Everything Great is *Nixbased

Last night I was browsing along and all of a sudden I have no Internet connectivity. As usual I check that the modem is showing that it is connected to my ISP, that my router (which ISP’s are too lazy to support so we all lie to them and say we’re directly connected) is running properly and handing out internal IP addresses to my network via DHCP etc. I then notice that my router shows it has acquired a 10. Address and that only 1 DNS server is listed instead of 3.

Immediately I know they have suspended my account. This isn’t surprising since I download ALOT via BitTorrent. It’s been 3 years with this ISP and I had forgotten what my bandwidth cap is and considering I download so much monthly I was curious. So I call the ISP. I get told it’s been suspended and transferred to the security department. The voice on the other end identifies his self as “Norm” and proceeds to tell me my account was suspended for downloading copyrighted material. After telling me that I play dumb and say I do not download copyrighted material. He then lets me know the real reason, my cap is 60GB a month and I have downloaded 192GB this month thus far.

Now why couldn’t he be honest in the first place? They didn’t know or care if the files I were downloading were copyrighted. Granted they had good reason with that amount of bandwidth that they were but no hard evidence, they were just concerned for the network bandwidth.

I continue to act like someone who is clueless about computers, asking him to walk me through setting up my email account given to me by the ISP (which I never use but they send warnings there). At that point I’m really playing it up. I tell him again that I don’t download movies etc. and that nobody here has access to the computer to which he replies it is probably a virus. He asks what anti-virus I am using and I tell him that I am using the one from the ISP’s website. (He assumes I’m using Windows and they don’t support Linux so now was not the time to be honest). He re-enables my account and tells me that I have 1GB of bandwidth to last me until the end of the month (this is bull as I’ve heard of others with this ISP being told the same and them going over similar to them saying theirs a 60GB cap and me being able to download more then that on a monthly basis).

This is an example of social engineering and playing into the person’s worldview. They deal with people like this everyday so a story such as the 1 I presented is believable and doesn’t get questioned much. I assume others do the same and that it works with other ISPs. Similar I know works with other large corporations.

As for those with morale objections, the company overcharges for their service because they know they are the only cable Internet provider available. They have lied to me many times over the years about refunds and service people showing up and even telling me there was an issue on my end when the issue was with a local node. If they provided the service at a fair price and were honest I would be mindful of my bandwidth cap. Some people will always disagree with this way of thinking but in business that’s how I expect it to go. If I am not fair to my customers I expect them to tell me and I will fix the problem. If I do not fix the problem I expect them to take advantage of me anyway they can.