I’m not even talking about the less-than-half performance I get out of my budget P999 myDSL plan. Some people would raise a ruckus over not getting even half of the speed that you promise for your prices, but I’ve learned to get past that and just enjoy the fact that I have unlimited DSL connectivity. Some ISPs have upload and download quotas on a monthly basis, I’m happy I don’t have to worry about that. What ticks me off greatly is when you hassle your customers with lousy handling of systems and logistical problems.

I’m no stranger to system problems. They happen. Even with the most copious amounts of preparation and prevention, this process or that procedure or this hardware hangs or breaks and needs tending to. It’s only a matter of time. But when things do fail, the least you can do, aside from trying to fix it as quickly as possible, is to tell the people who are going to be affected by it. We all know that people will assume that things will work, until they don’t. As a customer of your services, I assume that your DSL service will go uninterrupted until you tell me otherwise, because hey, I’m still paying you to provide me with that service.

Now, when it goes dead with no foreseeable causes, that’s when it really gets to me. It gets even worse when I learn that this is something that’s system-wide, and that there was no previous communication made to your customers in ways that you’re sure that they will see. You might have posted something about it on your website, but who really goes there regularly to check, anyway? And for customers whose internet access is down, how can they ever check? The pressure should be upon you to spread the word to your customers, not make them come to you for the answer. Send them letters, put notes in their monthly bills, show a short advisory on TV – do whatever it takes. Just make sure they know.

I know that you know that the last two paragraphs were very patronizing, but I don’t care. I’m usually a very patient guy, but something like this is just too hard not to bitch about, because it could have been handled a thousand times better.

For those of you wondering what the problem was, some of the myDSL accounts had their username and password combinations changed, but the notification for this never came to the people who owned those accounts. I guess what bothered me the most about the situation was that I wasted a good hour or two of my weekend trying to find a way to solve the problem, and that the solution was something really simple, but it was something you would never, ever find out about on your own. You had to ask straight from the source, but only because they didn’t exert any noticeable effort in communicating with their customers beforehand.

The thing is though, there hasn’t been any one real network provider that delivers solid performance across the nation yet. The overall nature of the service you get is really a mixed bag, a hit-or-miss affair, and it (still) winds down to where you live. Under the same ISP, some people experience good speeds while others crawl through the net at a snail’s pace and go through customer service hell. Even SkyBroadband, the new kid on the block touting more impressive packages isn’t safe. That’s probably what keeps a lot of people, me included, glued to their current ISP: there’s just no choice out there that’s a hundred percent better yet.

This sucks.