ISP’s

 Boy as I start this one I’m quite honestly at a loss as to where to even begin. Internet Service Providers (ISP’s)
 aren’t exactly at the top of anyone’s list. I guess the fact that I’ve web mastered several sites including one that
 won a Golden Web Award for 2001-2002 makes me a little shy of the subject due to the overwhelming amount
 of information I feel the need to cram into this small space. I promise you I'm leaving A LOT of stuff out.

 There’s a joke that is passed around my group of friends about Microsoft that pretty much sums up the
 experiences I’ve had with ISP’s.

 A helicopter pilot was giving a bunch of tourist a tour of Seattle, Washington when a very dense fog suddenly rolled in.
 The helicopter pilot flew up to a tall building and had one of his passengers make a sign and hold it up to the window
 of the helicopter that said “Where are we?”.  As the pilot and passengers watched, several people scrambled around
 inside the building and soon one of them held up a sign that read “You’re right next to a tall building”. At this point the
 helicopter pilot turned his craft. Flew straight to the airport and landed. Needless to say his passengers were amazed
 and upon departing the craft they gathered around the pilot and asked him how he was able to pull off such a
 tremendous feat of navigation. The pilot calmly looked at his passengers and replied “It had to be the Microsoft building.
 They provided a technically correct answer that didn’t mean a thing.”

 My very first experiences (and I might add my worst) was as a member of the AOL family.  If you’ve never tried AOL
 then let me save you a lot of trouble, DON’T. First, this is not true internet service. This is a separate “intranet” service
 with gateways to the internet. When you actually try to get on the real internet you’ll discover that it is impossibly slow
 and in many cases your computer will do what is called “time out” which is computer language for I’m going to give up
 trying. I quit AOL because they ripped me off and refused to refund my money. I believe they’ve change their MO
 now but used to you were required to have a credit card and they automatically billed your credit card each month.
 Since my wife and I own our business we take turns at the ever frustrating task of paying our bills. My wife had taken
 care of this for about 8 months up to tax time and I was reviewing our bills and business expenses getting ready for
 the annual trip to have our taxes done. We had a separate ISP and were accessing AOL strictly through the internet.
 I distinctly remember going online and notifying AOL that I wanted the $9.95 account which involved bringing your
 own access and not using theirs. We had indeed done this for almost a year when I noticed on our credit card bills
 that AOL had magically changed the account back to a dial up account with monthly charges of $29.95. When I
 called AOL their Customer Service Rep. Laughed at me and told me they never credited anyone after they had
 been billed and basicly he told me in a very Yankee accent to kiss his ass. I invited him to Oklahoma to make that
 statement to my face which he refused and when I asked his name he refused to even give me that. He then hung up
 on me. I immediately cancelled the account and it still took 3 months and multiple phone calls to some of the rudest
 assholes I’ve ever dealt with in my life to get them to stop billing my credit card. (I would love to come face to face
 with Steve “Lying Son of a Bitch” Case some day for a man to man discussion regarding my treatment by HIS employees.
 Personally I intend to take the two hundred dollars they ripped me off for out of his ass should the day ever arrive.

 Anyone that has tried to access AOL through the AOL dial up connections knows they are impossibly slow and most
 of the time it used to be that you couldn’t even get on line until sometime after midnight. At any other time you mostly
 got busy signals or if you did happen to get a connection after 5 minutes or so it would hang up on you. I believe many
 of you will remember a meeting of attorney generals from lots of state (not including Oklahoma) in which they just
 about barred AOL from doing business in about half the US.

 Now let’s get back to Mr. Case, CEO of AOL. I used to make it a regular part of my AOL experience to read the
 Steve Case updates and news which were posted regularly on AOL. Not once did I ever read anything that actually
 turned out to be the truth. I’m here to tell you that after about 3 years as an AOL’er  I never once read anything on
 his update that wasn’t either an out and out lie or a thinly disguised bull shit story.

 Next I went with a small ISP that was located in Tulsa. They had their problems but actually had tech support that
 could provide some help from time to time. For those of you that aren’t familiar with how most ISP tech support
 works then let me enlighten you. Everything they tell you is read off a script and a flow chart. If yes then got to
 page 24 if no then go to page 25 etc. etc. etc……..I’ll refer you again to the Microsoft joke.

 One day the home page for my ISP changed so dramatically that it took almost as long for it to load up as it did to
 get a connection on AOL. Being a nice guy (just ask bartcop) I sent an e-mail to my ISP telling them that the new
 home page they had constructed looked nice but that it took an impossibly long time to load up and had lost many
 of the features we liked about the old page including a link that put you at a page that had 10 different search engine
 submissions all on the same page. They had cut this down to 4 search engines and added E-bay and amazon.com
 to the search pages. I was a little irritated because here I was paying for a business account so they could provide
 free advertising for e-bay and amazon but they weren’t doing anything to help promote the website for my business.

 All facts I pointed out in my e-mail to them. My e-mail was forwarded around to many different people in the company,
 each time there was some derogatory remark about me or my wife on it then the whole thing along with all the bad
 mouthing was forwarded to me from their “customer relations” person. After much hell raising by me and much
 groveling by them I got a years DSL service and 20 megs of space for my website all for free. As soon as the year
 was up I changed to Southwestern Bell Internet Services.

 Here I should tell you that we had been using Internet connection sharing which is part of windows 98 second edition.
 It had run beautifully on my office network and I was assured that the switch to SWBell internet services would be
 seamless. In January of 2001 a tech from Swbell walked into my office. Completely disabled my network and when
 he saw the DSL work on the one computer he was working on he packed up and left without putting my network
 back together. Guess who got pissed again? I promptly called SWBell explaining what had happened only to be told
 “We don’t support networks!” My question was then why the hell did their tech touch my network to begin with. I
 could go into the months of frustration we suffered after that but it would get redundant. Let’s just say that the office
 network NEVER worked properly again and if anyone from Swbell internet services ever tells you that their system
 works with internet connection sharing you can tell them I said they are a liar. It never did and since the move to
 SE Oklahoma it doesn’t work down here either. Never mind the fact that when I ordered the DSL service for the
 new office I was assured by the person on the other end of the line that “all the problems have been fixed through
 a software upgrade and internet connection sharing definitely works with the SW Bell internet services system”.
 Another out and out lie. I’m wondering if SW Bell isn’t taking lessons from Steve Case.

 The SW Bell solution to my network problems. They wanted to sell me a $400.00 dollar router hub that you can
 purchase over the internet for $89.95. Don’t let them sucker you into a Cayman Router Hub. For lack of a better
 word they suck. My office network in Tulsa was down for a total of 7 months and SW Bell never reimbursed me
 not one penny for the thousands of dollars I lost because of their incompetence.

 My internet service works where I live now because I spent hundreds of hours trying to get it to work. Not one tech
 was ever able to make it work as I had been promised. Internet Connection Sharing is wasting space on my computer.
 You should have heard some of the Microsoft techs laughing when I told them about my problem. While SW Bell was
 busy denying they even had a problem Microsoft tech support told me (after charging my credit card) that no one could
 get internet connection sharing to work with Southwestern Bell Internet Services. I would dump SW Bell for another
 service provider but because I webmaster several sites I need the additional speed otherwise the web site work would
 take hours instead of minutes and there’s only one other service provider even in the area I’m living in. Our dial up
 connection on the ranch is never over 21.6 and I consider it a disgrace to modern technology. Honestly the DSL
 service is the way to go. A good friend of mine has tried the Cable Modems and for him it has been a nightmare as well.
 When they hooked it up at his home no less than 8 technicians showed up because none of them seemed to be able
 to make it work.

 Don’t be fooled by promises of tech support from your ISP’s. It doesn’t exist! The people answering the phone know
 nothing about computers. They are reading a script and following a flow chart trying to help you. A monkey could do
 the job and probably do it better. I’ld love to spend hours more telling you other horror stories related to people like
 Net Zero, Earthlink, Juno and the like but I don’t think Bartcop has room nor the desire to publish a novel on his
 website site. Suffice it to say, when it comes to getting on the internet there’s only one thing you can be sure of.
 You better have a good friend that knows something about computers or you’re on your own. Good luck!

 I’m still waiting for a reply from Honda for a future article. The hold up seems to be that one, they don’t really have any
 contact information on their website. The other is that I’m trying to ask them why TWO Oklahoma Highway Patrol
 Troopers told me to never put your kids in the back of a Honda and if you do don’t seat belt them in.  They said they
 were tired of working injuries and fatalities of children when they were in the back seat of these cars when involved
 in an accident. Maybe someone at Honda reads  bartcop.com  and has the Kahonas to respond!

 If someone has really sunk your ship I’ld love to hear about it. E-mail to downingc@swbell.net