Motoko's Journal

Why Verizon Wireless Sucks

I was reading an article the other day about a problem a customer was having with a company. One of the comments was interesting. The commenter wrote that it is rare to see words written about when someone is having no problems with a company, only when there are problems. Sadly, it is very true.

This was going to be a single post, but it is too big. History will be on this part, the positive stuff will be in the next post.For background, I've seen cell phones evolve from huge units that were a pain to carry, to the slim little things we know today. The first cell phone I have experience with is the "California Mobile Phone" which is basically a DynaTAC 8000X with a fancy name (and lower price). The service was from LA Cellular (later AT&T Wireless, then Cingular, and now AT&T). It was an awesome phone for the time, and since service was so expensive, it was mostly there for emergency use.

Later on, LA Cellular changed. They got big, and started being less friendly. Customer service was basically abandoned. Since there were newer and better plans and phones, it was time to look around. PacTel Wireless had changed its name to Airtouch and was running some clever ads at the time (remember the blind spokesperson Ricky?). Their plans were much better than LA Cellular, and the phones were also a bit cheaper, so they were chosen.

Airtouch was a great company, very friendly people on support, and their coverage was quite good for the time. In fact, just doing a bit of phone switching, I was using an analog handset until about 2004. Of course, the digital revolution was sweeping through the cell market and analog was being abandoned.

By this time Airtouch had become Verizon Wireless, and it was rather funny having a phone with the Airtouch logo long after that name was gone. Anyway, I began to use the cell phone for more than just emergencies, and the short battery life and high plan cost was a big problem. Since analog coverage was becoming non-existent, I decided to upgrade. So, a call to Verizon Wireless, and a shiny Motorola v60s was on its way to me.

It was a great phone with decent battery life and good sound. Only there was one problem. Where before I had decent analog reception (if sketchy availability of an open circuit), I had no reception at home or at the office. This rather defeated the purpose of having a call phone since the main locations I might think to use it didn't have coverage. Calls to customer service for other items when I needed help proved to be frustrating at the best.

After dealing with the two-year contract, I decided to look at other options. Sprint was rather expensive and Cingular scared me with tales of constant billing problems. T-Mobile was the other major choice, and after looking at a few sources, decided they were worth a try. I especially liked their coverage maps with street-level zoom, which confirmed they had at least decent coverage where I wanted it.

So, I moved to T-Mobile, but I was still wondering if I should have stayed with Verizon Wireless, as I knew them and at least had some expectations. The last interaction I had with them however convinced me to never go back.

I called customer service to confirm my account had been canceled when my old number was ported. The rep I talked to was very hostile (since they did lose my business), and after I confirmed the cancelation, told me that when I realized I made the wrong choice I'd be sorry for leaving them.

Now, this could be a one-off thing, but my previous experience with their customer service leads me to think it wasn't. Now, I do a lot of work with customers at the office, especially support, and it can be very frustrating at times. I realize that so I try to be nice and understanding when I am on the other side. The one thing I do know though is you don't ever insult the customer, and you especially don't tell them they are stupid or made a bad decision. At least, you don't tell them flatly. They are paying you for help, and as long as it is in your scope, you try to handle it as best as you can. Being rude is a sure way to lose a customer to the competition, and it certainly worked for me. I will never use Verizon Wireless, and I now warn others who might be considering them about how they treated me.

Next post will be on why I like T-Mobile and what I think Verizon Wireless could learn from them.

Possible New Server?

So everyone can see what their donations will be going toward (as D|S accused the group of pocketing money), I have posted some pictures of what we hope will be the new bot server. You can see them in my gallery.

The server is a 2U rack-mount with a SuperMicro board. It runs on two Intel Xeon @ 2.4gHz. Included is 2gB of DDR RAM. In the pics, you will see cabling for IDE drives, but those are to be replaced with 80gB SATA drives (one for system, two on a 3ware RAID card for a mirrored data area). We are slated to have 6 megabit of bandwidth, burstable to 100 megabit.

The server is actually sitting in my office here waiting for the drives to be put in and me to install an OS. I am, however, holding until enough donations can be gathered to ensure we can pay for the hosting. Hosting is going to be about $180 a month, and we must pay the first three months (to cover the bandwidth purchase our host will need to make).

Update 1 (some quick notes):

Since a few people have mentioned things in my post, I thought I would explain a bit further.

No, we aren't limited at 6 megabit. I calculated the speed from the transfer we would be allowed. The connection would have 2 terabytes of transfer, and is burstable to 100 megabit. 6 megabit would be a continuous speed we could sustain 24/7 without hitting overage charges.
The data center is connected to all the major North American Tier-1 backbones (Savvis, Level 3, Sprint, Verizon/UUNet, Qwest, Verio, etc...) and this is partly why the cost is what it is. It is a very nice network with nice speeds (I'm seeing 30ms on my pings to a machine hosted there).

Update 2:

I have done some looking and might be able to get 2.5 terabytes of bandwidth for about the same amount.

Rainy Days and Mondays

I don't know what is up with me recently. I just feel like crying and I'm just not motivated for anything. I've tried doing some stuff I normally love, but my heart isn't in it. I don't know what is going on with me.

So, my birthday is tomorrow. I'll be 25 years old, and I haven't accomplished anything yet. So many people have done so much by this point. One of my friends has moved out and is making a good life for themselves, another is married. I've lost track of many others, but I guess that is fine. I'd just bring them down, and I don't want that guilt to deal with, although I miss her and just wish I could sit and talk to her and hug her.

This week, I also found out that one of the people I love found someone else. I'm happy for them, I want them to be happy, but I still can't help feeling sad at my loss (so selfish!). Oh well, I guess I'm not meant for someone. It might be for the best anyway. Anyone who would take me would just be doing it out of pity. I don't need that.

Of course, I'm playing Sarah McLachlan on a loop right now. "Dirty Little Secret", too. Such a sad song, it fits my mood just right.

So, how will I be remembered when I go? My bet is that I'll be forgotten. I haven't done anything worth remembering, and that pains me. Even if I am not remembered, I'd love for something I did to be. I'm just not good enough or smart enough for that to happen.

Last.fm

I noticed a mention of an interesting service in a Slashdot comment. It offers free streaming radio but you can personalize it to play audio you like more instead of the usual random stuff you can find on most streaming radio feeds. The real interesting hook is how it uses the new fad of social networking.

Last.fm makes profiles on all users on the system and shows you users who have a similar musical taste to you. Aside from matching, you can also listen to radio feeds customized with their profile, possibly exposing you to some new music you might now know about, but with the added benefit of being something closer to your tastes.

It remains to be seen how well it works, as I haven't played enough tracks for me to be matched yet. I'll probably follow up on this topic later after I've played with the system a bit more.

Advertisment - MSSQL vs Oracle on Security

Just when you thought Microsoft couldn't top themselves on smug advertisments, another surprise gets published.

The new advertisment points out that Microsoft SQL Server 2000 is more secure than Oracle 10g. I have posted my views below.

The thing that bugs me most on this campaign aren't the claims, it is the plain smug and superior attitude. The looks on the faces of the people in these adverts make me want to smack them.

Anyway, at the moment I can't find much of anything wrong with the report. Perhaps someone else can find where the slant is? Report is here if you want to read it.

I actually looked over the report, and it seems to be rather well-done this time. Nothing easy to pick out, a solid testing style, equal comparisons across the products.

A few things I will note however. The comparison is between SQL Server 2000 and Oracle 10g. Oracle 10g is a much newer database than SQL Server 2000 (which is near the end of its lifespan). It might have been more fair to use Oracle 9i in the comparison, also a mature product in the timeframe used in the report.

The base OS for Oracle was RedHat Enterprise AS 3. Sadly, this choice caused the majority of security issues. I believe I calculated that 18% of the patches came from the kernel (a result of RedHat backporting everything from 2.6 to 2.4 - something they should have learned from RH 9.0). Personally, I would use a different base if I was deploying Oracle in the field, but I know most places that examined Linux would use RedHat, so I can't fault the study for choosing that too.

So, it looks like on this ad, MS is actually being somewhat truthful. Can anyone see anything that would cast some doubt on the results?

Got Linux?

Since it has been a busy week for me at work, and a busy weekend (had to do some work on the rack today), I decided to do a fun project I had been putting off: creating a "got linux?" penguin.

I have had a rather large (2 ft high) stuffed penguin toy for about two weeks. It was given to me by someone who knew I liked Linux, and penguins. Since just a penguin alone isn't too exciting, I thought I'd toss in a nice take on the famous "got milk?" campaign.

Using some tools, I mocked up a copy of the "got Linux?" sign, and sent it to my printer. The good thing about the printer is it is color. The only bad thing is that solid ink backgrounds kinda take some time to dry.

Anyway, after drying I made some use of tape and positioned the sign so it looked like the penguin was holding it.

Here is the result of my work:

Slanted Advertisment - MSSQL vs Oracle

Perhaps you've seen the advertisment Microsoft has been running lately. It claims to show that their MS-SQL Server is faster than Oracle. I guess they are trying to prove their software is better than time-tested enterprise stuff. Perhaps they are worried Linux is taking up the market they are trying to get into, and they know once something becomes intrenched, it is almost impossible to remove. They have that kind of lock on the desktop.

Anyway, you can check out the advert above. You might wonder how Microsoft got those results. I mean, even if MSSQL was good, it can't be that good. If it was, more people would be talking about that. Well, perhaps the explanation would be that the tests were skewed?

If you thought that, you'd be correct. That tiny print on the right side of the advert has the configuration of the test machines. Here is an excert with just the config showing:

...The benchmark was performed on an HP ProLiant DL585 server with SAP R/3 Enterprise Release 4.70 software running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition. The ProLiant was configured with four AMD Opteron 875 series dual core processors running at 2.2GHz with 128KBL1 cache and 1MB L2 cache and 32GB Advanced ECC PC3200 DDR SDRAM...

... The benchmark was performed on an HP Integrity Model rx4640-8 server ... running HP-UX 11i and Oracle 9i. The HP was configured as an SMP 4-way with four Intel Itanium 2 processors running at 1.5GHz with 32KB L1 cache, 256KB L2 cache, and 32GB RAM...

Hm. Aside from the complaint that they should have used the same machine for a fair review, it looks like they are using a much better machine for the Windows server. Four dual-core Opterons? Last I knew that meant it was technically eight processors. also note the speed difference. Looks like an unfair test to me.

Remember to always get the details when you see tests. It often helps show where a problem might be in the figures, or shows it was done fairly.