Andrew Gabriel wrote:


I used to know a few people who worked there, but I don't know anyone
who's still there now. I rather suspect they don't have the expertise
left to maintain their service. The news system was their own design,
but they lost those staff. From dipping into demon.service occasionally,
it looks like they have no one left who knows how to run the service.

This sounds like what I've suspected for ages.

ISP's are generally very strapped for money (they've beaten each other
down in price to below what it costs to run a service). This means they
usually can't afford good enough staff and are stuck with aging kit, a
combination which leads to poor service levels. Demon also stopped being
honest and open about their service status many years ago (it takes many
days of outage before they publically admit to anything having gone
wrong). This is in stark contrast to how honest and open they were in
the early years, and is probably a reflection of their insecurity.


I know there are business providers, eg Claranet, who charge more and
provide reasonable if limited service.
But this is the point. If I pay a fiver a month for adsl, I don't expect
much. If I pay £25, along with a number of other users, I expect the
provider to be able to afford to employ someone who knows what they are
doing. I can even put up with a bunch of engineers who can't do
accounts. What I don't want is to be dealing with a bunch of accountants
using words like efficiency and shareholder value while users get fed up
with the service provided. Aging kit shouldn't happen. There should be a
programme of maintenance and continual modernisation.
Similarly, I get incensed in the way that water companies tell me that
they have "invested" in a lot of new replacement pipes and this is a
huge improvement that I should pay for.

It's not just Demon, it's the Post Office, British Gas, Scottish Power,
BT.... The list goes on and on as Lesser Britain slides down the greasy
pole to third-worldness or beyond. I'm becoming a grumpy old man, and am
starting to write letters, but nothing seems to stop it all turning to crap.