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 Check

An 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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