ISP Donates to United Way to Make Up For Internet Outage
Reader Jon in Washington state has some issues with his ISP, Broadstripe. Namely, the periodic outages he experiences, and how the company decided to make up for the most recent one.
This week, he received this letter from the company:
He writes:
I have been told that if I expect my internet to be on 24/7, that I should probably sign up for a business account, because I occasionally work from home.
A couple of weeks ago, we experienced one of these outages, and received an apology letter from the Vice President of Broadstripe. In this letter, customers were told that instead of receiving a credit for the inconvenience, the company will be donating 10K to United Way to "show their commitment to the communities they serve."
So basically instead of taking care of their customers, they took the opportunity to get a tax credit.
Donating money to charity after an outage instead of crediting customers for the downtime? It goes without saying that Tax Cat approves, but Broadstripe's customers probably don't.
(Photo: Sugar Pond)
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Comments:
Internet kitteh sez "I can has internets?"
ISP sez "no"
The only way that could be any better is if they'd donated the money to "the human fund".
You should demand to see their tax returns to prove they gave the money.
Iz in ur compooter
Takin ur credits
I'm not fancy-shmancy tax attorney but, if the donation was really made on their behalf, can each subscriber take an equal portion of the donation as a charitable deduction? Sure, it would only be a few cents (what's that you say? the few cents per person will cost them less than downtime credit? that being pissed will probably only get you branded as a scrooge when you complain?), but in Times Like These, doesn't every penny count?
At least that's what I read on Consumerist.
Similar to your mechanic saying..." listen...since I messed up your car, I am going to buy groceries for those people over there".
And how does this help me?
Whenever an ISP goes into the technical explanation for why their service failed...they're just passing the buck. I've been through this with business T1 service from a local provider.
Machines break and that is beyond anyone's control. Proper planning to mitigate the effects of such downtime is not. That's the difference between amateurs and pros.
The amateurs blame faulty equipment, and think their customers are so stupid as to not see an obviously well-timed tax limiting strategy. The pros can donate their money when they wish...as they aren't needing to apologize for their service being offline.
Why didn't they spend the money on improving their network?
Did they really expect people not to get pissed at this?
Maybe they thought people would be too embarrassed to complain about a charitable donation but it's not charity if it's forced.
"Hey, not only did we not give you the service you were paying for we're going to give your money away. But that's OK because it's a charity!"
Send them a letter stating that in lieu of patience and continued support of Broadstripe you're canceling your account.
So UPS stands for Uninterruptible Power Supply, except for when it interrupts the power. Makes perfect sense.
Again, a company that needs to learn the concept of 6 P's. Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.
But why wasn't the existing UPS system a 'state-of-the-art' system? Or it was, but only if the state was 10 years old? And should they use the same UPS vendor to give a new state-of-the-art system? Maybe their building's infrastructure needs to be overhauled as well?
I'm not sure why they feel the need to apologize. Internet service, like most services, goes down from time to time. Even businesses lose internet on occasion (albeit usually for a much shorter amount of time). Unless the service is out for a prolonged period of time (I'm thinking 24+ hours), it's just something that you deal with. I've never understood why people get so caught up on it and insist on getting their $2 credit for 1 day of service not working. As the poster above said, equipment breaks, and it's beyond anyones control. Sheesh, just suck it up and move on. I'm sure the "donation" was made after they got a flood of calls from people demanding that they get a credit for the 5hrs the internet was out, 80% of those people swearing that they're losing thousands and thousands of dollars for every minute the service doesn't work.
Finally, you don't get a tax credit for donating to charity, you get a deduction.
@Esquire99: Then either give your customers a billing credit or don't. Don't tell them that they're being compensated by something you're doing that doesn't compensate them.
@floraposte:
I agree completely. I suppose my point was that I felt the letter/action was wholly unnecessary in the first place. They should have just fixed the service and moved on, no credits, no stupid charitable donations. Sometimes I wonder if the managers at some of these places actually think about the impact of sending out a letter like this before they sign it and stick it in the envelope. It's going to generate 10x more phone calls than if they had just fixed it and kept their mouths shut.
@snowburnt: Seeing their tax returns wouldn't help. How would know if it was money they were going to give anyways?
It figures that they would pick one of the bigger scam charities, too.
Well atleast they did something.We switched from a verizon t-1 to fiber line from long island fiber.
Verizon had a tech remove the wrong hardware at our co and took our t1 line with it.
You know what verizons reply was? Word for word "oops sorry a tech took out the wrong hardware sorry"
No credit or anything. Atleast they donated to charity.
Wow, a $10,000 donation to the United Way will pay about a week or two of the salary of the CEO of local United Way.
I'd suggest signing up for a different service but they have a monopoly on cable in their area. Speakeasy would be your best bet but you get no TV, small price to pay for going with a company that isn't retarded.
@nbs2: Unfortunately, that's not possible. For Federal Tax purposes, you can only claim deductions for items that you (or your spouse when filing jointly) personally paid.
I assume it makes no differance to the taxes of the entity if they donate $10,000 or reduce income through refunds. But did they expect a big "feel good" emotion by that letter?? PR fail.
Sounds like this ISP doesn't have an emergency co-location? Is this not something they need?
@snowburnt: Of course they're actually going to donate it. Tax credit. This way they can say they "did something" to "make it up to the customer" but actually get something back...a deduction.
Also...LOLZ @ uninterruptable power supply. Ironic.
Regardless of all the other considerations, there is no difference to their bottom line between a credit of $10K in billing and a charitable donation of $10K; both reduce their income by the same amount, and so their taxes by the same amount.
The only thing that would make this even close to an acceptable course of action as far as I'm concerned would be if the donation were at least 4 - 5 times the amount of the total billing credit involved.
"outline the steps we are taking to mitigate this from happening"
My second grade teacher told me never to use big words if I didn't know what they meant. FAIL.
@cmdrsass: They're not a scam. As a board member, we actually do some good. Maybe back away from your computer and go volunteer.
In lieu of paying my cable bill I'm going to donate the portion that I didn't use to the "get bastion72 a new LCD tv" fund. We hope you understand.
hahaha.. that's hilarious.. yeah.. epic fail.
because it would be too much of a good idea to give the money back to the people?
They could have just said "We're taking this very seriously." Instead of making it a 5-6 paragraph tl;dr explanation.
Where is the common sense and decency these days? The same place honest business practices have gone.
I'm a Fraudstripe customer, and i also got this letter. You want to know how bad this company is? I actually miss Comcast. And believe me, i didn't like Comcast very much.
Problem is, the city of Seattle signed an agreement with Fraudstripe so that they are now the ONLY high-speed ISP in my neighborhood. (And by high-speed, i mean between 1.5 - 2.0 mb/s with frequent slowdowns and outages.) DSL? They only have the slowest possible speed in my neighborhood. (which they advertise as being appropriate for Grandma to view email and pictures. No kidding.) Clearwire? Yeah, no thanks. Fios? Not available.
So me, and a whole bunch of people like me who live in downtown Seattle and/or the Rainier Valley, are kinda screwed. ...i loathe this company.
Time to send him a message saying, give me something in a monetary value either a credit or cash for the outage time, and my time that i was not able to actually work, or i amd going with a different carrier. period.
I got the same letter, what a joke. I also use this horrible, horrible sham of a company in Seattle (I have no other choice due to exclusivity agreement). I've filed two BBB complaints against them, had four or more house calls from inept technicians, been laughed at by technical support... I've never had to deal with such a horrible company in my entire life, period.
They're so bad they had to change their name from Millenium Digital Media to Broadstripe to try and ditch some BBB and masses of dslreports complaints. Half my channels don't work and my internet barely works, and they don't give a damn.
@HungryTuna: Not to mention they donated to the most shady and yet the most popular charity in America.
It drives me CRAZY when I have an outage, call my ISP, and they act all puzzled that I expect my service to work reliably and, moreover, want a credit on my account when they accidentally SEVER A TRUNK LINE CUTTING OFF INTERNET AND TELEPHONE ACCESS TO 3/4 OF THE ENTIRE CITY FOR TWO DAYS.
I get that outages happen. I don't get why they expect customers to be happy about it ... or why they don't think they should credit people with a monthly service when they can't USE it for part of that month.
Whoever thought this one up either has some huge balls or is some bleeding-heat liberal always looking for a way to donate someone else money to their favorite charity.
How's this any different from the government taking your money, and instead of giving you some of it back, sends it off somewhere without your permission?
File for it!
On Behalf of the customers, they are donating $10,000!!
So since you are a customer, **you can write it off on YOUR TAXES**. I would let them know that you are planning to use the tax credit so they will not get in trouble for trying to take your tax credit!
If the donation is on behalf of its customers, does that mean the customers are getting the tax credit?
Business: We can't deliver what you paid for.
Customer: Obviously
Business: So we gave money to charity to show we really are nice people (and for a tax deduction).
Customer: Hey, that is nice of you.
Business: But you get no money back for the service we didn't provide.
Customer: Bzzz, wrong answer. A reasonable person expects reasonable uptime. Pay up or I will have a judge make you pay up.
Business: Go ahead tough guy
Judge : Nice donation, now pay up.
@nybiker:
To be reliable, UPS's need to be replaced every 1-2 years in a Mission Critical environment. What I would like to know is how can it seriously take them longer than 5-10 minutes to replace the thing and be back up again...
Could they donate to a REAL charity instead of an old institution?
OMG! The United Way? NO WAY! They are the "Ticketmaster" for charitable causes. WAY too much of the money contributed to the United Way goes towards their "administrative costs."
A much bigger win would be donating DIRECTLY to a deserving local charity or food bank, where the money would have a greater effect, rather than 50-60% of the contributed money being kept by United Way for their "administrative costs."
i need to start a charity, thats some big dough in that business...and the helping whatever cause too on the side
This publicity stunt would have been better received had they ommitted the "In Lieu of billing credit" clause