Landlord And Service Tech Call Tenant A Nerdy Dipshit
The wireless Internet connection at Ari's new apartment isn't very useful. Neither is his landlord, or the support tech who's supposed to troubleshoot this kind of stuff.
Ari writes,
This past week I moved into a new apartment, which advertised internet being bundled in, and was listed on the rental agreement that I signed. Since I have been here, the internet has been poor in terms of speed and reliability. I emailed my landlord wanting to know what the speed of the Internet connection is at my new apartment. He said that he would forward the question to his support guy. The support guy responded in what is the most insulting response I have ever received. The person who stole the wireless router is just an, "a-hole" for being a thief, but I am a "dipshit."
From: Mark at Level2Support
Date: May 7, 2009 11:31:48 PM CDT
To: Thad, Ari
Subject: RE: Fwd: Rent CheckAn OC-3 at Level 3 costs around $37,000 a month with a $8,000 set up fee. You can go to http://www.ispworld.com/isp/bb/n_america.htm to check out backbone pricing.
It's a fucking single DSL line dipshit. And if some a-hole didn't rip off my WiFi N-band router I left in the laundry room last month, you would have better speeds between the AP and your system. Find out who stole it, and I'll give you a reward of not calling Chuck Norris to the complex to find the prick who stole it.
—-—-— Original Message —-—-—
> Subject: Fwd: Rent Check
> From: Thad
> Date: Thu, May 07, 2009 8:17 pm
> To: Mark at Level2Support
>
> In a message dated 5/7/2009 12:18:41 P.M. Central Daylight Time, [Ari] writes:
>
> Who can I talk to about the internet speeds?
>
> Het Slum, can you see what his problem is? i'm sure he just wants to bitch that its too slow. he's kind of nerdy, probably expecting instant full length movie downloads and live gaming. i have no clue what to tell him the speed is. it is what it is, we aint making it any faster.
>
> Thad
Hmm. Uh, okay. Well, as Ari points out, Thad and Mark didn't actually answer his question, at least not directly. Mark did however threaten to sic Chuck Norris on the apartment building, if that's any help.
We're not even sure if Mark was calling Ari a dipshit or Thad, since he responded to both of them, so we emailed Mark directly and asked him to clarify. He never got back to us.
Ari adds,
What I would like to do is get out of paying $20/mo. for the internet here. I looked at the Qwest terms of service, and it does state that reselling their service is against their terms of service.
We described the situation to Qwest and asked them what they thought, and they responded:
Based on the information you have provided it seems like the landlord is reselling our DSL service which they are not allowed to do. We can't be 100% sure without more details, but based on the information we have from you, that seems to be the case.
You might want to contact Qwest directly, Ari, and explain the situation to them. If Level2Support is the one reselling the Qwest service, it may be legit, in which case you'll need to talk to your landlord about either providing adequate speed or letting you out of the $20/month payment so you can buy your own. We don't know the details of your lease or the specifics of Minnesota renters' law, but you can read up on it yourself (and contact someone to help) at your state's Attorney General site.
(Photo: N_Creatures)
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Comments:
Wooooow. Talk about jerkfaces!
If you get your own internet connection and you go wireless, make sure to set up a secure network so Thad and Mark don't steal YOUR Internet. ;)
I'm sorry, but the tech left a router in the laundry room and it got stolen? That sounds a lot like it's his fault and that he's an idiot. Why would you even admit such a thing?
Can we get Thad and Mark's real email addresses so us consumers can ask some questions of them? They're business email addresses, not personal, so it should be no problem posting them in public.
There is a picture of Mark if anyone cares to email him your thoughts.
Mark's Email - markjohnston@level2support.com
Level 2 info:
7240 Metro Blvd.
Edina, MN 55439
952.400.6747
Anyone who uses the nickname "slum" as in "Het(y) Slum, can you see what his problem is" when referring to a landlord, should be taken as a warning sign.
The response from the tech was completely unprofessional but he was obviously in a pretty pissy mood before he even got your email.
I've worked tech support and sometimes you have to deal with people who aren't that intelligent. It comes with the territory. It can be aggravating, but most techs worth their salt can handle the job without referring to a customer or client as "dipshit".
Yeah man. Nice job everyone. I guess being a nerdy dipshit means you know how to get your way.
If they're paying Level3 $37K/month for an OC-3 they're the dipshits. At that commit level it should be no more than $2500 + loop costs.
Dumbasses.
This is probably really common. Offer "free internet" in your apartment building, and then hook up with a scumbag reseller who will install a single DSL line to the building and make everyone share it via wireless router.
At least the Wireless-N router would have improved speeds a bit by eliminating interference - but as it stands, Ari is probably getting so many dropped packets that he couldn't even download porn.
Oh, and to put it in persepctive. An OC3 line is about 155 MB down, as opposed to a standard resedential DSL line being about 5 MB down (some times more, usually less) OC3 would be over kill for most large business, even with VoIP unless they are using it as a backbone for a central offcie with remote occices then coming back to them.
At my last job, we ran an OC1 in to our main office and then acted as an ISP for our 25 remote offices which each had T1s comming back to us, and we never came close to hitting our bandwidth limitations.
So unless this is a GIANT appartment complex, a single T1 (around 500-700 a month) would be way more than sufficient if set up properly. Sounds like the issue here is that some idiot slapped upa wireless router and decided to say "wi-fi" included.
Invoking Chuck Norris is sooooo 2007.
@xtc46: I just e-mailed him asking why he thought leaving a router in the LAUNDRY ROM was a good idea.
@dragonfire81: I don't care if his dog died before he answered the e-mail, there is NO EXCUSE for his attitude. Also, the landlord's email to Mark wasn't any better and I'd say had a lot to do with how Mark replied to the tenant.
Anyone who is connected to a similar network should understand that even if the wireless connection is encrypted, nothing they do is secure. I would be paying $40 to $80 a month to have a secure private connection to the Internet in an apartment, bandwidth aside.
Besides, the DSL connection probably really is fast enough for everyone connected to the access point, the issue probably lies with some dumb kid using 99% of the bandwidth sharing files via bit torrent, in which case it's the landlords responsibility to hire a technician to provide either proper bandwidth sharing, or network congestion filtering. (which would just bring up another Consumerist story... "My landlord is throttling my torrents!!1$1"
@xtc46:
Has anyone emailed him and wished him luck on his job search? Has anyone forwarded page link to his boss?
'Quote: "Network stability, consistency and security is something that all clients require, regardless of who they are or what they do."'
What's the problem? Nothing on their site implies a minimum level of courtesy or professionalism. /sarcasm
The customer wants to improve his residential net connection and the tech babbles about OC3 pricing? Dude's getting a little old for a front-line tantrum over such a simple issue.
I'd also like to pile on to the guy for leaving a router in the laundry room. The best part is that they make locking mechanisms for those types of situations (at least Cisco does), but I highly doubt they were using anything you couldn't buy at Wal * Mart.
@xtc46:
You are a bit off on your math.
OC-3 is 155 MBit, not MByte. Which is still fast, but an order of magnitude off. A T1 is about 1.5 MBit, or the speed of my DSL line at home.
From the Level 2 website:
"Mission: We'll provide you with fast, friendly, round-the-clock service that's tailored to your budget and your needs. "
Mission: Failed.
Is it just me and my failing eyesight, or does that kid's shirt have "fuk" printed on it?
Chuck Norris? Heh. Chuckie will bow down to the Consumerist-enabled internetz that are about to be poured down on little Markie's head. Good times.
This is why when I look at apartments that have cable/internet bundled I run in the other direction.
Considering there's a lease provision covering the internet connection your landlord is probably in default. You should check out the back couple of pages of your lease and see if you can suspend payment of rent until your problem is solved.
@OMG! StopIt!_GitEmSteveDave: I guess/hope that it's the actual landlord's name. And that he/she is probably of ethnic origin.
@Digitizer: It's just you. You can click on the photo credit at the end of the story to see the Flickr post, and then see the original size from there. No "fuk".
@xtc46:
if his apartment is anything like the one i used to live in, a T1 would get slaughtered .
150 units minimum... a t1 would be doing around 1KBps to each unit.
i dont think youtube will work with that.....
I think he wanted to write Hey Slim, but his rage clouded his typing and spelling skills.
@nakedscience: I like to leave mine in the Laundry RAM. ROM is so 1980s.
(Sorry, it was too good to let pass!)
If it were me I would have taken being called "Kind of nerdy" as a compliment, but that's just 'cause I am :p
But yes, unprofessional, uncalled for, and certainly worth getting Qwest to look into.
On another note, the laundry room is usually not a very good place to set up a wireless router and any legitimate setup would not do so. Sounds like there is something fishy going on there to me.
That really depends on the users. There are plenty of legit reasons that a single user can saturate a connection (Netflix, Hulu, Xbox Live).
A DSL line is meant for a single user/home. If there are more than three or four units in this building, it's being spread too thin.
And we don't know what DSL connection is it. if it's 768k old-school, then it's even worse.
wow, mark and thad sound like real classy guys. where do you live? east new york?
Reselling your DSL is against YOUR terms of service, that doesn't mean it's against a reseller's terms of service.
It's an obvious point, but it needed to come up.
An OC3 shouldn't cost $37,000 a month! What planet is this guy from?
Cogent sells the bandwidth itself for about $5-10/mbit. So we're talking $1500/month for the bandwidth and whatever you'll be charged for leasing the lines. It won't be cheap, but it sure won't be $35,500 a month, either. Of course, no business would buy an OC3 for internet nowadays unless they're an ISP proper, they'd buy a lan extension to wherever the closest meet-me closet is.
I'd say you could easily get 100 mbits of Tier-2 grade service for under $5,000 a month without batting an eyelash.
Dipshit tech, indeed.
My email, I do wonder if he will reply :)
Mark,
I've just read the review of your service on Consumerist and was
wondering if I do go with Level2 for my service - can I expect the
same standard?
Thanks,
Matt
The dipshit is the idiots replying to all including the person they are making fun of. i would so be moving immediately.