#CharterNY Internet Service Back in #Plattsburgh

After two, days #CharterNY Internet service is back. Communication wasn't great, but when you got through to people yesterday they offered a month's free service. I think most people would have preferred the service.

The call center is somewhere far away, and that makes it hard to know what's happening and even how wide-spread the outage is. I think there are two lessons to be learned:

1. This isn't a job for a call center and customer service people far away. I tweeted the current stat with hashtags #CharterNY and #Plattsburgh. They may come in handy for the future. I added the service I pay for (up to 60 Mbps--"up to is always important") and my latest speakeasy.net results: LA/5, Chicago/11, NYC 28. That's the typical speed and typical range across the country for me. In this case, crowdsourcing just might be better than the call center, so let's keep those hashtags around for the next problem.
2. I don't think it's our job to ask for rebates. Maybe the FCC can look into a regulation that requires automatic refunds for outages lasting more than 6 hours. It's the companies' job to provide the service and to not bill us (or refund us) when they don't. They have the network management tools and they can easily do it. As it is, their costs are low because most people don't even bother to ask.