tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post3544629124878526079..comments2024-03-28T09:19:27.451+00:00Comments on RevK<sup>®</sup>'s ramblings: ADRRevKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12369263214193333422noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-12276185284522585812012-03-14T10:44:22.107+00:002012-03-14T10:44:22.107+00:00Seems to me that the people that should be paying ...Seems to me that the people that should be paying up are Otello and not A&A or the Customer. It's the ADR people that have cocked up, it would seem?Phil Vealehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16898488623416029658noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-62037332003163273832012-03-14T07:39:23.769+00:002012-03-14T07:39:23.769+00:00I seriously doubt it - any more than our lack of r...I seriously doubt it - any more than our lack of response to emails to our customer is breach of service. My point is that both are not breach of contract, but that clearly the ombudsman thinks that it justifies compensation regardless.RevKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369263214193333422noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-11725357624942760372012-03-14T01:31:12.338+00:002012-03-14T01:31:12.338+00:00Is the ADR's lack of a timely response to your...Is the ADR's lack of a timely response to your emails a breech of service? ;)Frank Bulkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02004215342995023858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-86286554737095019352012-03-13T20:07:33.371+00:002012-03-13T20:07:33.371+00:00Hello again,
I'm glad you found my comments u...Hello again,<br /><br />I'm glad you found my comments useful, in some manner.<br /><br />My concern is that you are so upset and obsessed with this one ruling that you are unilaterally shovelling reactive terms into your contracts. Terms that alienate your customers and degrade the "fair" image of A&A.<br /><br />Threatening to claw-back ADR awards is unreasonable. Don't you realise that customers incur direct costs dealing with your company when there is a fault? Phone calls to your office, man hours. Simply refunding the "missing" cost of service is not redress.<br /><br />The more unreasonable terms you include, the more opportunity a court has to strike them or an executive agency has to over-rule. Yes, they can do that. Contract law is not final, it can be over-ruled by statute. <br /><br />I'm glad you're following the OFCOM channel now. I think that is a more productive opportunity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-57496127215026191622012-03-13T20:05:19.796+00:002012-03-13T20:05:19.796+00:00Hello again,
I'm glad you found my comments u...Hello again,<br /><br />I'm glad you found my comments useful, in some manner.<br /><br />My concern is that you are so upset and obsessed with this one ruling that you are unilaterally shovelling reactive terms into your contracts. Terms that alienate your customers and degrade the "fair" image of A&A.<br /><br />Threatening to claw-back ADR awards is unreasonable. Don't you realise that customers incur direct costs dealing with your company when there is a fault? Phone calls to your office, man hours. Simply refunding the "missing" cost of service is not redress.<br /><br />The more unreasonable terms you include, the more opportunity a court has to strike them or an executive agency has to over-rule. Yes, they can do that. Contract law is not final, it can be over-ruled by statute. <br /><br />I'm glad you're following the OFCOM channel now. I think that is a more productive opportunity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-88281268061207234752012-03-13T20:04:35.535+00:002012-03-13T20:04:35.535+00:00Hello again,
I'm glad you found my comments u...Hello again,<br /><br />I'm glad you found my comments useful, in some manner.<br /><br />My concern is that you are so upset and obsessed with this one ruling that you are unilaterally shovelling reactive terms into your contracts. Terms that alienate your customers and degrade the "fair" image of A&A.<br /><br />Threatening to claw-back ADR awards is unreasonable. Don't you realise that customers incur direct costs dealing with your company when there is a fault? Phone calls to your office, man hours. Simply refunding the "missing" cost of service is not redress.<br /><br />The more unreasonable terms you include, the more opportunity a court has to strike them or an executive agency has to over-rule. Yes, they can do that. Contract law is not final, it can be over-ruled by statute. <br /><br />I'm glad you're following the OFCOM channel now. I think that is a more productive opportunity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-85199972349073996332012-03-13T20:01:06.052+00:002012-03-13T20:01:06.052+00:00Hello again,
I'm glad you found my comments u...Hello again,<br /><br />I'm glad you found my comments useful, in some manner.<br /><br />My concern is that you are so upset and obsessed with this one ruling that you are unilaterally shovelling reactive terms into your contracts. Terms that alienate your customers and degrade the "fair" image of A&A.<br /><br />Threatening to claw-back ADR awards is unreasonable. Don't you realise that customers incur direct costs dealing with your company when there is a fault? Phone calls to your office, man hours. Simply refunding the "missing" cost of service is not redress.<br /><br />The more unreasonable terms you include, the more opportunity a court has to strike them or an executive agency has to over-rule. Yes, they can do that. Contract law is not final, it can be over-ruled by statute. <br /><br />I'm glad you're following the OFCOM channel now. I think that is a more productive opportunity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-38013510445240303612012-03-13T19:58:50.613+00:002012-03-13T19:58:50.613+00:00Hello again,
I'm glad you found my comments u...Hello again,<br /><br />I'm glad you found my comments useful, in some manner.<br /><br />My concern is that you are so upset and obsessed with this one ruling that you are unilaterally shovelling reactive terms into your contracts. Terms that alienate your customers and degrade the "fair" image of A&A.<br /><br />Threatening to claw-back ADR awards is unreasonable. Don't you realise that customers incur direct costs dealing with your company when there is a fault? Phone calls to your office, man hours. Simply refunding the "missing" cost of service is not redress.<br /><br />The more unreasonable terms you include, the more opportunity a court has to strike them or an executive agency has to over-rule. Yes, they can do that. Contract law is not final, it can be over-ruled by legislation. <br /><br />I'm glad you're following the OFCOM channel now. I think that is a more productiveAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-85483485632954446362012-03-13T18:58:14.173+00:002012-03-13T18:58:14.173+00:00Their report would likely be their intellectual pr...Their report would likely be their intellectual property, and therefore the law that would prevent you publishing it in it's entirety would be copyright law. That might not prevent you from publishing quotes from it under the fair use provisions if you can justify it.Alexis Threlfallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11792447399167532389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-78855990978727693092012-03-13T18:55:57.487+00:002012-03-13T18:55:57.487+00:00They would have to show a monetary loss as a resul...They would have to show a monetary loss as a result of your breach of contract, otherwise it becomes a penalty clause and would be unenforceable...Alexis Threlfallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11792447399167532389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-58852432978786938322012-03-13T18:55:00.067+00:002012-03-13T18:55:00.067+00:00That term is likely to be struck down as a unfair ...That term is likely to be struck down as a unfair contract term however Adrian, though there's nothing to lose by trying it.Alexis Threlfallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11792447399167532389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-15029998121469891282012-03-13T18:54:50.931+00:002012-03-13T18:54:50.931+00:00That term is likely to be struck down as a unfair ...That term is likely to be struck down as a unfair contract term however Adrian, though there's nothing to lose by trying it.Alexis Threlfallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11792447399167532389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-71949695319125828952012-03-13T18:43:33.002+00:002012-03-13T18:43:33.002+00:00I seriously doubt AA would be able to publish the ...I seriously doubt AA would be able to publish the text in full, since it would identify the complainant. At least not without the say so of a *really* good lawyer.<br /><br />A resonable summary was posted at http://revk.www.me.uk/2012/03/shortfalls.html<br /><br />btw. Personally I trust RevK - he's not the kind of person to hide facts or make himself look better than he is.. if AA screwed up that would have been on of the first posts, but it looks like (apart from missing some emails) they did everything right.Tony Hoylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06485210895681350152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-39665419370829930112012-03-13T15:27:28.668+00:002012-03-13T15:27:28.668+00:00I have been keeping an eye on this from the beginn...I have been keeping an eye on this from the beginning. I'm just amazed how many comments there are based on something that no one has even seen!<br /> Unless I've missed something the finding has not been published for us to see. I can't help but think that all these comments are totally pointless unless they are based on seeing the finding in full. <br />Can we please see the finding in full and have some sensible debate based on what is says?Tim Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08306505254480047743noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-6339080907789339002012-03-13T12:10:25.854+00:002012-03-13T12:10:25.854+00:00I follow your blog daily. I also own an ISP and yo...I follow your blog daily. I also own an ISP and your days seems a mirror of mine... Constantly battling pure stupidity from Favourite Telco etc. I was sure your ADR issue was going to get overturned because no one can be that Biased against the facts. After I read your recent posting I got so angry... just pure stupidity!!. So my conclusion is the ADR provider is setup to service US (The ISP) we decide which one to contract to and in turn they are supposed to be Unbiased and work with the facts. Clearly whoever is overlooking your case knows nothing about the industry or is so far removed from the current daily battle us ISP's have to go through with favourite Telco just to provide some kind of customer service .. It would be interesting to find out more about previous ADR cases to see if the industry is being let down by the current providers. But on a personal note the industry is behind you and watching this case carefully.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16505044467796417053noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-25924486890290808702012-03-13T10:04:07.272+00:002012-03-13T10:04:07.272+00:00I do find it mildly amusing that other ISPs report...I do find it mildly amusing that other ISPs report more threats of ADR now, but we are getting lots of "I promise not to take you to ADR" comments :-)RevKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369263214193333422noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-67642647987009329442012-03-13T08:51:35.504+00:002012-03-13T08:51:35.504+00:00I would also like to point out that as you have re...I would also like to point out that as you have repeatedly stated:<br /><br />"A&A has NOT been found in breach of contract with 'your favourite customer'"<br /><br />Therefore, how can this ADR ruling be seen as anything else *but* a punishment ?Terry F.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13969846575454712191noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-23755994973911590752012-03-13T08:40:54.348+00:002012-03-13T08:40:54.348+00:00Crikey... that was a quick response RevK!
Maybe &...Crikey... that was a quick response RevK!<br /><br />Maybe 'punishment' is a harsh term to use... the only reason I use that word is because I feel like I have been punished myself for choosing them as a supplier in the first place.<br /><br />One of the issues we will be raising with the ADR is that they were regularly overcharging us for bandwidth not used (and at double the published BT Wholesale IPSC rates per Mbit/s it soon adds up) and as we logged our traffic on a per-line basis, switchport basis *and* router interface basis at three different points of measurement (RADIUS server, SNMP to switch and SNMP to router respectively), all three of our figures matched.<br /><br />However, they didn't match against theirs.<br /><br />Cue lots of e-mails exchanged, we check, double-check and triple-check our figures for accuracy and they come back and say, "No issue at our end... invoice still stands!" - we push further, many many months go by and then we finally, nearly one year later, get a response, "Oh yes, we were adding up each individual VLAN interface plus sticking the bytecount for the actual port on there as well... k thx bye!".<br /><br />My beef is that we spent many many man hours diagnosing a problem with *their* infrastructure, effectively accused of falsifying our figures and then we didn't get an apology nor any kind of recompense for helping them fix a bug in their backend systems.<br /><br />The problem was that if we didn't spend the time/effort to do this, we would have had no way of arguing against their overcharging (therefore allowing them to defraud us - charging for services not supplied is fraud, yes ?) and the alternative was to do what we did and expend time and effort in diagnosing their error - which also cost us money (in the form of man hours) to resolve.<br /><br />Plus, they were still invoicing us in November/December for tails migrated out from them to A&A in October :-)<br /><br />The only thing which this company can do exceedingly well is extract money from bank accounts while failing to provide any kind of usable service or competent support - this doesn't even go into the failings at the NOC level... although that can wait for AAISPISSUP methinks when I can disclose stuff which I'd rather not do in a public forum such as your blog.Terry F.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13969846575454712191noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-13787049782524272992012-03-13T07:48:03.431+00:002012-03-13T07:48:03.431+00:00It will be interesting to hear. The fact you use t...It will be interesting to hear. The fact you use the word "punishment" is part of the problem though - ADR should not be about "punishment" and that is specifically excluded from their terms. It should be about resolving a dispute. Where the company is in breach of terms, then they should pay the costs incurred, obviously. If you find ADR a useful alternative to the courts then I wish you luck.RevKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369263214193333422noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-326015885680131782012-03-13T07:34:01.869+00:002012-03-13T07:34:01.869+00:00As I think I've mentioned to you in #a&a, ...As I think I've mentioned to you in #a&a, based on your experiences with the ADR process as a service provider, we are initiating the ADR process with our former L2TP supplier due to some pretty flagrant breaches of the agreed contract over the course of the last 12 months.<br /><br />I'll make no bones about the fact that if you hadn't been hit with this frivolous ADR claim (and lost), I wouldn't be doing this - my logic is that if a fair-dealing *decent* provider such as A&A can be found to have failed in the eyes of the arbitrator, they shouldn't have any problem dishing out some punishment to a company which has personally frustrated me for the last couple of years and has been providing a patently broken service since April 2011.<br /><br />I will be happy to fill you in with all the gory details at the forthcoming AAISPISSUP and I'm sure you will be pleased to hear that your wholesale L2TP service is loved by me, my chaps in the office and all of our end users who loyally stuck with us from the migration between 'old provider' and A&A.Terry F.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13969846575454712191noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-38051535100772965852012-03-13T05:14:24.719+00:002012-03-13T05:14:24.719+00:00Thanks for everyone's comments, including ztor...Thanks for everyone's comments, including ztora, I am slightly calmer now.<br /><br />I am expecting a call from someone that can offer some legal advice later today anyway. We'll see what they say.<br /><br />Considering this from the customers point of view is a good idea. But bear in mind that ADR is meant to be there to "resolve a dispute". It is specifically not there to consider or change the terms of contract. It is specifically not there to punish us for making mistakes and has terms outlawing punitive awards.<br /><br />If the dispute is "I think you own me money, but i agreed that you don't have to pay me any because you did not break the contract" then the "resolution" is "sorry, tough, you agreed".<br /><br />The whole area of whether a contract with limited liabilities like this is "fair" is something I am happy to debate. But that is not for the ombudsman to decide. I think it is fair, especially where we provide very cheap services and even free services. I also think it is fair as people have a choice - we are very "up front" about the limit of liabilities and people don't have to buy from us. If everyone thinks we are unfair we have to change the terms to stay in business.<br /><br />The idea that, in a free market, someone can offer different levels of service guarantee to customers, is generally good. Someone could offer broadband with huge payouts for even seconds of downtime - if they charged enough for the service. We have chosen a level at which we will offer the service, largely because we understand some of the limitations of the providers we use for parts of that service. We don't hide that or mis-sell the service.<br /><br />Nothing in the ADR terms allows them to undermine our contract terms like this.<br /><br />It is also interesting the points on fraud and mistakes of fact. We are going through the emails later this morning. But the customer clearly stated they wanted to continue the service and the ombudsman says there is nothing to show that the customer put that line in their email. This means they are, in effect, accusing us or the customer of fraud. So we'll be writing to them on that point, asking if they are accusing us of fraud or not.<br /><br />If ADR was there to punish us for poor customer service, then that would be fine, but it is not. It is clearly not. It is there to resolve disputes. Given that it has failed to find an agreed solution (and failed to even try to) they have failed to do what we have paid them to do. They are a company, not a court, and they are paid to resolve disputes, by us.RevKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369263214193333422noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-33879151315929226282012-03-13T04:48:58.883+00:002012-03-13T04:48:58.883+00:00Just to remind the ombudsman service - if you are ...Just to remind the ombudsman service - if you are reading this you are in breach of copyright simply by downloading it to your computer to view it.RevKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369263214193333422noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-6687370551894558692012-03-13T04:34:46.523+00:002012-03-13T04:34:46.523+00:00Your comment "It's only an appeal which c...Your comment "It's only an appeal which can decide that it was wrong." is quite correct, and the fact ADR allows no appeal to a real court is an issue. By adding this clarification we are giving ourselves that right of appeal in effect.RevKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369263214193333422noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-42896403344540146932012-03-13T03:55:58.699+00:002012-03-13T03:55:58.699+00:00I understand the points you are making. In this ca...I understand the points you are making. In this case the customers stated clearly that he would be happy if we released him from contract with no penalty, and we said that was fine by us - so agreement reached. Even so, the ombudsman ignored the resolution the customer proposed and we agreed and decided to force a good will payment as well, which makes no sense.RevKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369263214193333422noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3993498847203183398.post-29531953742575844952012-03-13T03:53:48.843+00:002012-03-13T03:53:48.843+00:00I can see what you are saying here, but there are ...I can see what you are saying here, but there are a couple of key points to bear in mind. (1) A court would not make an award against us having determined that we are not in breach of contract, and (2) we have no appeal against ADR decision.<br /><br />The whole point of agreeing limits of liability is to avoid payments which exceed them. It is valid in contract law to agree limits of liability, which is why we do it. The new term does not change the limits has been AGREED by the customer - it simply clarifies what that agreement means. It means you AGREE not to *take* more than that limit.RevKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369263214193333422noreply@blogger.com