BYTE.com > Chaos Manor > 2003
Scams, Bugs and Surly Service
By Jerry Pournelle
March 31, 2003
(Scams, Bugs and Surly Service
: Page 1 of 1 )
Column 272 (Continued from the Previous Week)
The EarthLink Saga
Let me begin by saying that EarthLink has been my means of Internet
access for ten years and more, and I have no plans
to
change that. EarthLink continues to host my wife's web site, where you can find
out about and order her
reading instruction program. I don't keep my web site there because the
volume of traffic is far too large for their
non-commercial accounts, and I get special attention and service from
the Rocket gang. They also run SpamAssassin, which
is effective, and respond quickly when I find false positives. I get a
lot of press releases that look like spam. (My
web/mail hosting providers aren't currently looking for new clients, so
I won't recommend them, but you can find them at
linuxmuse.net.)
But we have used EarthLink for years as our Net access system, and
we've been satisfied: considerably more satisfied
than
most of the people I talk to have been with their providers. I have
used EarthLink to log on from France and Italy, and
some years ago from Finland and Brazil, and so far wherever I have gone
in the United States I have found a reasonably
close local dialup number and have been able to get my mail and update
my web site.
Roberta has had the same experience, which is what makes this story
important as well as surprising. It's a grim saga
of
employee mistakes, good intentions gone bad, and just plain
coincidences. It all turned out well; and note that this kind
of thing can happen to anyone.
Pay Up Now!
The story began when Roberta got a nasty dunning letter from
EarthLink billing. It had the subject line "Important:
Final
Past Due Notice," and claimed "we have previously sent you invoices and
a past due notice but we have still not received a
payment to bring your outstanding balance current. This is the final
notice we will send you. We have scheduled your
EarthLink account for inactivation on 03/19/03 unless payment in full
is received before that date."
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