Wednesday, January 17, 2007
You have GOT to be kidding me!
This has to be a joke, right? Of all things PeoplePC could get an award for, they're getting an award for customer satisfaction? This is the company that has a 900 number for tech support! This is the company that requires its users to utilize a highly flawed dialer instead of DUN. This dialer will dial-up to long distance numbers without a second thought, leaving its customers with insane phone bills. This cannot be! I had to look into this further. After a quick Google search, I had discovered the awful truth: This very well can be!As is detailed at J.D. Power and Associates' own site, they handed this honor over to PeoplePC back in September. How could they have won this honor when I get tons of hits daily from Google searches for "PeoplePC frequent disconnects" and the like due to an article I wrote about them months ago? PeoplePC ranking highly in customer service goes against everything many experienced techs like myself have dealt with on the ground. When I read the article, however, I discovered exactly why PeoplePC was able to win:
PeoplePC receives the highest ratings from customers in four factors: cost of service, billing, e-mail services, and offerings and promotions.The only actual service they were judged upon was email! It doesn't take into account whether or not the user can ever actually connect to the internet successfully, be helped by the tech support, or afford a phone bill after PeoplePC's "Smart Dialer" has been dialing to 400 miles away.
This honor means absolutely nothing! It is not an award for customer service. It's an award for cheap service. J.D. Power and Associates, you have lost every shred of what little credibility I was willing to lend you. You are completely and utterly incompetent. Have every member of your staff get rid of their current internet connection and replace it with PeoplePC for six months. Then, I believe you would be ready to rate them accurately.
Labels: PeoplePC
Saturday, September 16, 2006
PeoplePC
Today I thought I'd talk about my experience with PeoplePC's dial-up internet service. I happened to have had a customer back at the beginning of the year who bought PeoplePC service. He was a first time internet user. He had just paid around $1500 for a Dell XPS as his first computer, and asked a friend what internet service he should get. His friend led him wrong, and told him to go with PeoplePC because it was cheap. Like a true wide-eyed and naive internet newbie, he signed on for a full year contract right away, and a few weeks in, he called me out there to figure out some of his computer issues, namely his getting kicked offline constantly.
At the time, my only contact with PeoplePC was seeing their odd commercials. When I saw the kind of setup they had, my first instinct was to ditch their proprietary dialing software and use DUN, but it turns out he was paying extra for the "accelerated" (glorified proxy server that decreases image quality to decrease load time), so I didn't have the heart to tell him it was bunk.
In addition to the frequent disconnects, I noticed a serious lack of performance for a two week old dual-core performance beast. After playing with the processes a bit, sure enough, it was PeoplePC's dialer that was hosing his performance. If you're not familiar with their dialer, or as they call it, the "Smart Dialer", it has a hacked Internet Explorer window that you must keep open the entire duration of your connection. If you close it, it disconnects from the internet. Well, isn't that completely useless?
As I was fiddling with the settings on the "Smart Dialer" trying to find a setting that would stop it from disconnecting so often, I came across his list of phone numbers in the "Smart Dialer". One was local, one was EAS, and the other three were local toll! As it turns out, these are the numbers PeoplePC had given him to use in the "Smart Dialer" when he called their support number... their 1-900 support number. No, I did not stutter. Their support is via a 1-900 number. Anyway, they had primed the "Smart Dialer" with these numbers, and wouldn't you know it, the dialer liked to dial one of the local toll numbers best. Therefore, every time he connected to the internet, he was getting charged about $0.10 per minute by the phone company. As you can see, this is no "Smart" dialer. It is simply a method by which PeoplePC controls their bandwidth, and it has nothing to do with optimizing anything for the user. They couldn't care less if you end up dialing long distance to connect to the internet. I was quick to disable all the numbers but the local one, and it connected just fine. It disconnected about 45 seconds later, but it did successfully connect. Then it crashed. Actually, it had crashed a few other times before, but I didn't feel like writing "It crashed" every other line, so from now on, just assume it crashes often. I gave him a heads up on the awful phone bill he was going to receive, and then continued with my exploration.
I failed to find any setting that seemed to improve connection stability, so I had to reach into the tech toolbag for a few tricks. In my pursuit of underhanded "stay alive" methods, I took a minute to read their terms of service to see what exactly was legal. It turns out that, as part of the terms, you agree that you will only connect to their service using the proprietary dialer provided, and not with DUN. I was becoming more and more impressed with how it seemed they were actually trying to be the worst ISP ever. I'm gonna have to give them the award. They've done so much to do so little.
Eventually I got everything to a workable state, but it was only designed for the short term. My customer, already conceding the money he'd paid to PeoplePC, had decided to choose a local ISP that actually works. So, in this particular case, PeoplePC makes out like a bandit because of their subpar service and shady business practices. They get paid without actually having to provide any service. Wow, that's a pretty effective business model.
At the time, my only contact with PeoplePC was seeing their odd commercials. When I saw the kind of setup they had, my first instinct was to ditch their proprietary dialing software and use DUN, but it turns out he was paying extra for the "accelerated" (glorified proxy server that decreases image quality to decrease load time), so I didn't have the heart to tell him it was bunk.
In addition to the frequent disconnects, I noticed a serious lack of performance for a two week old dual-core performance beast. After playing with the processes a bit, sure enough, it was PeoplePC's dialer that was hosing his performance. If you're not familiar with their dialer, or as they call it, the "Smart Dialer", it has a hacked Internet Explorer window that you must keep open the entire duration of your connection. If you close it, it disconnects from the internet. Well, isn't that completely useless?
As I was fiddling with the settings on the "Smart Dialer" trying to find a setting that would stop it from disconnecting so often, I came across his list of phone numbers in the "Smart Dialer". One was local, one was EAS, and the other three were local toll! As it turns out, these are the numbers PeoplePC had given him to use in the "Smart Dialer" when he called their support number... their 1-900 support number. No, I did not stutter. Their support is via a 1-900 number. Anyway, they had primed the "Smart Dialer" with these numbers, and wouldn't you know it, the dialer liked to dial one of the local toll numbers best. Therefore, every time he connected to the internet, he was getting charged about $0.10 per minute by the phone company. As you can see, this is no "Smart" dialer. It is simply a method by which PeoplePC controls their bandwidth, and it has nothing to do with optimizing anything for the user. They couldn't care less if you end up dialing long distance to connect to the internet. I was quick to disable all the numbers but the local one, and it connected just fine. It disconnected about 45 seconds later, but it did successfully connect. Then it crashed. Actually, it had crashed a few other times before, but I didn't feel like writing "It crashed" every other line, so from now on, just assume it crashes often. I gave him a heads up on the awful phone bill he was going to receive, and then continued with my exploration.
I failed to find any setting that seemed to improve connection stability, so I had to reach into the tech toolbag for a few tricks. In my pursuit of underhanded "stay alive" methods, I took a minute to read their terms of service to see what exactly was legal. It turns out that, as part of the terms, you agree that you will only connect to their service using the proprietary dialer provided, and not with DUN. I was becoming more and more impressed with how it seemed they were actually trying to be the worst ISP ever. I'm gonna have to give them the award. They've done so much to do so little.Eventually I got everything to a workable state, but it was only designed for the short term. My customer, already conceding the money he'd paid to PeoplePC, had decided to choose a local ISP that actually works. So, in this particular case, PeoplePC makes out like a bandit because of their subpar service and shady business practices. They get paid without actually having to provide any service. Wow, that's a pretty effective business model.
Labels: PeoplePC
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Zone Alarm 6.5
This is the first post, so it will work to give you an idea of what I'll be getting at. It's pretty simple. I tell you what the user reported as the issue, what my more professional diagnosis yielded, and the solution(s) employed. I'm sure many of the problems I'll be covering have been covered elsewhere, but I'm just posting as I come to them. Some posts will not be in this style, I'm sure, but I'm aiming to make this the general style.
Report: User cannot change home page in Internet Explorer on one machine. Machines cannot "talk to each other."
Equipment: Two computers connected on south side of DI-524, both machines XP Pro SP2 with Zone Alarm. One machine has Zone Alarm 6.1.744.1, while other has 6.5.731.0.
Diagnosis: Both machines still successfully access internet. Zone Alarm settings for trusted Zone are correct. Program access rules seem correct. Upon changing home page in IE, after applying, leaving internet options and returning to internet options, home page has reset to previous setting. No known home page locking softwares on machine.
Troubleshooting: Lowered firewall on machine with ZA 6.1 with no improvement. Lowered firewall on machine with ZA 6.5 and achieved connectivity. Reraised ZA 6.1 on other machine and connectivity continued. Rechecked settings on ZA 6.5. Despite matching ZA 6.1 settings on other machine, ZA 6.5 has blocked communication between the machines in the trusted zone, although I'm not sure why this has occured all of the sudden after functioning correctly for so long.
Solution: I went ahead and uninstalled ZA 6.5, figuring on a corrupted install, and, just for the hell of it, attempted to change the homepage in IE. Amazingly, it now works correctly. Reinstallation of 6.5, however, once again locked the home page, although trusted zone connectivity remained intact. In the end, I uninstalled ZA 6.5 again, ran Regscrub, and installed ZA 6.1.744.1. All reported issues now seem to have been resolved. I set ZA 6.1 to manual updates to avoid it asking user to be updated to 6.5.
After working on this, I did some googling, and sure enough, ZA 6.5 seems to be troublesome. It bothers me a bit that it has been out for so long, and yet these problems remain. I actually noticed a little later that one of my personal machines has ZA 6.5.722.0, and sure enough, my IE home page is locked. I never change it, so I hadn't even noticed. Hopefully, Zone Labs will fix this issue in later releases, or at least add a control so you can disable the home page lock.
Report: User cannot change home page in Internet Explorer on one machine. Machines cannot "talk to each other."
Equipment: Two computers connected on south side of DI-524, both machines XP Pro SP2 with Zone Alarm. One machine has Zone Alarm 6.1.744.1, while other has 6.5.731.0.
Diagnosis: Both machines still successfully access internet. Zone Alarm settings for trusted Zone are correct. Program access rules seem correct. Upon changing home page in IE, after applying, leaving internet options and returning to internet options, home page has reset to previous setting. No known home page locking softwares on machine.
Troubleshooting: Lowered firewall on machine with ZA 6.1 with no improvement. Lowered firewall on machine with ZA 6.5 and achieved connectivity. Reraised ZA 6.1 on other machine and connectivity continued. Rechecked settings on ZA 6.5. Despite matching ZA 6.1 settings on other machine, ZA 6.5 has blocked communication between the machines in the trusted zone, although I'm not sure why this has occured all of the sudden after functioning correctly for so long.
Solution: I went ahead and uninstalled ZA 6.5, figuring on a corrupted install, and, just for the hell of it, attempted to change the homepage in IE. Amazingly, it now works correctly. Reinstallation of 6.5, however, once again locked the home page, although trusted zone connectivity remained intact. In the end, I uninstalled ZA 6.5 again, ran Regscrub, and installed ZA 6.1.744.1. All reported issues now seem to have been resolved. I set ZA 6.1 to manual updates to avoid it asking user to be updated to 6.5.
After working on this, I did some googling, and sure enough, ZA 6.5 seems to be troublesome. It bothers me a bit that it has been out for so long, and yet these problems remain. I actually noticed a little later that one of my personal machines has ZA 6.5.722.0, and sure enough, my IE home page is locked. I never change it, so I hadn't even noticed. Hopefully, Zone Labs will fix this issue in later releases, or at least add a control so you can disable the home page lock.
