[AusNOG] Offtopic: Cessnock Exchange

[Rod]

Thought for the day:

Morals act like dietary fibre. It is what keeps most little fish little.

Rod

-----Original Message-----
From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net
[mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Jeremy Visser
Sent: Wednesday, 16 November 2011 8:33 AM
To: Keith Anderson
Cc: ausnog at ausnog.net List
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Cessnock Exchange

On 15/11/2011, at 14:33, Keith Anderson wrote:
> One customer went to the local member and to cut a long story short - 
> ended up with the Telstra Retail lady suggesting a migration to ADSL2+ 
> with BigPond to overcome the problem.

As a tech support guy at an ISP that sells TW-based DSL services (i.e. in
the same boat as most ISPs out there), this is what always leaves me
speechless.

Literally speechless. I'll be dealing either with a congestion problem or a
no ports issue (often a customer wants to upgrade from ADSL1 to ADSL2+ but
are knocked back due to "lack of ports"), and inevitably I get asked the
question "this wouldn't be happening if I were with BigPond, would it?"

In some cases I have contacted customers after they have jumped ship to
BigPond, and indeed they had their problem solved that I found impossible to
fix via the TW channels (either provisioning or faults).

This is why I get left speechless -- it's a moral dilemma. On the one hand,
you have Telstra doing something quite likely illegal and morally
reprehensible. On the other hand I must accept the status quo (evil telco is
evil), and because I can't lie to my customers, I can't exactly disagree
with them.

I'm such a little fish in a big sea, I don't feel like I have the power to
be the change I want to see in the world.