Path: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local01.nntp.dca.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail
NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 03:41:44 -0500
Newsgroups: fidonet.linux
Subject: Goodbye Giganews
From: thanatoid
Message-ID:
User-Agent: Xnews/5.04.25
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 03:41:44 -0500
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properly
Xref: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com fidonet.linux:483
Dear Giganews:
I am posting to inform you that your arrogance and your blasé
(at best) treatment of your paying customers has finally reached
the point where I no longer consider it tolerable, no matter how
good your Usenet service may or may not actually be. (And it
appears to be slipping, judging by the comments in
giganews.general.)
I have been a customer of yours for over 3 years. Several times
I have attempted to get "tech support", with results I would be
generous to call disappointing (see posts quoted below).
I have posted to your "local" newsgroup several times (see posts
quoted below), asking valid and reasonable questions, and asking
for some changes to improve the user experience. Those letters
were either rudely answered with phrases like "do not rekindle
the subject as it is considered dead and buried" or totally
ignored.
I am not the only person who has raised some of those concerns.
The others were treated in the same manner.
Then there is the matter of being rude and providing virtually
zero customer service versus just playing dirty. Since you
refused to discuss let alone explain why you will not put in a
search engine, I figured out a way to find stuff on your site
almost instantly, even though my NR does not support NZB files.
I guess I was stupid to actually use one of your local groups
for the procedure required. It worked for about a month, than it
stopped working. I know I will never find out why, but there is
only one conclusion I can arrive at: You maliciously disabled
the part of your "unique and proprietary system" that allowed my
simple method to work. Hard to believe, but many things are.
By a lucky and ubelievably timely coincidence, my credit card
expired at the end of April, and the replacement got lost in the
mail, so I will be getting a new number. So I don't even have to
go through the equivalent of a full rectal examination that
attempting to terminate an account with you is probably like.
While your Usenet service was nearly excellent, regrettably it
was VASTLY exceeded by your arrogance.
Undoubtedly, some of your clients - those who apparently enjoy
the fact there there is no more quality control, customer
service, manners, or anything like those things to be found
almost anywhere in the world - will come to your rescue, like
they have in the past (since you yourselves don't bother
replying to 95% of the posts addressed to you).
I can only feel sorry for them. I wonder what they do when they
buy a $1,000 TV and it doesn't work properly... Do they just put
it in the garage and go buy another one, thanking the store
manager for allowing them to visit again?
I know from past experience that you will not deign this post
with a response. Nor would I read it if you did.
Sincerely,
thanatoid
a Former Customer
== == == ==
Included for Usenet community education purposes are a few
relevant posts from the past, in chronological order.
Comments in CAPS between == == == == are to make it easier to
sort through them.
I know it's long, but IMO it is WELL WORTH reading.
== == == ==
Sat, 07 Feb 2004
Newsgroups: giganews.general
Subject: late comment on "30 day retention"
I only come in here when I have to.
Most interesting thread.
Funny how the "threat" of possible loss of a client
("outgrowing") DID prompt an appropriate reply.
de•fen•sive (di fen‚siv) adj.1. serving or done for the
purpose of resisting attack. 2. of or pertaining to defense.
3. sensitive to the threat of criticism or injury to one's
ego. — n.4. a position or attitude of defense: on the
defensive about one's mistakes. [1350–1400; ME < MF < ML]
As you see, there are several meanings to the word
"defensive". Defending your legitimate position is one.
"Being defensive" (item 3 and 4 above) is another, and it
means specifically, acting somewhat inappropriately and
perhaps rashly in defending a position which has clearly (to
all but the person being defensive) been proven wrong or
inaccurate etc. in some way or another.
I am sorry to say that's how I perceived most of the posts
from Jason and Michael.
Specifically, I found Michael's splitting hairs about
"intentions" versus "fact" troubling. More than Jason's
defensiveness, in fact.
Someone already mentioned that the road to hell is paved with
good intentions. Whatever whomever's intentions may have
been, the announcement said "30 day retention in all binary
groups". PERIOD.
A later statement from Michael, "Our retention is going to be
a floating number always" is probably the most accurate and
illuminating of all, but it is certainly nowhere near the
meaning of "30 day retention in all binary groups."
Personally, I thought the 30 days retention was FANTASTIC and
basically made ALL OTHER usenet providers obsolete as of that
moment. I actually thought it was overkill, but I certainly
wasn't going to complain. I didn't think I would ever NEED
the 30 days (even with my 33.6 modem) but alas, today (Feb.
6) I did, and an article in a.b.s.mp3-gothic-industrial
dated Jan 9 was not available, even with XNews' "server
override", which sometimes helps.
I was RATHER disappointed and came here to see what's up.
And, FWTW, these are my comments.
BTW, why IS there a giganews.announce? Nothing ever gets
posted there. And I think I found out about the "30-day
retention" from a third party source - I did NOT receive ANY
announcement of any kind. I would think sending a mere 60 or
70K customers an email would be a standard procedure when
changing server names or addresses, or making significant
changes in retention or other policies. And I don't think one
should have to lurk in giganews.general all the time just to
know what's going on.
And, again, the news release was NOT "Giganews announces
intention of 30-day retention in all binary groups". THAT
would have been laughable to anyone. It did NOT say "30 day
retention as long as we don't get more than XXXXXGB of data
per day" nor did it say "30 days after we do some mystical
calculations with our proprietary software" nor did it say
"30 days if our system manager OK's it that particular day".
The statement WAS :
>:>:>:> Giganews is pleased to announce a new standard in
>:>:>:> newsgroup retention. We will now offer 30 days of
>:>:>:> article retention in all binary newsgroups."
So PLEASE stop claiming otherwise. It is really
unbecoming!!!
== == == ==
NO REPLY, OF COURSE.
== == == ==
Thu, 21 Apr 2005
Subject: MANY parts intermittently missing
Newsgroups: giganews.general
Hello GN,
MAIN PROBLEM:
Over the last couple of weeks, I have been forced to re-dl a
large amount of posts because even though the headers load up as
complete, once downloading, there are many parts mysteriously
missing. This causes XNews to skip to the next article, where
usually the same thing happens. I have often had this problem
with about 10 or 15 or more posts. It happens with 10-day old
posts as easily as with 40-day old posts.
I check the machine in the morning and find it has been sitting
idle (though connected) for 5 hours, because XNews will not re-
attempt to DL a post that was found incomplete. So I do a bunch
of annoying manual "read - not-read" etc. tagging, and try
again. 90% of the time it downloads fine. 10% of the time it
doesn't. So sometimes I have to do it again, and eventually it
works. Sometimes I use the "override server" function, sometimes
I don't. Doesn't seem to make much of a difference.
I've been with you guys for a few years and this is a new
problem that has not gone away almost immediately like some
other minor problems I have experienced in the past. It is very
annoying to see that I have wasted 5 hours or more of potential
DL time. I have a 33.6 modem so time IS of essence. It's not
like it will take me 7 minutes to re-DL everything I missed.
I use the 216.196.97.135 server (I believe that's the "south"
one) and always have.
Below you will find the headers to 2 of the last 12 or so posts
that this happened with, this morning.
MINOR PROBLEM:
BTW I have complained in the past (to no avail) about the total
lack of announcements from GN about any changes to their
servers, pricing structures, etc. I have NO idea what is going
on, and even though given the speed of my modem, there have so
far been no reasons to change to another server or pricing plan,
it would be really nice to know what the company is up to.
When something like (see above) happens I can't help wondering
if maybe my server is not being "attented properly" because it
is not the "groovy-fast hot NOW server" etc...
I would be nice to see announcements posted to the historically
dead giganews.announce NG (WHY was it ever established?) since
GN apppears unable or unwilling to send relevant emails directly
to their clients. I do not see why I should have to go to the
website every few weeks just to see what major development or
change in service I may not be aware of.
(irrelevant header info)
Thank you.
== == == ==
STRANGELY ENOUGH, I RECEIVED SOME REPLIES TO THIS ONE, EVEN ONE
FROM GIGANEWS (!). HERE IS THE (ABBREVIATED) THREAD:
== == == ==
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