ISP's Slapping Techs For Lending A Hand 331
Mike writes "Broadband Reports is running a story about how several large ISP's have reprimanded, even fired techs who offer support in BBR's forums in their free time. BellSouth is the latest ISP to forbid any official tech support representation. Instead of sculpting PR guidelines for techs to follow, they're
scaring them into submission."
Truly horrible (Score:2, Insightful)
breach of personal privacy (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sounds about right to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Kyle
There saving company time and money (Score:1, Insightful)
It's a simple case of liability (Score:5, Insightful)
You've probably seen plenty of usenet posts with long
The wave of the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
is...? (Score:3, Insightful)
The employees should be allowed to do pretty much anything they want when they go home. (apart from selling non-disclosure agreement secrets.) This is kinda like firing a doctor for curing someone without charging them. Seems kinda silly to me.
But then again, the tech market is in a slump, and they may need the money.
If this is during work though, it's somewhat understandable (note: I am not condoning it (IANCI).). Some offices prefer you work for them during work hours, and not work for free online.
As well, if these techies are giving out details that they aren't allowed to (due to some agreement or another). Then again, it is understablable (IANCI). Businesses have their "intellectual property" that they'd prefer to sell then give away.
Seem odd though for a company to do this and risk the bad press.
Re:breach of personal privacy (Score:2, Insightful)
Kyle
"Official Capacity" (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't blame these companies a bit for wanting to be able to control what their company says and how their company is portrayed. The article says nothing about the companies prohibiting the techs from posting in an unofficial capacity.
Its the correct move. (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally have seen incorrect information posted on BBSs. Yet if the poster IDs him/herself as an employee of company X and that incorrect information causes damage the company could be liable. The article says "So instead of spending twenty minutes drafting clear corporate policy on public forum relations protocol, some companies clamp down on such activities; sometimes brutally." No they took there 20 minutes and elimiated a potential legal loophole. Running a proper BBS forum would take a lot of resources and I can understand why a corportaion would want to clamp down on this.
This isn't the evil empire. This is CYOA. And considering the amount of stupid and incorrect information that can be found out there I don't blame them on bit!
All Aboard! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Samaritan Effect (Score:2, Insightful)
If you look at the history of companies like Apple, for example, you see this effect can be quite pronounced. If we Mac-heads had let Apple die, our investment in skills and hardware would all be worthless now!
Re:You stupid troll (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:breach of personal privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Truly horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
For example: a licensed tech provides off-time support in a relatively unofficial capacity, which causes the user to do something that royally screws his connection/hardware/software/downloaded pr0n/etc. User calls official tech support and demands retribution, seeing as how one of the company's techs told user to do something that "broke his stuff."
I've been in this situation before, and it ain't pretty for anyone involved, no matter how good the tech's intentions were.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for kindness and helping others. But I also understand the corporate position of "no unofficial tech support by official tech supporters."
Re:breach of personal privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
RTFA. The main complaint of these ISPs is that these people (in their free time) say "I'm a tech support person for XYZ ISP and..." Their free time doesn't seem so free any more if they seem to be acting in their official capability as XYZ tech support. And if the information is harmful, does the poster get blamed or the employer they all but claim to represent?
Re:It's a simple case of liability (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thats the reason I was fired (Score:4, Insightful)
Generally speaking, most places dislike their employees generating business from their customers or doing business on their time.
Re:Truly horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, let's take a step back for a minute. First of all, this is DSL, not saving the whales. The terrorists haven't won just because these guys can't post.
The truth is, running a company is hard. Wouldn't you rather have your job for the "Holiday season" that some free webboard tech support?
Part of the problem here is that it can be dangerous to have your employees posting as a representative of your company without any standard of what can or cannot be communicated safely.
It appears from this article that that some companies are setting up a policy that forbids this sort action by their employees. In a large company, this can be necessary. How well do the managers know their employees? Are they just spouting off about how much they hate their employers? Are managers going to scour the web for these people's posts?
It's true, it would be nice if this were allowed to continue, but I certainly understand why for liability's sake most companies don't want to be involved. This certainly doesn't warrant front page slashdot news. I know we all hate corporations, but often times companies get big because their the best at what they do, or at least good at making money while doing it.
Some day you kids will go off to college, and then, you might even have to get a job at a corporation, too.
Jesus, people. This isn't microsoft sacrificing babies in the parking lot every morning.
Re:Sounds about right to me (Score:3, Insightful)
The key part you're missing is that these techs ARE doing this in their free time. It's not that they're being asked to visit these forums while off the clock. The only reason the company caught up to them, is because they identified themselves on a public forum as company employees. The company is worried about being asked for a paycheck, it simply doesn't fit along the company line of using answers to technical questions that have been reviewed and OK'd by management.
Tech Support (Score:2, Insightful)
No, it's not right or fair. Unfortunately, in these days when people cannot recognize that hot coffee can burn and so sue the restaurant, Bell South is protecting itself from that sort of legislation.
But, no, it isn't right.
The Good and the Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
The main problem is that some people just do not have the correct "attitude" and a disgruntled employee (rightfully or not) might cause severe damage to the "corporate" image.
OK, OK. You must be thinking now: "But not helping also damages their reputation!". And I couldn't agree more. I think they should "pre-screen" the employees that can do that, or employ some similar process.
I speak from past experience. In a previous job, we were in charge of fixing a broken Oracle Database (poor backup schemes and a disk failure -- you get the idea). The development team sent a programmer to "help us out". The management team on the branch office where the problem happened was already demanding answers (who? why? How can we avoid it?). We were kindly explaining everything to calm them down (a new backup policy, redundant hardware and all). Everything was going in the right direction.
Later on that day, in the middle of a big meeting to discuss the problem (with the aforementioned managers), Mr. Programmer does some quick queries to an yet to be fully restored database and says "Well, I say that this database is completely messed up -- I don't trust this data anymore...".
Needless to say we had to counter his false and invalid arguments with some facts. Took us some good hours and a lot of paperwork.
That is the danger of having someone without any tact representing the company or a group in a "delicate" situation.
Re:Truly horrible (Score:4, Insightful)
This is essentially what it's saying to the people in charge. Whether it's true or not is what they should be worried about.
It also a liability issue. What if a less-than-stellar tech goes online and starts spewing bad information - then people are angry at your company, and you've done nothing wrong.
As a former Prodigy Internet tech (it was acquired by Bell South...) I recall this was an issue for our call center. Tech support is practically a scripted job and while it attracts a variety of intelligent people, it gets plenty of random ones, too. We had plenty of people who would spin wild tales for people as to why they couldn't connect, and believe them themselves.
Re:Thats the reason I was fired (Score:3, Insightful)
it's very typical, and what we need to do is call the kettle black.. we all need to start publically humiliating CEO's, CFO's and espically CTO's at companies that do this kind of crap... call up and leave messages to these "leader" as to how stupid they are, be sure to spread the word about any company that does this, you'd be really suprised how a little of warning via word of mouth is more effective than $2,000,000.00 in advertising.
Basically.... WARN everyone you know about companies like what you worked for. fill them in, and let them know that XYZ isp is not what you want to use...
Hell I know cable guys that reccomend to people "can you get DSL?? I'd switch to that first and avoid cablemodem service unless you have no other choice. hell I also know cable guys that reccomend to their friends and relatives to get a dish instead of cable service in their town.
the way to flush these "morons with money" (tm) is to spread the word to everyone you know... it will put them out of business.
understandable - even nescessary (Score:2, Insightful)
I am a 'network engineer' as one of my collateral duties in my job and am quite comfortable troubleshooting network issues. It drives me around the bend when it takes me an hour to manage to reach someone who can understand 'the modem is synced but your gateway can't be pinged' rather than "OK, now click on the 'Control Panel' and choose 'Network Settings'. Now click on 'Advanced'. Now verify that your gateway address is
Useful phrase for clueful people: "Why, yes Mr. Level 1 Tech Support, I do run Windows ME." Know why? "I'm sorry, we can't help you unless you are running Windows or Macintosh." Not even if the problem is that the DSL is down because PacBell (hey - why not give them the free advertising that their 'Controlled Customer Interaction' deserved) screwed up and turned it off. The next time I have to reconfigure my home network so that a Windows machine can be plugged directly into the DSL modem because that is the only thing their script supports and they can't discover that THEY have an error until I do this - I am going to BILL them for wasting my time at $200 US dollars an hour.
Fucking scripts.
In the last 3 years I've had my DSL disconnected IN ERROR by PacBell 3 times. Each time it took 2 weeks to get reconnected and the first week was nothing but forcing my way up through the support levels to someone who DIDN'T have a script and COULD fix the damn problem. For the record: The problem is that I have a static IP address and their install people messed up the database entries saying I'm a customer after first messing up and assigning me dynamic addressing. So a year or so down the line when they have a router problem and rebuild all their routes from the database - I get dropped from the routing tables for 'not being a customer'. Two weeks. Three times. Three years. Average of over 10 phone calls lasting more than 30 minutes for each incident. All because the damn problem wasn't on their script.
And it probably didn't occur to you that the number of people calling tech support is significantly reduced when people have some useful forum for getting their problems resolved that doesn't involve getting put on hold for 20 minutes before you ever talk to a human. You can afford to spend 2X as long on a call if 3 calls weren't made as a consequence of a good support forum. People's problems are rarely unique. But by 'hiding' problems and solutions behind phone trees and scripts rather than placing them in open forums, you prevent people from finding the solutions for themselves. Instead you waste your company's time and money doing the exact same thing over and over and over 'By the Script'.
But, hey, no one ever got fired for going 'by the script.'
the truth (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Truly horrible (Score:3, Insightful)
If your support is that worthless, then forbidding your employees from helping others in their spare time won't help. The only way to fix that problem is to fix your official support.
What makes you think this isn't going to happen while the tech is on the job? If a tech does that then they deserve to be reprimanded. While reprimanding an employee for what they say while not on the job treads dangerously on First Amendment rights, employers can probably get away with it these days.
Regardless, techs should be reprimanded for doing things that are bad for the company, not things that merely could be.
"Liability" has become the ubiquitous excuse for far too many of the evils in the world today.
Re:Truly horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
When on the job, I can represent myself as a technical support representative from my company, and when I am not on the job I cannot make that claim. Its that simple.
I can still offer support, assistance and advice, but there is no way I'd support anything outside of my work structure and still represent myself as doing official work (i.e. claiming I'm a support rep).
I don't do this for my company's sake, I do it for mine -- its called CYA... coverying your ass.
DSLreports Is A Terrible Place To Get Help (Score:3, Insightful)
Have any of you actually gone to DSL reports and gotten help from message boards? You post a problem and you get 200 answers about "it's your CDROM drivers" and, "your MTU window size is too small!".
Most of these techs may be enthusiastic about their jobs and helping people, but they are also not very technically inclined to help the customers. How many of them are actually qualified to do anything on the ISPs systems? Does that tech know about ATM VPI/VCI addressing, am I supposed to be using 0/32 or something else? The difference between AAL3 and AAL5? What about PPP components and how laying PPP over Ethernet is such a bad idea? Can they tell you why they use PAP instead of CHAP authentication? Do they know half a DINK about RADIUS? Ask them what the frequency ranges are for CAP and DMT. Do they even know how IPv4 addressing works? Hell, ask them how many pairs DSL runs on and you may be surprised at the answers that you get. They couldn't lay out a static route on a Cisco if their jobs depended on it -- which is why they don't get exec, or even login access.
At first I was disappointed when I turned to DSL reports to see what their message boards looked like. Then I realized that it was a good thing. DSL Reports is a idiot magnet, keeping all of those screaming kids and adults away from... ME.
I am still against the big ISPs, telcos, and cable Internet providers. This was a good move but done in classic big-stupid teclo tradition. They are to blame for the fact that these customers need technical support in the first place. Your network operator is stupid from top to bottom.
in customer relations, you DON'T.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Truly horrible (Score:4, Insightful)
The quality of tech support was not in question, it is a matter of when an employee clocks out at the end of the day and acts as a private citizen X does the company get to govern his/her actions.
No one was saying these individuals were trying to act as agents of the company. All liability arguments are moot. This is simply a matter of control.
Re:Attention: Ekrout is a known troll (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead of trying to drag this guy down-- who, even if nothing else, is really entertaining-- why don't you try posting something insightful or funny yourself?
Re:Sounds about right to me (Score:3, Insightful)
The same applies to some extent for technical support. If I say I work for xyzzy (even if I don't!) then people are going to assume I know what I'm talking about at least as far as xyzzy's service is concerned, even if I explicitly say I'm not currently answering in an official capacity. I'm exploiting (and if I screw up, damaging..) xyzzy's reputation.
The simple answer (at least for web forums) is to log on under a pseudonym and don't say who you work for. Build your own reputation. The company won't know who you are so they can't gag you. The customer has no idea who you are IRL or who you work for, so they can't sue anyone. Everyone's happy.
Re:Don't see anything wrong with this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thats the reason I was fired (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thats the reason I was fired (Score:2, Insightful)
True. The problem is that most ISPs larger than a handful of customers rely on telco equipment (or at least they do in Ontario, Canada). The telco configures the dialup boxes, and getting things changed on them is like pulling teeth. I'm told the defaults on a Cisco dialup box tend to be rather conservative in what they will accept in line noise.
>You would be amazed at what kinds of things can disrupt a dialup connection. Did you know that many people get different connection rates depending on the weather?
Yes. I actually live in an area that varies between 19.2k and 31.2k depending on your luck of the draw. However, the fact remains that v.32 connections are supposed to be able to retrain to another speed upon line noise. All the ISPs I've tried in my area simply drop the connection flat. I can get a stable connection at 14.4k, though, which goes to show it's very much a factor of their boxes refusing to renegotiate the connection (or at least that's the best explanation I've ever seen). I've tried about 10 different modems, varying from cheap-ass SM56s to expensive external USRs. All the same.
>I've seen connections improve by replacing the phone jack in the wall. Moisture builds up and the contacts become corroded. It's not some lame excuse tech support made up to get you off the phone - it might not be the answer to your problem, but it's a known issue that can't be ruled out yet.
Been there, done that. Here we have a demarc jack at the point the line enters the house. Same results when connected to that.
>How do you explain it when a thousand other customers can all connect just fine, and you're the only one having problems, but you're connecting to the exact same equipment as everyone else is? Is that the ISP's fault?
The other thousand customers don't stay on the net for an hour long? Your logs should show that... Of course, the logs are already tainted with errors resulting from purposely misconfigured dialup boxes (which, BTW, shows the admins are competent -- these boxes don't misconfigure themselves -- so don't feel I think people at ISPs are stupid).
>You can dial your friend's ISP and get better speeds, so you assume your ISP is to blame. Take your computer to a friend's house, and plug into his phone line. Your connection speed vastly improves. Whose fault is it now?
Been there, done that, for over a decade. In a "good" area that gets a decent connection, no drops. In a "bad" area (like mine) I have to manually force the modems to connect at a lower rate to keep a stable connection.
This is proof that there's a problem with the ISPs boxes. And, as I've said, I've used more than a few ISPs around here.
>And then there's 56k. First of all, did you know it's impossible to make a 56k connection if there's more than one conversion between analog and digital anywhere on the connection? Your analog line is converted to a digital signal at your phone company's central office - that's one conversion. If it converts back to analog at the other end, 56k is impossible.
Yup. That's why I don't get 56k. Not because of the digital problem, though, it's because of the other fact you sort of missed -- cheap telcos strip the high-bit of the connection, giving them 12.5% more through the same line.
>Secondly, there are four protocols for 56k: X2, k56flex, v.90, and v.92. v.92 is pretty new and not widely supported...
I don't get any connections anywhere near that speed. Doesn't matter what equipment I use, or what flash the ROMs have. Same steaming crappy internet everywhere. And it isn't just limited to my town... I've seen the same problem anywhere where the lines aren't 100%.
>(and the particular init string required to do this is different for each manufacturer, and they're usually cryptic, like "+MS=11,1")
I _love_ modems like this! Try the ones where you have to set the S registers... Ugggggghhhhh...
>I don't do dialup support anymore, so I can't say how much of this is still an issue. I would imagine most of these kinds of incompatibilities have been resolved, now that v.90 has had a few years to mature. Still, don't assume the ISP is always responsible for your problems.
I didn't. I just suspected it until I did a little prodding of people who I know as sysadmins...
I'm sure your ISP is decent if you've checked it and they don't do this sort of crap. If you have service in the Ontario, Canada area let me know and I'll direct customers there.
bellsouth people giving tech support! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Truly horrible (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a valid point... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is really sad that it comes to this, when in reality I've gotten help from covad tech's on DSLREPORTS before, and several times I've gotten help with advanced router functions from some really sharp people there...
Re:Truly horrible (Score:2, Insightful)
Most people can't/won't check if what I'm claiming is true or not.
Just as most people doesn't verify the accuracy of information they dig up on the internet.
But I can agree with you to some extent.
Back when I was working as a technician for a broadband-company, I would gladly help people out but I would never say that I worked for that company though.
In part because I'm not actually representing my employer when I'm not working and therefore has no business saying that "I'm a company X techie".
In part because if people know I'm from that company, I will get targeted with complaints about their service and stupid questions that I'm not allowed to answer.
(Like: What equipment do you use, what servers, what security, etc. Only idiots and fools would answer that kind of questions. Especially if they've been boosting about where they work.)
But as long as I don't say where I work or tell people stuff that I shouldn't reveal, I see no reason for my employer to forbid me to help or fire me for it.