Re: Different customer service reactions (was Re: Wanted: Clueful Individual @ TeleGlobe.net)

[John Fraizer <nanog () EnterZone Net>]

On 16 Jul 2000, Sean Donelan wrote:

> Interesting, neither company solved your problem, but your reaction was
> very different to how the different companies handled your call.  I guess
> different companies feel it makes business sense to have such policies.
>
> I don't know if it is cultural or what.  ISPs which were originally
> independent companies seem to have more open trouble ticket policies
> than ISPs formed by telcos.  Genuity/BBN and UUNET (I distinguish UUNET
> from the rest of Worldcom) had relatively open trouble ticket policies.
> Sprint and MCI had restricted trouble ticket policies.

You've nailed it with the word "telcos", Sean.

> Whats even more interesting is the frustration refusing to even look
> at a problem creates last a long time.  Even if they later fix the problem,
> it won't make up for the difficulty in getting them to look at it.  Sprint
> blackholed one of my customer's routes for three days, and argued with me
> for days how it wasn't their responsibility and wouldn't open a ticket.
> After I eventually proved beyond any reasonable doubt it was in fact a
> Sprint router making the bogus announcement and got a Sprint engineer to
> fix their router, to this day I still mention how difficult it is to get
> Sprint to fix a problem in their network because they'll ignore it as
> long as they can.

It would be interesting to see the outcome of a suit where provider A sued
provider B for loss of business and other related damages resulting from
just such an incident.  I'm not an attorney (I don't even play one on
TV) but, it would seem that you would be able to prove callous disregard
and/or malicious intent.  Perhaps I'm wrong.  It is still an interesting
point to ponder.

---
John Fraizer
EnterZone, Inc