Re: UU Net sales tactics?

[Melody Yoon - KF6RMW <melodyy () best com>]

On Wed, 28 Oct 1998, John Golovich wrote:

> Has anyone else received a phone call from a UUnet salesman out of the blue?
> It appears that he used the Boardwatch magazine, because he quoted me some
> information out of it about my company.

heh. That sounds like UUNet. When I was at OneWorld, I used to get calls
from WC trying to get us to change our LD carrier to them. We told them
"uhh. hell no" :) Little did they know that we were dropping UUNet like a
rock too :)

[stuff cut]
> The comments that peaked my anger the most were.
> "Im sure companies as small as yours would b content with someone as small
> as Fibernet"

hrm. Who was your sales person? You should talk to his boss and ream him
for sales person's manners.

> When I stated to them that their company is one of the most expensive T1
> providers, he responded with
> "Not every company is able to afford the best Internet that can be offered"
> (implying UUnet is directly that).

heh. I had both our sales rep and the technical leads on the phone after
we had escalated what I considered a minor problem.

When I was at OneWorld, we were using 8 /24's that we weren't supposed to.
Some belonged to Global Center (who OWS, previously GlobalVillage owned)
and some to other providers. UUNet was happily redistributing our BGP
announcements for these /24's through their network. This is, of course, a
Bad Thing(tm). So, I contacted UUNet and told them "We are currently using
8 Class C's we are not allowed to be using." and requested "5 Class C's to
completely replace the IP allocation" that we had. Within a day I got a
reply from them rejecting our request because OWS wasn't using at least
90% of the current allocation.

I personally thought UUNet was on crack. I replied "what are you talking
about? We're trying to replace what we have now completely". In the
original email I had even sent them the IPs we weren't supposed to use so
they knew what we had.

Two weeks later, we discovered what happened. It seems that according to
UUNet records, we already had a /21 allocated to us. However, their
idiotic tech couldn't graps the fact that we were "One World" and the
account said "One World" but the allocation information on the /21 said
Primenet even though it was attached to our account. I had a field day
over this. As it is I ended up purchasing a T1 from Best Internet to
replace the UUNet line and told UUNet the reasons for the termination.

Mel

Melody Lynn Yoon      melodyy+KF6RMW () best com   | Graduate - '97 MSF
Consultant - Collective Technologies            | NRA Member
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