[clue-tech] Qwest DSL download speed reduced

[Nate Duehr]

black at clapthreetimes.com wrote:

> I dislike the speed test sites because folks are taking them too literal.
> They are at most a "best guess" service. Here's an analogy - imagine if
> you were an auto mechanic and one of your customers had Uncle Louie come
> into town, take your car for a spin while he got some milk and then said
> the car should run better. Armed with this "knowledge" the customer comes
> back to you, the mechanic, and says you do lousy work.

If Uncle Louie works building engines for Rousch Racing, I think the guy 
doing "lousy work" better listen to him.

> Or another example, imagine you share your DSL line and your son is
> downloading Half Life 2 while you, on another PC, run a speed test. The
> results will not reflect your actual bandwidth at all.

People who actually care about their download speeds and actually call 
to complain (generally) aren't that stupid and shouldn't be treated as 
if they are.

Don't fall into the corporate support trap of thinking all customers are 
or SHOULD be treated equally.  Small business people know who their best 
and/or brightest, and/or biggest customers are and give them better 
service.

Knowing where your bread is buttered is important.  Telcos are really 
bad at it.  When the person with the $90 a month high-end DSL service 
calls, they get the same service as the guy on the subsidized 
money-losing $19.95 introductory plan.  That's not right, and if one of 
the service providers figured it out and categorized support calls 
appropriately, people would love it.

"Consumers" aren't as dumb as most corporate support systems make them 
out to be.  My recent example of Apple requiring an appointment at the 
so-called "Genius Bar" to tell me my 4 day old laptop wouldn't even 
POWER ON [ http://www.natetech.com/?p=203 ] is a good example of 
corporate customer "service" policy gone insane.

(Note the quotation marks around "service" in that sentence.)

Nate