items above the others. Some forums indexed by google do show the number of replies and date of the last post on your search results page, so I guess they're at least working on this. Also, if you're searching for prices of things in Canada, google "price Canada" and you will find a bunch of Canadian price search websites that index various Canadian stores. These are much better than the "Canadian versions" of American price search websites, although they are mainly for computer related stuff.
No, I'm not quite colorblind. That article might be well written, but I certainly don't share the author's point of view. A lot of the "strange rituals" and dirtiness found while exploring the game shouldn't be viewed as some stereotyping or whatever. It's advertised as a fun a video game, not a realistic simulation of modern day Africa. The game is obviously way more interesting and fun if I can explore a primitive village, or ancient tunnels, and shoot spears and other weapons out of the air that are being thrown at me, compared to if I was up against, well, normal people in a modern setting. I suggest reading this article instead.
Because it's set in Africa, and there's black zombies! I saw one attack a white woman, so clearly the zombie was a racist! Honestly, I played through the whole game, and I didn't see anything that seemed racist to me. But I thought it's worth mentioning because it's another recent case of video games that bother some tiny minority of overly sensitive people. They make a big fuss and somehow it gets picked up by the press, which apparently scares away retailers, publishers, parents, and whatever else. I guess my point is that I don't really believe this game could be that bad or offensive. Maybe not quite what Konami is comfortable publishing, but I'll still check it out when it gets published. Or at least wait for a review of the actual game, not just listen to statements from people that are offended by war or that battle or whatever.
why does the phone company even send out the bill in this case? obviously, nobody would ever pay it... this reminds me of the guy that got a $60,000 bill for downloading a movie while in mexico. these companies need to learn to call their customers when their bill reaches, say, $1000
I mean did they really thing this through? What are they going to do with all the servers? Build their own data center in the crime lab? I guess my point is that reconnecting even one server properly would be a pain, but obviously if it has raid or virtual operating systems or whatever, you can't just pull all the drives and read them individually... Maybe they thought since they can't narrow their problem down they will just collect everything and figure it out later, but they didn't realize they just made their problem way harder. I hope they blow the buildings power grid when they hook up all the servers at once or something similarly hillarious.
I do the level two tech support for road runner ('national help desk'). I can say that I've never, in the few years I've been doing this job, had to tell anyone they've been cut off for using too much bandwidth, and we (the outsourced call center i work in) have never been informed of any sort of limits for any of the divisions we handle (Hawaii to New York). So chances are, no matter where in the US you live, you're not going to get cut off for using too much bandwidth if you have Road Runner. It's quite possible I'm wrong, because we see accounts shut off for 'abuse' quite often, but AFAIK that is due to virus infections and things of that nature.