Are ISP's responsible for compensation due to down time?

[coolred]

I know like with your phone, if you are without service for a certain amount of time they have to give you a credit on your bill. I was wondering if this applied at all to ISPs?

 

[pyonir]

probably not. Qwest wasn't going to reimburse after a outage caused by a hacker...claiming it wasn't their fault, therefore they didn't have to pay (i think that was what it was about..i don't really remember)

it is probably in the contract you signed.

 

[XMan]

It depends on your contract, most only guarantee a 95% uptime. That means if it's down for a whole day, they're still under the terms of the contract.

I couldn't access MSN for over a week, twice in the span of two months, and they never gave me a credit.

 

[Zorro]

Some might give you shut up money just to get rid of you on the phone.

 

[GooberPHX420]

With cox.net service, I dont think they have to give you anything, they just wanna keep thier customers so they sometimes offer a small credit, or if you b|tch enough, a month or two..

 

[b0mbrman]

At one point, I got a pretty big credit from our ISP after it was down for a week...if it's just down for a day or so, there is nothing.

Check your contract

 

[Ronstang]

Your ISPs suck then guys. I was having all kinds of intermittent problems and lossing connection for unknown reasons and th8s wen on fo about a month. The lady at the Cable Co. creditted me half a months service for all my troubles and the sad thing is it turned out to be a POS Netgear outer. I love my Cable Co., they really take care of customers.

 

[Paulson]

With my isp (where I work/admin the website) if the customer bitches enough they'll get a month free... usually it's just to get em off of our backs...

 

[Instagib]

i dont know

 

[Dedpuhl]

Cox has given me a couple credits. At one point, I was on the phone with them once every other day

 

[db]

In my experience, you have to *notify* them of the outage when it happens.
When the service is functional again you call billing and tell them you don't want to be charged for that time.
ie, service was down for 2 days: you get 2/30 off you monthly service fee.
I wish more people would do this, b/c this REALLY gets their attention--it is the best kind of feedback a consumer can give in order for changes/improvements to be made. (And it punishes them for bad service).

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: pyonir
probably not. Qwest wasn't going to reimburse after a outage caused by a hacker...claiming it wasn't their fault, therefore they didn't have to pay (i think that was what it was about..i don't really remember)

it is probably in the contract you signed.

Are you referring to the Code Red? (July of last year I think?) I was working for Qwest technical support at that time & I assure you it was NOT their fault.

The attack method used by the virus produced insane amounts of hits on the Cisco 67x routers that were used as DSL interfaces. In a short period of time, the router would lock due to a buffer overflow. Qwest identified the problem, & temporarily solved it by changing the web interface port to a random port above 1024 (defaults to 80, obviously). Cisco eventually provided a permanent fix, which resolved the bug in the CBOS that allowed the virus to shut it down.

This was not Qwest's fault, it was the fault of the coders who wrote Code Red. If you really wanted to stretch blame, you could blame it on Cisco for having the fault in their CBOS.

This would be much akin to you blaming your PC manufacturer for your PC having a virus which prevented it from dialing.

Viper GTS

 

[Fritzo]

Originally posted by: coolred
I know like with your phone, if you are without service for a certain amount of time they have to give you a credit on your bill. I was wondering if this applied at all to ISPs?

We don't state that directly, but if there's an outage for more than two days, we credit the customer's bill.

 

[Tiger]

The folks were without thier cable for 10 days. Excite went belly up and left a lot of cable companies holding the bag. To their credit Mediacom didn't charge for the days without service. Of course three weeks later they raised the price for the service by 50%.

 

[Mookow]

Originally posted by: Tiger
The folks were without thier cable for 10 days. Excite went belly up and left a lot of cable companies holding the bag. To their credit Mediacom didn't charge for the days without service. Of course three weeks later they raised the price for the service by 50%.

What were you expecting? The previous company could not break even at that price. So, the price went up.

 

[Pepsi90919]

usually it's just to get em off of our backs...

our? do you answer the phones?

 

[Rendus]

You'd be suprised how many of us around here are phone monkeys.

Rendus, 3-letter cable company Tier 2 technical support (Bah, they're paranoid about people speaking on behalf of the company. Insert disclaimer here)

 

[ThaGrandCow]

If you bitch lots of times they'll give you a month free

 

[yakko]

My last one did. Through a screw up they also gave me about 10 months free. I have never had a long enough outage with my current one to care.