Comment On The Cost of Reliability

Now that's customer service!

<system action="clear out">I really hate MCI.  Really!</system>

telco = fraud

I always Laugh Out Loud at an email notification of Internet connection down.
That is like the "calling the phone company to report that your phone service is dead"!

  I am surprised Alex did not change the name!!!

Alex Papadimoulis:

It's one thing when you have to pay ten times more than the average residential consumer for T-1 Internet access. It's another thing when your T-1 line is three times slower than many residential packages. It's yet another thing when your T-1 line is less reliable than most residential lines, going out at least twice a week.

Wow! And I thought I had a good deal with my cable provider... Where do I sign up?

>BiggBru

Web 3.0?

Anonymous:

I always Laugh Out Loud at an email notification of Internet connection down.
That is like the "calling the phone company to report that your phone service is dead"!

That message is totally legit.  I supported a WAN of 450 sites across the country.  Whenevor one of the sites went down, MCI sent me that exact message.  I could then call the site proactively and tell them the status (note I did not email them).  The timestamps between the DOWN and UP messages where used to measure my uptime key performance indicator.

This forum needs to start thinking 'out of the sandbox'.  The world is bigger than your Dev machine.

Bus Raker:

That message is totally legit.  I supported a WAN of 450 sites across the country.  Whenevor one of the sites went down, MCI sent me that exact message.  I could then call the site proactively and tell them the status (note I did not email them).  The timestamps between the DOWN and UP messages where used to measure my uptime key performance indicator.

This forum needs to start thinking 'out of the sandbox'.  The world is bigger than your Dev machine.

Well then an option to receive or not receive the e-mail would be in order, depending on whether it is useful to you.

(CS2 doesn't remember me logged in, even if I tell it to... and just now it WSOD'd on me logging in. Then logging in again tells me I'm already logged in. WTF?)

Yeah, I kinda always wanted my own personal T1.... until cable had 15MBit/3MBit service for 1/5th the price ;-P. Sure, I don't get a static IP, but I don't really need that anymore...

Yeah, it is pretty stupid that they try to send you an e-mail when your net access goes down, but only if they are sending it to a server at the ip address that went down. This really isn't WTF worthy imho... the biggest WTF is that the line is so unreliable.

Bus Raker:

That message is totally legit.  I supported a WAN of 450 sites across the country.  Whenevor one of the sites went down, MCI sent me that exact message.

And I suppose that if you didn't get that message until after connectivity was restored, as is the case with Mr. D here, you'd still be raving about how wonderful it all is? Oh, good. When you ask for a little Viarga advertising in your inbox, I guess that means everyone else needs to get it too.

Bus Raker:

I could then call the site proactively and tell them the status (note I did not email them).

Well, you should have emailed them. If it works for you, it works for everyone else, right?

Bus Raker:

This forum needs to start thinking 'out of the sandbox'.  The world is bigger than your Dev machine.

I see, it's only a WTF if it happens to you.

Boring!

Anonymous:

When you ask for a little Viarga advertising in your inbox, I guess that means everyone else needs to get it too.

Bus Raker:

I could then call the site proactively and tell them the status (note I did not email them).

Well, you should have emailed them. If it works for you, it works for everyone else, right?

Bus Raker:

This forum needs to start thinking 'out of the sandbox'.  The world is bigger than your Dev machine.

I see, it's only a WTF if it happens to you.

I don't know where to begin so I just won't.

Viagra?  What does that have to do with the price of eggs in Hong Kong?

Bus Raker:

I don't know where to begin so I just won't.

Aw, come on... someone's got to do something to make this into an interesting thread!

...

Oh, wait... I think I get it:  The real WTF is that we've run out of WTF's in the world?

Anonymous:

Oh, wait... I think I get it:  The real WTF is that we've run out of WTF's in the world?

we're getting closer to living in a perfect world!!!

    Didn't you get the email saying the OUTLOOK server is down? wha?

Alex Papadimoulis:

From: MCI T-1 Support

Sent: Tuesday, March 7, 2006 2:04 PM

To: James D-------

Subject: Network Outage Notification

--------------------------------------------------



Dear MCI Customer,



Your connection may be down due to an outage; we 

are working to restore service as quickly as 

possible.  We will contact you again once the 

situation is remedied.  In the meantime, if you 

want further updates, please call us at one of 

the phone numbers listed below.







Please do not respond to this message.



Thank you for your patience.

MCI 

What programming language is this?  I have never seen a "From:" command before.  Is this PHP?  Would it even compile?

GoatCheez,

where do you live that has 15MBit/3MBit service?!?!? highest i can get on cable is 6mbit

 

lol - This is a temporary hack until I can get the real CAPTCHA validation working. Just type broken in the textbox below.

Bus Raker:

Anonymous:

I always Laugh Out Loud at an email notification of Internet connection down.
That is like the "calling the phone company to report that your phone service is dead"!

That message is totally legit.  I supported a WAN of 450 sites across the country.  Whenevor one of the sites went down, MCI sent me that exact message.  I could then call the site proactively and tell them the status (note I did not email them).  The timestamps between the DOWN and UP messages where used to measure my uptime key performance indicator.

This forum needs to start thinking 'out of the sandbox'.  The world is bigger than your Dev machine.

Yeah.  That's right, Bus.  These other schmos just can't see the 'big picture'.  You and me, man... At least we understand what Enterprise systems are like!  I say we kick all their asses!

(Pssst.  Everyone humor him.  He might be dangerous.)

Bus Raker:

Anonymous:

I always Laugh Out Loud at an email notification of Internet connection down.
That is like the "calling the phone company to report that your phone service is dead"!

That message is totally legit.  I supported a WAN of 450 sites across the country.  Whenevor one of the sites went down, MCI sent me that exact message.  I could then call the site proactively and tell them the status (note I did not email them).  The timestamps between the DOWN and UP messages where used to measure my uptime key performance indicator.

This forum needs to start thinking 'out of the sandbox'.  The world is bigger than your Dev machine.

So let me get this straight.  You use email timestamps to measure your downtime indicators?  Because there's no way those
could be forged.  I'm not sure if I should congradulate you for getting
a client to sign that kind of contract, or denigrate you for being as
fraudulent as MCI.



Wait, you're with MCI aren't you? 



For anyone who doesn't know, MCI got in a lot of trouble some years
back for slamming.  I'm actually amazed they are still around.  People
started avoiding them like the plague.  They have basically 0 market
presence in my state.

This type of shit makes me puke

    Hey guys,

I work in the office with James, and I don't think Alex's post did justice to this story.

We are a small branch for a giant company, with a huge contract with MCI.  For the past 5 months or so, we lose connectivity for at least a couple minutes a day.  Sometimes several times a day.  Often for quite a bit of time. 

Because our company has this big contract with MCI, we can't switch T1 providers.  However, since MCI has a giant contract with us, they have nothing to lose.

They do the absolute minimum amount of work to make it appear like they are trying to resolve the situation.  They keep saying they will "rewire the building" or they "rewired the road" or something ridiculous.  However, once or twice a week, a new tech guy comes that we have never seen before, they go to our server room, look at our T1 line and say "oh yeah somethings wrong", poke around for a while, at which point the internet will come back (simply by nature of the fact that it comes and goes).  They assume they fixed it and leave.

They do the same exact thing every time.

This includes the awesome emails that James gets.  He told them he does not want them.  He told them he is on site.  They don't care.  He gets tons of them.

In fact, while writing this post, we lost and gained internet at least 3 times (my little outlook box popped up and let me know).  That means he has three emails in his inbox that he can't get til the internet comes back.

The situation has gotten so bad that we have found alternate sources of internet, which help for when we need to look something up, but are useless for any domain-related activities, which are obviously important to the company.

I promise you it is a WTF.

Lets kill kill kill kill the POSERS..
 lets Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat the Shit out of Little Fuckers...

if it's green.. cut it down
if it shits..
 shoot it.

 the business dont care..
it's all about the bottom line.

for the CEO each square foot of his house represents approx. 1000 families suffering.

marvin_rabbit:

Bus Raker:

This forum needs to start thinking 'out of the sandbox'.  The world is bigger than your Dev machine.

Yeah. 
That's right, Bus.  These other schmos just can't see the 'big
picture'.  You and me, man... At least we understand what Enterprise
systems are like!  I say we kick all their asses!

(Pssst.  Everyone humor him.  He might be dangerous.)

Anonymous:

    Hey guys,

I work in the office with James, and I don't think Alex's post did justice to this story.

I promise you it is a WTF.

Too late now, man.  Me and Bus are still coming to kick your ass!

Anonymous:

I promise you it is a WTF.

I promise you, poor or stupid customer service is not a WTF.  It may be poor or stupid or both, but WTF it ain't.

I further promise you that having a contractual relationship that is so much of your business that the client owns you is a WTF, but do not worry - it will not last.  Either the contract or your company will go away.

Good luck - you need it.


OMG - I edited this post!!

I further promise you that having a contractual relationship that is so much of your business that the client owns you is a WTF, but do not worry - it will not last.  Either the contract or your company will go away.

The client doesn't own them. They are the client! When your suppliers own you is even worse!

Tampa, FL.... Brighthouse offers it to the Digital Combo customers. It's an upgrade from the 5Mbit package, although now that i think about it, I think it's really 15Mbit/1.5Mbit. What was also cool is that the upgrade only costs $8 a month for a year, and it also includes HBO and Cinemax ;-P

Alex, dude, c'mon... If anyone wants a better wtf for the day, I came across an old link while cleaning my bookmarks:

http://spedstories.blogspot.com/

I have never seen a "From:" command before

You need to get out more.

http://www.fortran.com/come_from.html

Anonymous:

    Hey guys,

I work in the office with James, and I don't think Alex's post did justice to this story.

We are a small branch for a giant company, with a huge contract with MCI.  For the past 5 months or so, we lose connectivity for at least a couple minutes a day.  Sometimes several times a day.  Often for quite a bit of time. 

Because our company has this big contract with MCI, we can't switch T1 providers.  However, since MCI has a giant contract with us, they have nothing to lose.

They do the absolute minimum amount of work to make it appear like they are trying to resolve the situation.  They keep saying they will "rewire the building" or they "rewired the road" or something ridiculous.  However, once or twice a week, a new tech guy comes that we have never seen before, they go to our server room, look at our T1 line and say "oh yeah somethings wrong", poke around for a while, at which point the internet will come back (simply by nature of the fact that it comes and goes).  They assume they fixed it and leave.

They do the same exact thing every time.

This includes the awesome emails that James gets.  He told them he does not want them.  He told them he is on site.  They don't care.  He gets tons of them.

In fact, while writing this post, we lost and gained internet at least 3 times (my little outlook box popped up and let me know).  That means he has three emails in his inbox that he can't get til the internet comes back.

The situation has gotten so bad that we have found alternate sources of internet, which help for when we need to look something up, but are useless for any domain-related activities, which are obviously important to the company.

I promise you it is a WTF.

Sooooooooooooooooooooooo

The WTF is that MCI has poor service?

Bigger wtf: Bus Raker using e-mail timestamps for uptime calculation!

marvin_rabbit:

Bus Raker:

This forum needs to start thinking 'out of the sandbox'.  The world is bigger than your Dev machine.

Yeah.  That's right, Bus.  These other schmos just can't see the 'big picture'.  You and me, man... At least we understand what Enterprise systems are like!  I say we kick all their asses!

(Pssst.  Everyone humor him.  He might be dangerous.)

Whoa there!  Are you telling me there's people in this forum WITHOUT a sense of humour or sarcasm?  There's the WTF!

Anonymous:

I have never seen a "From:" command before

You need to get out more.

http://www.fortran.com/come_from.html

Damn, I was just hoping to post something ridiculous and have people take me seriously a la those ridiculous comments yesterday about how "you shouldn't do just client-side/javascript validation."

Fortran is a little bit before my time...

"and there should be an LED that lights up when the battery is dead!"

GoatCheez:

Sooooooooooooooooooooooo

The WTF is that MCI has poor service?

Bigger wtf: Bus Raker using e-mail timestamps for uptime calculation!

Wow you guys are relentless.  Is this how you take it out on the world when there is a poor daily WTF?  I have no idea how they reported uptime (I would assume there would be logs from the switches) and I don't work there anymore.  I was only there to support a Visual FoxPro database and had to witness all of the MCI shit going on ('cause obviously they lost database connectivity so I would check the email queue to see if the location was down).  VFP ... now there's a WTF!

Wait, why am I explaining myself to a bunch of randoms?  WTF?

The real question is, HTF do you get rid of an MCI sales rep that won't stop calling you trying to sell you something even after you told them you are going with their competition for half the price..?

The biggest wtf of them all:
Bus explaining himself to a bunch of random people on a forum thread!

lol... Just bustin yer chops lol...  If ya don't take all the posts on this forum with a grain of salt, you'll end up in a never-ending battle... Just hope Alex doesn't disappoint tommorow!

marvin_rabbit:

Yeah.  That's right, Bus.  These other schmos just can't see the 'big picture'.  You and me, man... At least we understand what Enterprise systems are like!  I say we kick all their asses!

(Pssst.  Everyone humor him.  He might be dangerous.)

But, but, if you try to beat me up, um...well, Chuck Norris is my best friend.  Yeah, that's it.  He's my friend.  His facial hair could beat you up by itself!

GoatCheez:

Tampa, FL.... Brighthouse offers it to the Digital Combo customers. It's an upgrade from the 5Mbit package, although now that i think about it, I think it's really 15Mbit/1.5Mbit. What was also cool is that the upgrade only costs $8 a month for a year, and it also includes HBO and Cinemax ;-P

Alex, dude, c'mon... If anyone wants a better wtf for the day, I came across an old link while cleaning my bookmarks:

http://spedstories.blogspot.com/

WTF..
 those guys are a buncha prix.
 ...
 poor noob want's a little help and they are just being a buncha goof's.

I wish I was there.. I would have slammed all those morons.
 and sent em to look at this link:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=125794&SiteID=1

looks like it is a bug.

Anonymous:

GoatCheez:

Tampa, FL.... Brighthouse offers it to the Digital Combo customers. It's an upgrade from the 5Mbit package, although now that i think about it, I think it's really 15Mbit/1.5Mbit. What was also cool is that the upgrade only costs $8 a month for a year, and it also includes HBO and Cinemax ;-P

Alex, dude, c'mon... If anyone wants a better wtf for the day, I came across an old link while cleaning my bookmarks:

http://spedstories.blogspot.com/

WTF..
 those guys are a buncha prix.
 ...
 poor noob want's a little help and they are just being a buncha goof's.

I wish I was there.. I would have slammed all those morons.
 and sent em to look at this link:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=125794&SiteID=1

looks like it is a bug.

Naw dude, read the whole thread that you posted. Not a bug, just normal FPU output.

lower element:

I'm actually amazed [MCI] are still around.

They aren't, really. Verizon bought MCI recently, and renamed it "Verizon Business".



What amazes me is that T1s are still around.

GoatCheez:

Sooooooooooooooooooooooo

The WTF is that MCI has poor service?

Sounds like the WTF is that MCI has decent service, but less than stellar field techs.

As for measuring uptime, the emails could serve as a useful audit tool and reminder to check the DS1 stats - depending on the capabilities of the CSU/DSU, and whether it sits on the subscriber or carrier side of the demarcation point.

What is the DS1 alarming?  Yellow (FERF)?  EBER (Excessive Bit Error Rate)?  LOS?  LCV (Line Coding Violation)?  What's the BER when the link is "up"?  For that matter, what line coding is being used (AMI? B8ZS?) SF? ESF?

GoatCheez:

Tampa, FL.... Brighthouse offers it to the Digital Combo customers. It's an upgrade from the 5Mbit package, although now that i think about it, I think it's really 15Mbit/1.5Mbit. What was also cool is that the upgrade only costs $8 a month for a year, and it also includes HBO and Cinemax ;-P

Alex, dude, c'mon... If anyone wants a better wtf for the day, I came across an old link while cleaning my bookmarks:

http://spedstories.blogspot.com/

OMFG, that has got to be one of the funnies things I've ever read in my life.

This might be a good read to help understand why he just couldn't get it.

http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

By the way, the pizza seems to be gone, I wanted to test it with the new CS.

yea I read that.
 but im saying it "Looks like a bug"
 specially if your new and you dont know why it's happening.

I would have prolly thought it to be a bug..
 but I would have dug deeper, noobs usually arent too good at digging yet.

GoatCheez:

Anonymous:

GoatCheez:

Tampa, FL.... Brighthouse offers it to the Digital Combo customers. It's an upgrade from the 5Mbit package, although now that i think about it, I think it's really 15Mbit/1.5Mbit. What was also cool is that the upgrade only costs $8 a month for a year, and it also includes HBO and Cinemax ;-P

Alex, dude, c'mon... If anyone wants a better wtf for the day, I came across an old link while cleaning my bookmarks:

http://spedstories.blogspot.com/

WTF..
 those guys are a buncha prix.
 ...
 poor noob want's a little help and they are just being a buncha goof's.

I wish I was there.. I would have slammed all those morons.
 and sent em to look at this link:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=125794&SiteID=1

looks like it is a bug.

Naw dude, read the whole thread that you posted. Not a bug, just normal FPU output.

Gotta tell, ya... I read both of the posts, and then went back and reread the 'sped' post.  And, yeah, those guys were a bunch of pricks.
(Disclaimer: Not saying I'm not ever a prick.  I was a prick a few hours ago with Bus's post.)
The guy didn't get any answers until he found the problem himself.  And by the time they could have helped him out with the finer points of implicit casting, the whole thing had degenerated to name calling... which the pricks started.

smbell:

GoatCheez:

Tampa, FL.... Brighthouse offers it to the Digital Combo customers. It's an upgrade from the 5Mbit package, although now that i think about it, I think it's really 15Mbit/1.5Mbit. What was also cool is that the upgrade only costs $8 a month for a year, and it also includes HBO and Cinemax ;-P

Alex, dude, c'mon... If anyone wants a better wtf for the day, I came across an old link while cleaning my bookmarks:

http://spedstories.blogspot.com/

OMFG, that has got to be one of the funnies things I've ever read in my life.

This might be a good read to help understand why he just couldn't get it.

http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

By the way, the pizza seems to be gone, I wanted to test it with the new CS.

http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

ah, yes.  The Juice.   Brillant

marvin_rabbit:

GoatCheez:

Anonymous:

GoatCheez:

Tampa, FL.... Brighthouse offers it to the Digital Combo customers. It's an upgrade from the 5Mbit package, although now that i think about it, I think it's really 15Mbit/1.5Mbit. What was also cool is that the upgrade only costs $8 a month for a year, and it also includes HBO and Cinemax ;-P

Alex, dude, c'mon... If anyone wants a better wtf for the day, I came across an old link while cleaning my bookmarks:

http://spedstories.blogspot.com/

WTF..
 those guys are a buncha prix.
 ...
 poor noob want's a little help and they are just being a buncha goof's.

I wish I was there.. I would have slammed all those morons.
 and sent em to look at this link:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=125794&SiteID=1

looks like it is a bug.

Naw dude, read the whole thread that you posted. Not a bug, just normal FPU output.

Gotta tell, ya... I read both of the posts, and then went back and reread the 'sped' post.  And, yeah, those guys were a bunch of pricks.
(Disclaimer: Not saying I'm not ever a prick.  I was a prick a few hours ago with Bus's post.)
The guy didn't get any answers until he found the problem himself.  And by the time they could have helped him out with the finer points of implicit casting, the whole thing had degenerated to name calling... which the pricks started.

You're kidding, right?    He was told early on that it was compiler-independent. 

Some people should be  removed from the  Gene Pool.  Retroactively if  necessary.  Paraphrased from Ed Yourdon.

smbell:

GoatCheez:

Tampa, FL.... Brighthouse
offers it to the Digital Combo customers. It's an upgrade from the
5Mbit package, although now that i think about it, I think it's really
15Mbit/1.5Mbit. What was also cool is that the upgrade only costs $8 a
month for a year, and it also includes HBO and Cinemax ;-P

Alex, dude, c'mon... If anyone wants a better wtf for the day, I came across an old link while cleaning my bookmarks:

http://spedstories.blogspot.com/

OMFG, that has got to be one of the funnies things I've ever read in my life.

This might be a good read to help understand why he just couldn't get it.

http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

By the way, the pizza seems to be gone, I wanted to test it with the new CS.

Now I get that juice joke!  That quote never made sense to me the past few months.

Bus Raker:

Viagra?  What does that have to do with the price of eggs in Hong Kong?

Well if the roosters in Hong Kong took Viagra...

Bus Raker:

Anonymous:

I always Laugh Out Loud at an email notification of Internet connection down.
That is like the "calling the phone company to report that your phone service is dead"!

That message is totally legit.  I supported a WAN of 450 sites across the country.  Whenevor one of the sites went down, MCI sent me that exact message.  I could then call the site proactively and tell them the status (note I did not email them).  The timestamps between the DOWN and UP messages where used to measure my uptime key performance indicator.

This forum needs to start thinking 'out of the sandbox'.  The world is bigger than your Dev machine.

I'm thinking outside of the sandbox, I'm looking at a world bigger than my dev machine. The sign, outside my sandbox, says these guys paid big bucks for a T1 line, which usually comes with 24/7 access... and they are geet 22/5 access for it. That is a nice little nifty WTF to me. On top of that, to rub salt in the wounds, while the network is down, they send an email over the down network... Which even apparently YOU don't do. And yeah I'm sure the email is legit, I'm sure the network is down.

chrismcb:

I'm thinking outside of the sandbox, I'm looking at a world bigger than my dev machine. The sign, outside my sandbox, says these guys paid big bucks for a T1 line, which usually comes with 24/7 access... and they are geet 22/5 access for it. That is a nice little nifty WTF to me. On top of that, to rub salt in the wounds, while the network is down, they send an email over the down network... Which even apparently YOU don't do. And yeah I'm sure the email is legit, I'm sure the network is down.

A T1 line comes with highly developed OAM capabilities (that's
Operations, Administration, and Maintenance for those who are unfamiliar).  So far, the only
suggestion I've seen from those responsible is that the link was "down".  No indication if it was an
Excessive Bit Error Rate.  A Loss of Signal.  Line
Coding Violations.  No indication of what the Bit Error Rate was while
the link was "up".  No indication which direction was errored.  All of which (and more) should be known.



These are pretty basic requirements for a client to administer a T1. 
It may well be that these details were curtailed in order to make it
look like a WTF on MCI's part.  Without those details, though, the WTF
appears elsewhere.

It was a little bit of an aside in the original post, but not only was
the email sent over the downed network, but the email told the
administrator to call the numbers that were included below, and there
weren't any numbers in the email.



More than anything, I think that is the WTF...