ACS Tech Help Doesn't Exist After 5pm Saturday Until 8am Monday, But Finally Our Internet Is Working Again [UPDATED]

So, Saturday night, about 10:45pm, our internet stopped.  It's pretty dramatic when you're streaming a movie.

We'd had an interruption just last Wednesday as well.  ACS (Alaska Communications Systems) phone tech couldn't fix it, but the next level was able to do something that got it on again in a couple of hours.

But when I called to report Saturday night, the recording said to call again during business hours.  Business hours do not include Sunday!   I was encouraged to report online.  But I never use the online system and couldn't figure out my id and password for sure, or even if I had one.

I did try to update my password with a user id that did get the response that they had send me an email telling me how to do that.  But I never got the email.  I tweeted ACS, but no response.  But even if you report it on Sunday, nothing will happen until 'business hours."

So this morning I finally got through and within 90 minutes (I only just tried the internet now after having breakfast) it's working again.

In this internet era,  how can an internet service have a 38 hour period where there is no one to restore someone's interrupted internet service?  Before I got my smart phone - which was only last December - I had no backup if internet went out.  And blogging on my phone is painful.

It turns out that you can't (have an internet service with a 38 hour help blackout period.)  ACS has this announcement on one of their webpages:

"We know how important it is to have a reliable internet connection. That’s why we are committed to keeping you connected with our reliable, dedicated business internet services that include a 24-hour repair guarantee. In the case of an outage, it is our priority to fix your internet within 24 hours of your initial call to tech support. If we are unable to fix your internet connection within 24 hours, you will be eligible to receive a $100 account credit.
In the instance that we don’t meet our 24-hour repair guarantee, simply call our Account Support team within 30 days of the outage to claim your credit."

Let's see if this works.  I see two potential problems for me:

• This is on a page for business customers, not residential customers
• It says within 24 hours of your initial call to tech support, but you can't get tech support between 5pm Saturday and 8:00 am Monday.  They didn't answer my initial call, but I made it around 11pm on Saturday night and service was working at 11pm Sunday night, or even until around 9:30 or 10am Monday.  

There are caveats below  including that it only applies to business customers.  But there is a different phone number that I'll try next time I have an outage during non-business hours.   

Alaska Communications Tech Support at 855-565-2556.

I'm less interested in the $100 than just getting my service back. (Though if I'm paying for service they don't provide, I should have a refund, right?  But $100 is way more than one 40 hours blackout.)

I have left a message at their corporate number.

[I'd note that when people have problems like this with a government agency, the reaction is often to rant and rave about how bad government is.  So I'd note that if that is a reasonable conclusion to make, then it would be equally justifiable for me to rant and rave about how bad business in general is.  But I think neither is a sensible response.  My problem is with a specific business, just as people having trouble with a government agency is a problem with a specific agency.  And with government, we are all the owners.  If we don't elect competent representatives, that's our problem.  And if we complain about having bad choices, that's also our problem.  In a Democracy we have to work to keep it working - even if that means finding and supporting good candidates to run.  Or even running for office ourselves.]


It's nice to have these little, eventually solvable problems, in these times of huge seemingly unsolvable ones.  But the House is working on impeachment, and there are things we can do about climate change - a carbon fee and dividend,  non-fossil fuel sources of energy; changing our eating and agricultural habits.  Solving little problems gives encouragement for the bigger ones.

And not having internet for a day, well, before the 1990s, I didn't have internet every day.  I finished a book yesterday and did household chores and had brunch with friends.

But still.  ACS, please get your act together.  I like having a local internet carrier rather than some conglomerate.  But I'm sure you can devise a work schedule to take care of problems between Saturday night and Monday morning.

[UPDATE October 28, 2019:  Over the weekend I also send a message to ACS via Twitter.  The Twitter reader apparently was off until Monday morning too because I got a message this morning telling me to call in today.  I responded with a brief summary of my issues and a link to this post.  I just got another Twitter message from ACS:

"Hi Steven, we're sharing your blog post with our tech support manager. Thanks, for your thoughtful comments. We are sorry for the trouble with your service this weekend. We appreciate you."]

How Not To Do An Online Survey

I had to call a company yesterday, and during the call I spoke to two different representatives.  The first one was very good, listened, understood my issue and said she would fix it and then check to be sure it was really fixed.  She could not, however, do anything about my other issue.  That had to be handled by a different department.

That person said he could change the setting on the computer.  I'd had the same problem last year with the company.  He said I should fill out an online form. I looked at it.  It wasn't short and required that I look a number of things up.   (I had earlier, before this call,  filled out paper work online for the rental car accident payment. Our rental car in October had been hit in a parking lot while we were eating lunch.  I was fed up with all the paper work and not receptive to doing more work like that just then.)  I asked him to do what the other rep had done - fix it and then check in a few days.  His response was, I told you a way to fix it, but you don't want to take it. (He was n't wrong, but his tone of voice was.)  I said, look, if your company can't fix this over the phone without me filling out the whole form over again, then maybe I'll just have to take my account elsewhere.  "But I gave you a way to do it ('you dolt' wasn't said, but was in his tone.)

So today I got an email asking me to take a survey about my phone call with the company.  It wanted me to rate 'the representative' I'd talked to.  I couldn't find a way to ask, "Which one?"  I couldn't find a way to leave a comment.  I couldn't go on (to see if there was a place for a comment somewhere else, without rating the representative.  I didn't want to rate the good rep poorly nor did I want to rate the poor rep positively.

So, they didn't get my feedback.  I just closed that window and went on to other things.

Of course, I don't know if they really wanted to know, or whether this was a gimmick to make me think they cared how I felt.  If it was a gimmick, it didn't work.  If they really wanted good feedback, it didn't work.

Surveys should always have comment options because:

• People may not understand the question, and comments let the surveyors know that.
• The options offered may not include what the responder actually experienced.
• The question may not be appropriate.   (my case here - which rep did they mean?)

So, if any of these things happens, and there is no comment option and no 'skip the question' option, then the respondent has two choices:

• Answer the best she can, knowing the response isn't really right
• Quit the survey

I understand the companies that do surveys for other companies want to do things as quickly and easily as possible.  Just run the survey responses through the computer and provide the client with whatever statistical analysis of the numbers they need.

Comments, for that sort of surveyor, just get in the way.
They can't be so easily quantified.  And if they actually point out flaws in the survey instrument, then everything would have to be thrown out and started over again.  Data you've already collected are now suspect (how many other respondents had the same problems, but just answered the question anyway?), so you have to ask those people again (not what anyone wants to do) or keep the bad data or start over.  And it would be hard to do that without telling the client that you - however you sugar coat it - screwed up.

So who is this post for?  I guess

• First it's for me, to just get this off my chest.
• Second, for others facing frustratingly bad survey questions - just quit if they don't  give you a way to point out why the question doesn't work for you.
• Third, for companies that hire people to do surveys for them.  Don't trust the survey consultants..  Take the survey yourself.  Have a number of other people test out the survey - perhaps even actual customers.  Require the survey company  to allow people to comment throughout the survey.
• Fourth, for ethical surveyors, who perhaps didn't learn all they needed to learn, but are willing to listen because they want to do it right.

Time For Everyone To Voluntarily Leave United Airlines

I watched the video of the man being dragged off the plane.  WHATTTTTT????????????  FOR REAL???

OK, Alaska Airlines once removed a passenger for insulting a female crew member.  And more recently they had a woman leave the plane for being disruptive and insulting to the man sitting next to her because he'd supported Trump.  But neither was physically dragged off.  Watch how politely the flight attendant spoke to the unhinged woman passenger.  And in both cases, the passengers were at fault.

From what I can tell (given the sketchy info available so far), United decided to bump four passengers so that four United crew could get to work, presumably, at the destination, Louisville.  In my experience passengers don't generally board until the bumping is taken care of.   In this case the passengers were already on board.

The airline says they offered $400 then $800 vouchers to people who would voluntarily get off.   No one volunteered.  Then, they say, they picked four people randomly.  Presumably they would all get the $800  that was offered to people who voluntarily left the plane, but I don't know that for sure.

Three passengers got off 'without incident.'  The fourth said he was a doctor who had patients to see the next morning.  He also was of Asian descent.

The passenger did nothing wrong except insist that his valid ticket for that flight be honored.  The airline screwed up by overbooking the flight and boarding the passengers first and then insisting that four get off.  They should have thought about their crew members before filling the plane.  Once it was filled, there was no reason why their crew should have precedence over paying passengers. Even before the passengers boarded the plane, there's no reason crew should have precedence.  How did they pick him?  Was he flying on frequent flyer miles? Was it because he was Asian?

If they needed to board sky marshals, I might give them a little more leeway.  But the passenger said he had to get to work the next morning which was no different from the United crew having to get to work.  And crew members are much more interchangeable than a doctor seeing his patients.

I applaud the man for not backing down.  The airline employee used terrible judgment when he forcibly dragged the passenger off the plane.

I can't believe that there wasn't a single person on the plane who couldn't have been persuaded to take the $800 voucher (or move if necessary) to free up one more seat.  They could have even offered to let them wait between flights in the United board room.  There were lots of other options.  They could have even found another crew member to substitute in Louisville.  Surely they do that all the time when crew call in sick.

I understand that an unruly passenger might need, on occasion, to be forcibly removed from a plane.  One who might be endangering other passengers.  I don't know how often passengers are dragged off like this man was.  Here's a story about an abusive United passenger causing a Sydney - San Francisco flight to divert to Auckland, but the video shows him walking off on his own power.  And the passenger was the problem.

But this man was only standing up (or in this case sitting down) for his rights.  The airline overplayed its authority to make these decisions, which they have for airline safety requirements.  Not to fly they screw up and need to fly their own crew around.

I'm guessing the pressure to fly on-time played some role in this.  There was also some machismo in the security guy having his authority challenged.

I have to give a big cheer for cell phone videos that document what happens.  Of course they can be edited to distort what happened, but it seems that most of these get up pretty quickly and are from ordinary folks who aren't editing before they post.

I don't normally write about something like this where all the facts are not clear yet.  Perhaps it's because family matters have made me a frequent flyer over the last several years, but this one hits home.  And I'm ready to eat crow if it turns out the passenger wasn't a doctor and did something, besides refuse to give up his rightful seat, that legitimately provoked his removal.  But it will be hard to justify dragging him out.  But I'm ready to say I was wrong if time proves I jumped the gun.  And my wife and I volunteered, when getting our boarding pass, to bump and when they offered us $400 each on flight that was leaving right away (though with stops on the way), we said ok.  Before we got on the plane.

The United CEO's non-apology letter doesn't help. In fact it suggests that the problem starts at the top of the company.  I agree you should support your employees when they take the difficult, but right, action. I cheered on Alaska for backing up their crewe when they booted the man who demeaned the female crew member.   But not when it's the airlines fault.

I hope lots of regular United passengers start checking out other airlines.  Given the leggings incident a couple of weeks ago, and this saga (video below), I'd say that United has a serious problem.