Received the email below regarding the outage - my comments up top.

Lies, all lies - RR blunder comments:
- the mail was not fully functional for 6 consecutive days.
- my mail bounced when myself and friends tried sending mail to it, what about you?
- finally sent me my email? no, not really - I however, did receive some emails *again* that were sent at the beginning of the month which were sent to me way before this problem occurred.
- an apology? this is certainly an after thought - only 6 days after the outage was fixed.

has anyone checked the guaranteed uptime for service? of course the lines were in service, but if this falls into place as a "service" then it has been broken. 6 days is not near the typically stated 99% uptime. Actually most providers claim a bit more than just the minimal (yes, I say minimal) 99%.


and now for the letter...

_____________________
March 15, 2001




Dear Customer:

Please accept our most sincere apologies for the inconvenience you may have experienced with our Road Runner e-mail last week. From the moment the problem was identified, we worked around the clock to resolve it and prevent such inconveniences in the future.

Last Monday, a Road Runner server encountered a technical problem that stopped delivery of e-mail in its Southwest Region, which includes the Austin area. All other services, such as internet access and speed, continued to function normally. The affected equipment was replaced within hours restoring e-mail capabilities. However, the equipment was replaced a second time on Wednesday to handle the unexpectedly high usage of the e-mail system. Customers experienced delays and intermittent success in retrieving their e-mail. The slowness in retrieving e-mail was caused by a backlog of messages waiting to be sent, and many users trying to get their e-mail at the same time. More than four million messages were saved and systematically delivered to customers throughout the weekend. A small number of customers' mail boxes did not accept e-mail from Monday through Friday. The majority of these messages were returned to the sender with
notification that the message had not been delivered.

Our technical and customer service staff have been working tirelessly to respond to your calls and to keep you informed. During the past week, we responded to 42,000 customer telephone calls - four times the average number
of calls - and posted 193 service status updates on our web page. We also have been working with a team of engineers to upgrade the e-mail system and prevent this from occurring again.

Once again, we are very sorry for the inconvenience you experienced and thank you for your patience and understanding. We will credit each residential and business account for five days of full Road Runner service.
This credit will appear on the bill you will receive in April.

We will continue to work to provide you with the best quality of service. We know that you have a choice in service providers, and we thank you for choosing Road Runner High Speed Online.

Sincerely,

Steve Farabee
Vice President of Digital Online Services


****If you recieved more than 1 of these letters, it is because it was sent to all mail accounts. This include your subaccounts.****

 

I got this apology, too. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to spend the $7 they're going to credit my account. I don't really use my roadrunner email account, but this is ridiculous. I agree with you, Schatten, this is a pretty lame apology and it doesn't even make sense. Oh well, what am I going to do, switch to Southwestern Bell dsl and get even worse customer service?

Mark

 

I am going to call and ask for a full months credit. I have heard that some people have been getting it when they called and complained. A 5 day refund is not enough.

Kirk