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My Troubles With Ridgenet
Below is the text of an email I sent the manager of my former local internet service provider back in July. It's fairly self-explanatory, and lays out quite well some of the reasons why I changed to Earthlink, despite having to move my website about the science fiction author A.E. van Vogt. I've slightly edited this email for clarity and for various other reasons. (I.e., proper names and email addresses other than my own have been omitted to protect the guilty.)
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From: Isaac Wilcott
To: [system administrator's email address omitted out of sheer politeness]
Date: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 5:06 PM
Subject: A Complaint
[manager's name deleted],
I have a complaint to make. I've been a happy customer of Ridgenet for two years, but have recently noticed a marked decline in the quality of service you provide. Slow connections, sudden disconnects, and strange connection-error messages were nonexistent when I first signed up with you, but recently have become very common. But the foremost of my problems lies with your billing department, who not only seem to be incompetent, but also apparently fail to communicate with anybody else within your company.
Below is a message I received from them earlier today. This is the third time in the last month I've had trouble with your billing department. First of all, when my credit card number was stolen in late June I wrote to you requesting to change my payment method to cash/check until I got my new card in the mail. However, contrary to what I had been told, I was not sent any kind of invoice or reminder — one evening I received an email message from the billing department telling me that this was my "final warning" to pay, that I had "ignored" my invoices, and service would be terminated if I did not pay by the 13th of July. The next day I phoned them, gave them my new credit card number, and informed them quite clearly that I would be going back to my card being automatically charged each month. I freely admit that I was partly at fault here — I was still dealing with the bureaucratic loops I was having to jump through after falling victim to identity theft [to read more about this nasty experience, click here], and I had temporarily forgotten that I needed to give you payment. Hence, the need for a reminder, the invoices supposedly sent out at the end of each month. Still, after giving you my new card number I thought all was well.
Then, a few days later, I was connecting to check my email when a message popped up saying that authentication had failed, that there was no such user on Ridgenet. I thought maybe it was just a glitch of some kind, and tried again later. It still didn't work. I was on the verge of phoning your tech people to ask what was going on, when the phone rang and it was one of your employees. He informed me that my account had been locked owing to my failure to pay for the month of July. I told him that I had just a few days ago given the billing department my new credit card number and switched back to the automatic billing. He put me on hold while he checked this out. He then came back, saying they did indeed have my new card number, that he had corrected the error in their records, and unlocked my account. [He didn't even apologize for the mix-up, and his whole tone insinuated that this was all somehow my fault, and he seemed highly offended that I was asking him to do his job properly.]
I guess it was foolish of me to expect things to have finally been sorted out. I today received this email invoice from your billing department! Has the person who failed to send the invoice last month finally caught up and sent me one? Are there two of me in your records, with one of my paying cash/check and the other paying via credit card? If so, then perhaps you can explain why I'm getting merely half the service for one person?
How many times a week will I have to call your billing people, trying to get them to do something so simple?!? I'm tempted to go down there and fix your records myself!
Were it not for the large website I've created with Ridgenet (http://www.ridgenet.net/~icshi/), I would not hesitate to discontinue business with you and go elsewhere for my internet service provider. But if this sort of nonsense continues, I'll grit my teeth and do just that. I've been patient, polite, and try to understand and sympathize with your employees, but I'm really getting sick of all this.
Yours sincerely,
A thoroughly dissatisfied and irate customer,
Isaac Wilcott
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The only reaction I got to this email was a brief message full of vacuous reassurances couched in insincere cookie-cutter apology form-letter language. The manager also tried to appeal to my vanity by stating that my website made for "interesting reading."
But obviously it reached the point where I went ahead and made the change, despite all the hassle I've had to go through to move the website. The straw that broke the camel's back was a lengthy one-way "interchange" in the form of an email I repeatedly sent to the manager of Ridgenet, as well as various departmental underlings, each of whom failed to give any kind of response. Here is the whole frustrating story, beginning in April 2003:
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From: Isaac Wilcott [icshi@ridgecrest.ca.us]
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2003 1:31 PM
To: [system administrator's email address omitted]
Subject: Buying Extra Space
I am interested in buying 5 addition MB for my website (http://www.ridgenet.net/~icshi/), and would like to know the cost for such extra space. Is the price still $5, on top of the monthly $20?
Isaac Wilcott
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I received a prompt and polite reply to my offer to give them more money — seemingly, the only incentive they ever had to answering their customers' queries.
The system administrator informed me that $5 was indeed the current price, but since they were going to put a new server into use within the next month or two — that would increase each customer's free webspace limit from 5 to 10 MB — they wouldn't bother charging me during the intervening time. And, naturally, once the new server was up, I wouldn't be charged extra anyway.
However, they went ahead and billed me the $5 extra for that month, without an explanation... and the next month... and the next... But at this point it was merely an impolite irritant rather than an actual problem. But the story continues:
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From: Isaac Wilcott
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 10:12:21 -0700
To: [system administrator's email address omitted]
Subject: FW: Buying Extra Space
I had purchased some extra space in April and had received the below email from the system administrator. [I attached the system administrator's email that said the new server would be added within two months and I wouldn't be charged the $5 extra, etc. etc.]
I'm currently buying 5 MB extra a month on top of my free 5 MB, and am considering buying a further chunk to increase my space to 15 MB, but don't really want to spend the added $5 a month. So I'd like to know if the free space limit going to be upped to 10 MB anytime soon. It would be nice to know what's going on beforehand and plan the expansion of my website accordingly.
Sincerely,
Isaac Wilcott
http://www.ridgenet.net/~icshi/
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From: Isaac Wilcott
Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2003 12:17:20 -0700
To: [webmaster's email address omitted]
Subject: FW: Buying Extra Space
I wrote to the system administrator concerning an email I had gotten from her in April, but have as yet received no response. I am forwarding the whole interchange to you, and hopefully this time I'll get a response.
Isaac Wilcott
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From: Isaac Wilcott
To: [system administrator's email address omitted]
Date: Sunday, October 19, 2003 12:43 PM
Subject: FW: Buying Extra Space
Well, this is the third time in the past month that I've sent this email to someone "in charge" there at Ridgenet and have still received no response.
Perhaps it would be simpler if I asked it as a "Yes" or "No" question?
Do you currently have any plans to anytime soon to expand the free alotment of webspace for subscribers to 10MB, as mentioned to me by the System Administrator back in April?
The entire interchange, including the Administrator's original statement, is included below, as well as my previous two attempts to contact you.
I really would appreciate even a very short response. It's not a very difficult question!
Isaac Wilcott
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It was at this point that I had finally had enough, and started to look around for a new ISP. There was another company here in town, but they seemed to provide only email services. So I started thinking about nation-wide ISPs. I avoided AOL like the plague that it is — having used them some years ago for a brief time — but I'd heard good things about Earthlink and checked them out. They offered much more than Ridgenet did, and for a lower price. The rest, as they say, is history.