But I'm losing money!

[Jack Doe]

How many of y'all, especially in telcom, have had a residential-service subscriber break the rules and run a business from home? I had this one who messed her stuff up in a big, big way.

SC=Insane woman who should have biz class service
Me=Our stately hero

Now a touch of background. My company has in its Terms of Service some pretty strict restrictions about what is allowed and not. Any mention of using residential services for business is grounds for termination of all services. We do have some leeway, though, and your average eBay'er or whatnot won't be penalized.

Me: Thanks for calling *Awesome Cable Company,* my name is Jack, how may I help you?
SC: You a**h**** are costing me money!!!
Me: (Wah!?) Ok, how may I help you ma'am?
SC: I run my business from home, and my internet has been down for three days!
Me: Ok, let's see what we can do about that. (I pull her modem remotely, and it's dead. Very, very dead.)
Me: Ma'am, I can't get your modem to respond to any network side signals. We need to either swap the modem or get a tech out to you to replace it.
SC: (goes nuts) WHAT!? I WANT A G**D*** TECH OUT HERE NOW! YOU A**H**** ARE COSTING ME $500 AN HOUR IN LOST SALES! I DON'T GIVE A F*** GET ME A TECH NOW!!!!
Me: (getting angry) Ma'am, you will refrain from using profanity or I will terminate this call. Further *reads the TOS verbatim,* which means I'm supposed to turn all of your services off right now. Now, if you want, I can roll a tech or you can come and get a modem, but that tech won't be out until Monday (3 days away.)
SC: (goes nuts again) DID YOU NOT HEAR ME YOU STUPID N*****!? (btw, I'm Korean) I WANT A TECH NOW!
Me: Ma'am, this call is over. I will be disconnecting your services immediately (that is the only way we can get a tech out *today!*) and you may contact our business class division. Internet access starts at $200 a month for a dedicated 768K line. Thanks for calling Awesome Cable, have a great day.
SC: DON'T YOU HA....*click*

I put some long, long notes on that account. It was probably pretty funny when their tv's went down ten seconds later too.

[marasbaras]

$500 an hour ... nobody making $500 per hour through the computer uses some pathetic little cable service. NOBODY.

When I was doing serious work, we had a T1. If it was down for an hour, we received a day's credit ... up to 10 hours. They were VERY responsive.

4am, Christmas Eve, T1 down? Tech's rolling, sir.

You don't get that kind of service for $29.95 per month.

[JustADude]

$500 an hour ... nobody making $500 per hour through the computer uses some pathetic little cable service. NOBODY.

When I was doing serious work, we had a T1. If it was down for an hour, we received a day's credit ... up to 10 hours. They were VERY responsive.

4am, Christmas Eve, T1 down? Tech's rolling, sir.

You don't get that kind of service for $29.95 per month.

Ironically, I'm paying about $60 a month for a 15 MBit/sec connection at the moment. Not one-point-five, fifteen. Of course that's a "theoretical maximum", so I often get 'only' 8-10 MBit/sec. I'd assume paying business rates would have much better guarantees on the actual available bandwidth as well as up-time.

Also, remind me to get a full T3 if I'm ever filthy rich.

[edible_hat]

And here's me about to switch to a slower plan because we never need our current speed (but we do need the extra $10 a month)

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

That $500/hr was probably revenue (in other words income before any expenses are deducted), the actual profit/take home pay from that would be very small.

Why do you have a policy that you have to disconnect customers running a business on a consumer line? If they are going to be that stupid is that not their own risk to take?

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

Also, remind me to get a full T3 if I'm ever filthy rich.

Sod that...if I win megabucks...I'm getting an OC-48 line. I want to pull stuff down so fast that I have to open my case and shake out all the hard drives I've sucked through the lines.

I also want to be able to flood ping all the mother [smurf]ing spammers clogging my mail box with the nigerian 419 scams.



M

[ta2ooed1]

Why do you have a policy that you have to disconnect customers running a business on a consumer line? If they are going to be that stupid is that not their own risk to take?

Because running a business with a residential line is against there terms of service. This lady has been basically stealing $170 a month ($200 quoted in the OP - $29.99 for typical residential rate) from the awesome cable company since she either got the service or started her business. Whichever came first.

[dithers66]

It's so Beautiful to hear an SC destroy herself.

[depechemodefan]

$500 an hour ... nobody making $500 per hour through the computer uses some pathetic little cable service. NOBODY.

Maybe she runs a home-based porn site?

[tropicsgoddess]

Oh how I LOVE when SC's are their own wrecking ball!

[Jack Doe]

Because running a business with a residential line is against there terms of service. This lady has been basically stealing $170 a month ($200 quoted in the OP - $29.99 for typical residential rate) from the awesome cable company since she either got the service or started her business. Whichever came first.

Bingo. She was actually paying $44.95/mo for her internet service, which was a 7mb/384kb circuit. The business class equivalent with no other bells and whistles (eg, web hosting, networking support and the like) is $440/mo plus tax. Now the extra includes guaranteed 24/7 onshore tech support and an on-site tech to their location within 60 minutes of a down call, 99% throughput of service maximum (unlike res services which usually top out at 92-95%) and a few other knickknacks.

Like I said I usually don't care about guys doing this stuff but damn, she was a nasty piece of work.

[One-Fang]

since she either got the service or started her business. Whichever came first.

Whichever came second.

[Dreamstalker]

Sod that...if I win megabucks...I'm getting an OC-48 line. I want to pull stuff down so fast that I have to open my case and shake out all the hard drives I've sucked through the lines.

OC-48...*drools* Can I share if I help take care of the spammers?

Someone once tried to tell me that online auction stuffs was against my ISP's T&C...a "storefront" on an auction site doesn't mean one has an actual business.

[Arm]

The funny thing is, unless she was serving through her home computer, she's not losing squat.

I mean, she specifically mentioned sales. So barring the cam-whore route, which I admit is the only thing I can think of that she could do that could possibly pull in that sort of money... She has a website somewhere. That has a storefront on it, that either handles credit cards itself (not bloody cheap!) or in turn makes a handoff to paypal, where the actual payment is made and processed.

The status of her personal connection shouldn't affect her webhost *at* all, nor will it do squat to her connection back to paypal.

The more I think about it, the more I think she *must* be a cam-whore. Her personal connection would go to her server and the video would be distributed from there. That would make sense. Because even with 50 bucks of cable service, you're not serving up 500 bucks an hour worth of streaming video.

...I totally overthought this, didn't I?

[Phone Jockey]

I hear this crap from cable customers all the damn time. They try to get out cheap by paying for residential service & get pissed when our tech won't come out the same day, like our business class techs will do. Sucks to be them.