[geeks] @home has finally done it...

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Sunday, August 19, 2001 at 14:39:54 (-0400), Kurt Huhn wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] @home has finally done it...
>
> I've gone around and around with @home sooo many times regarding their terms
> of service.  When I signed up for @home the first time (what seems like many
> years ago), the clause regarding servers didn't appear in the TOS.  I asked
> the engineers and the salespeople at every @home affiliate since, when I
> sign up for serveice, wether continuing to run a personal SMTP and HTTP
> server is aceptable.  I alwyas get positive response.

Ah, OK.... that's a bit different indeed.

By the time @Home came to these parts in the form of Rogers at Home they'd
already written a pretty restrictive contract.

> It isn't even that they're now blocking the ports - it's the lack of
> communication to their customer base that pisses me off.  A simple email to
> their users "we're going to be blocking inbound http and smtp on such-n-such
> a day" is all that's needed.  I could have made alternate plans in a matter
> of hours.

Isn't it wonderful what monopolies think they can get away with!  Such
attitudes usually only help create new and competing solutions!  ;-)

I'm still trying to figure out how to get involved with the Canadian
class action suite that's hoping to take Rogers at Home on for their poor
service.  I've got Cricket graphs to show just how much packet loss and
downtime they've given me.....

Rogers tried to solve their service issue by putting a whole lot more
dweebs on the end of the line so that you didn't have to stay on hold
for hours to get to even the front line goofs.  If only such illusions
of service didn't satisfy so many lusers.....

> Bah!  They'll be rid of me soon enough anyway.  As you've suggested, I'm
> moving to an ISP that doesn't limit incoming traffic types.  Paying for what
> I need, I suppose.  Besides - what geek wouldn't take advantage of that
> situation.  I might not have a right to complain - but it won't stop me from
> actually doing it.

Even though I didn't have to actually return a signed copy of the
contract to @Home (which I suppose implies that we've each mutally
accepted the terms of service since they still handle my connection and
I still pay their bill), I've not done anything to explictly contravene
their terms of service.

I did however, until I got my DSL service, have a GIF tunnel running
through their network though, which got my own IP network routed through
to me from our company ISDN line, effectively using their network as a
local loop between two of their paying customers....  :-)

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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