Comcast - No complaints! [was: Re: Craptastic Service!

Sun Feb 22 22:58:29 UTC 2009

Jim Popovitch wrote:
> But that doesn't really equate to network traffic (IMHO).  

No, it doesn't.  I didn't make the analogy to airlines, I responded to 
the analogy made by someone else.

> If your
> upstream has an outage, it is more akin to a delayed departure rather
> than an airline bump or flight cancellation.  You reach your
> destination later than planned (latency) and you may have to take a
> different route, but your packet^Wbutt gets through.   Neither of
> those situations involve cash compensation, or penalties paid, by
> major airlines.  At most you might get a few loyalty points.
When overbooking results in a passenger being bumped to a flight that 
departs 2 hours later, your packet^Wbutt gets through too, but you also 
get compensation for the delay.  An argument could be made that 
extensive outage/network problems (longer than 2 hours?) are similar in 
duration/effect, and that similar compensation should be due.

I'm not saying that I expect this to happen, I'm just saying that 
there's plenty of precedent for other types of businesses compensating 
customers beyond merely giving refunds.

jc