This is soo true. I believe that a major reason software continues to be disturbingly buggy is the lack of a quality control standard. If something is wrong with your house you have a contracter come look at it, if he finds that your walls were insulated with used coffee cups from McDonalds (found one of these in my wall) you nail the builder; there may even be legal options available to you. Same thing with a car or furniture. Average user may only notice that his door makes a noise, but the mechanic will notice that the manufacturer neglected a couple bolts. Very few people are going to find someone to crack open their source code to look for the origin of a problem when they notice a bug. In fact we are so far from a quality control standard that most people won't even report an obvious bug. Problematic software is the accepted norm. Also, going back to the car analogy, most software is essentially a car with it's hood welded shut since so little is open-source.
Is Excite responsible for the terrible customer service that we all receive from @home or is it the cable companies that contract the service out that are at fault? When I call for customer support I get a local cable representative from Comcast.
Here's a great little test I've devised to show how unwilling comcast is to deal with their customers. This is actually happened:
my service was working fine. I disconnected my cable modem intentionallay, and then called Comcast.
Me: hello, I'm calling from "my county". My @home service has been down for several hours now. Do you have any idea what might be wrong?
Comcast Rep: Oh, I'm showing that several nodes in "my county" are down right now
Me: Nodes? wow, that sounds bad.
Comcast rep: Yes sir, but our technicians are aware of the problem and are working on it.
(NOTE: the first thing you hear when calling the comcast Support Line is a recorded list of problematic nodes; "my county" was not listed)
Me: How long will it be until my service is back up?
Comcast Rep: I have no way of contacting those technicians out in the field.
Me: your pants are on fire! (ok, I didn't actually get to say that.)
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This is soo true. I believe that a major reason software continues to be disturbingly buggy is the lack of a quality control standard. If something is wrong with your house you have a contracter come look at it, if he finds that your walls were insulated with used coffee cups from McDonalds (found one of these in my wall) you nail the builder; there may even be legal options available to you. Same thing with a car or furniture. Average user may only notice that his door makes a noise, but the mechanic will notice that the manufacturer neglected a couple bolts. Very few people are going to find someone to crack open their source code to look for the origin of a problem when they notice a bug. In fact we are so far from a quality control standard that most people won't even report an obvious bug. Problematic software is the accepted norm. Also, going back to the car analogy, most software is essentially a car with it's hood welded shut since so little is open-source.
Is Excite responsible for the terrible customer service that we all receive from @home or is it the cable companies that contract the service out that are at fault? When I call for customer support I get a local cable representative from Comcast.
Here's a great little test I've devised to show how unwilling comcast is to deal with their customers. This is actually happened:
my service was working fine. I disconnected my cable modem intentionallay, and then called Comcast.
Me: hello, I'm calling from "my county". My @home service has been down for several hours now. Do you have any idea what might be wrong?
Comcast Rep: Oh, I'm showing that several nodes in "my county" are down right now
Me: Nodes? wow, that sounds bad.
Comcast rep: Yes sir, but our technicians are aware of the problem and are working on it.
(NOTE: the first thing you hear when calling the comcast Support Line is a recorded list of problematic nodes; "my county" was not listed)
Me: How long will it be until my service is back up?
Comcast Rep: I have no way of contacting those technicians out in the field.
Me: your pants are on fire! (ok, I didn't actually get to say that.)