Hi Bob. I had the same problem when I worked for a local telephone company who resold US West lines. For service, we would "relay" the service call to US West (as is expected, we want our customers to only deal with us). US West, as usual, was weeks behind in service. We told the customer it would be a few weeks and they threatened to cancel us and go back to US West because US West always fixed stuff faster. Heheh. Most of those people will understand (from earlier days of analog modems) that even if they pay their AOL bill, they can't use it unless they pay their phone bill for obvious reasons. One is dependent, the other is independent. You are the AOL in this analogy, and Qwest is the phone company that cut off their communications line. Sorry for comparing Real-Time to AOL. :) Timothy On Fri, 1 Dec 2000, Bob Tanner wrote: > Been running into this lately, so I thought I would ask the collective knowledge > of the LUG this question: > > How do you explain to people the difference between a Telco and an ISP? > > The people are totally newbies and very, very non-techincal. > > The situation I am in is a client lost their DSL service from USWest. After days > of calling and hours on the phone with Qwest I was told that they are beyond the > 19,000 foot mark. > > Qwest says they should have never gotten DSL in the first place. Qwest will not, > no matter what put DSL down that circuit. Qwest has not explaination on how they > got DSL in the first place. > > Anyways, this client is very upset. They keep calling us and asking us to "fix > the problem". > > I have tried (very patiently) to explain Real Time is an ISP, we provide > Internet access. Qwest is a telco, they provide the physical connectivity. > > It just doesn't sink in. > > I have tried this analogy. Real Time is an automotive dealer, we sell cars. > Qwest is like MNDOT, they build roads. > > You (the client) have bought a speedy but very safe car (linux). It comes with > an airbag (ipchains) for safety, etc.. You got the car, but there is no roads to > drive on. > > It didn't sink in. > > So, how can you explain to the client that when the physical link is down, no > matter how bad you want to fix it from them, Qwest must be involved and they > must do the fix? > > > > -- > Bob Tanner <tanner at real-time.com> | Phone : (612)943-8700 > http://www.mn-linux.org | Fax : (612)943-8500 > Key fingerprint = 6C E9 51 4F D5 3E 4C 66 62 A9 10 E5 35 85 39 D9 > > _______________________________________________ > tclug-list mailing list > tclug-list at lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > --------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Houck thouck at thouck.com www.thouck.com