I was so frustrated with my current ISP, NTT/Verio, that I Googled "clueless ISP" to see if anyone else had experienced the same frustration with their ISP. I came up with 24,400 results!
Is it possible that we have an epidemic of corporate stupidity springing up around us?
It is the wrong time for an established ISP like Verio to rest on their accomplishments of yesterday. Competitive pressures have recently reduced monthly charges from $24.99 to $9.99.
I have had very few problems with uptime or speed at Verio. It appears, however, that they have grown so large that they focus far more on sales than on customer service.
A few months ago I had to move one domain from Verio to another ISP because Verio could not give me enough control of my domain so that I could point it to a site on TypePad. Weeks of discussion with baffled technical people went nowhere. They could not understand why I would want to use the domain as a pointer to another site. Duh! I finally moved the domain to pairNIC.com which was cheaper and provided me with the capabilities I needed.
The last straw occurred a few days ago when I was billed for renewal of five domains that I intended to let lapse. Verio is still playing that tired old scam, made famous with magazine subscriptions, where you get automatically renewed and the fee is not refundable.
They have installed the phone tree from hell and it takes incredible determination to reach a live person to answer billing questions. I finally got a customer service representative on the phone, who was friendly but not helpful. "Domain renewal fees are non-refundable." I had cancelled my domain renewals but she insisted their billing was non-refundable.
Surely they do not expect payment for non-service? I guess they do. Clueless, indeed!
I have written an email pointing out the negative results of such a repressive billing arrangement. If I receive no satisfaction, I will dispute the charges when I am billed by the credit card company. Being billed for fees that I did not authorize sends me a strong message about this company and its lack of business ethics.
I may eventually have to move my last domain to another ISP.
But I won't go quietly...
UPDATE: The good, clueless folks at Verio did not respond. I disputed the charges on my AMEX credit card with a full account of being billed for services I did not authorize. The credit card company agreed with me and removed the charges.
Verio got the message. They sent me an email saying that my domain registrations were not being renewed.
Persevere! Maybe the epidemic of customer-no-service feeds on the manic busy-ness that consumes everyone I know: most people don't have the time it takes to fight. But just you wait, corporate scammers, till the baby boom generation retires. We'll be an army of angry old folks with the time and resources to do something about it.
Posted by: Lin | Sep 09, 2004 at 08:41 AM
I have had a very similar experience with Verio recently. They blocked several domain transfer requests in what I can only guess was an attempt to keep us from moving our hosting. They wouldn't talk to us so we're not exactly sure of their motivation.
Apparently they don't feel that its cheaper to keep an existing customer because everything they're doing is the exact opposite.
Posted by: Brian | Sep 09, 2004 at 09:36 AM
I think every business becomes clueless re customer service at some point in its expansion. We will see more and more clueless ISPs. Unfortunately I think you are not typical in trying to resist and that most people just seem to accept bad service, so the growth of over-large corporations continues and the exploitation increases.
Posted by: Peter | Sep 09, 2004 at 03:00 PM
I can't think of a few easy ways to get revenge.
Posted by: Dingo | Sep 10, 2004 at 04:36 AM
That was suppose to read "I CAN think..."
However, I couldn't edit it because this window went to the left half of the screen (in between your two side bars).
I doubt that makes sense to you, but I bet some of your other commenters have had this problem. Perhaps if you tried commenting yourself (possibly using a different resolution), you might see what I'm talking about.
Posted by: Dingo | Sep 10, 2004 at 04:38 AM
Dingo,
I add comments frequently to my blog. In my Firefox browser, the comments wordwrap quite nicely.
What are you using?
Posted by: David St Lawrence | Sep 10, 2004 at 12:52 PM