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 COLUMN
Reliability problems with @Home e-mail sends customers elsewhere I'VE GOT GOOD NEWS and bad news. The good news is that many of @Home's cable partners now offer "free e-mail." The bad news is that by "free," @Home means it won't give customers credit on their monthly bill for lost e-mail.
An AT&T@Home customer who has regularly tested the amount of e-mail sent to his @Home account that is delayed or simply lost reports the problem has steadily worsened during the past six months. "What's really appalling is that [in January] it's just gone through the roof," he says, noting that nearly one in seven test messages was delayed by at least four days. "And there's no reason to think it's going to get any better, because their main response seems to be coming up with new excuses. Perhaps that's just as well ... [considering] the [lack of] technical competence to fix these problems they've demonstrated, [because it seems] they are only capable of making things worse." @Home customers who feel they shouldn't have to pay their full monthly bill because of the e-mail outages are hearing some interesting explanations for why that's not possible. "I had been experiencing the problem for about two weeks and I had missed several critical e-mails, including travel arrangements from my travel agency," wrote a Comcast@Home customer who finally got a technical support representative to admit the service was experiencing problems with its e-mail servers. "I tried to convince him that I should receive some compensation in my billing. He was 'not authorized to provide any credit.' He claimed that e-mail is provided as a 'free service' to @Home customers, so my bill did not include any charges for e-mail." "This is like if I bought a new car and it didn't run -- can the dealer then tell me the engine was thrown in for free so he's not responsible for it?" wrote another Comcast@Home customer who also was told that @Home e-mail is "free." "It's outrageous. ... There is nothing on their Web site or in the terms of service that says anything about e-mail not being part of [the fees]." A variation on the "free e-mail" theme was reported by several AT&T@Home customers. After requesting a credit for lost e-mail, they were told that the service is for "recreational" purposes only. "Since it's only a 'recreational service,' I was told by AT&T that I shouldn't depend on getting my e-mail," wrote another reader. "They as much as told me to sign up for a free e-mail account somewhere like Yahoo and use that as my regular address for receiving e-mail." Excite@Home officials acknowledge they had e-mail problems in January, and that they have recommended some customers get a free Excite account to use temporarily for important e-mail. Although their cable partners may be telling customers that e-mail is a free service, Excite@Home still considers it a crucial feature. "E-mail is part of the core services," says Mark Bindon, vice president of customer care for Excite@Home's consumer division. "But I can certainly understand where a [cable provider's] tier one support rep might have gotten to the point these last few weeks where they might tell a customer to go somewhere else for e-mail." According to Bindon, Excite@Home upgraded its e-mail systems in October to address capacity issues. "What we're seeing now are software-related problems, and we're working with our software vendor to nail those down." One can't blame @Home users if they don't put much faith in the company's promises. And from reading a canned statement that @Home sent me and has distributed to some customers, one has to wonder if the company has a clue where its problems lie. "Broadband users put considerably more stress on a network compared to dial-up subscribers and Excite@Home is building and constantly enhancing its e-mail system to meet current and future demands," the statement read. "Broadband users' systems are constantly checking for new e-mail -- and some e-mails may contain files of substantial size -- and thus the load on the system is millions of requests per minute." I'll let that statement speak for itself, except to point out that the real trouble for @Home's customers is with incoming mail, and it's hard to believe that a broadband network could be overly stressed by that. Frankly, I'm flabbergasted that @Home hasn't been able to get this fixed after all these months. Free or not, an ISP that can't deliver e-mail reliably shouldn't be in business very long. I hope that's a message that doesn't go astray. Got a complaint about how a vendor is treating you? Contact InfoWorld's reader advocate, Ed Foster , at gripe@infoworld.com.  RELATED SUBJECTS  Business NewsWeb TechnologiesDiscuss this article in our online forums MORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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