Keep in mind that I'm the Information Systems Manager for a three-time Inc 500 company when you evaluate his insistence that I don't know what I'm doing.

I finally gave up on that, and simply configured my primary email with my ISP to use the u2me3.com email address as a reply-to address.

Then (as my long-time readers are already aware) u2me3 crashed for a period of several weeks.  The whole thing died; nameservers and all - which means that NOTHING marked "u2me3.com" worked; not POP3 (aka incoming email), not SMTP (aka outgoing email), not FTP, not HTTP, nothing.   Since, of course, the technical support address for u2me3.com is support@u2me3.com, I obviously couldn't inquire about the crash that way... although I did try it anyway, just to be absolutely sure.  Yup... bounced.  Of course.

After about a week of no u2me3.com, I finally got exasperated and looked up the contact name for u2me3 with InterNIC.  I called him in England to inquire what the problem was, how bad it was, and what progress he was making - since, after more than a week of interruption in service with no way for me to contact him by email, he had still not so much as sent me a message letting me know "hey, the system crashed, sorry about that but we're working on it".  He was incredibly snotty, refused to go into any technical detail about what had happened, but assured me (and yes, he did assure me this, without me prodding him for it) that no information had been lost, it was simply a matter of restoring all of the accounts and user information from backups.  I did ask him for an ETA on the restoration, and he said that he hoped to get it done that day.

After another week, still with no contact, I called him again.  Again the snottiness, again the reassurance that nothing had been lost, this time the ETA was within four hours.  In the next week, I saw u2me3.com come back on line... my account, however, remained non-functional.

After a third week with no contact, I wrote him the first email that you see below.  Mail from me is this color, mail from him is this color, and annotation by me is pale grey, just like this preface. 

When can I expect my files and my access rights to be restored? I have been very disappointed in your refusal to give me any factual information about this problem and its restoration from the get-go.

Hey,

Your account has already been re-activated and information e-mailed to you. Your files cannot be restored - this information was included in the same e-mail.

I spoke to your personally on the phone regarding this matter.

Sincerely,
[redacted],
U2ME3 Internet.

Neither account information NOR inability to restore my files has been emailed to me.

Please re-mail the account information to this address.

[account information mailed to me]

I wish to cancel recurring VISA billing. Please bill my card immediately for service through 1 Nov 1999 and consider my service cancelled as of that date.

[my name]

stoner.u2me3.com

Hey,

Please FAX us authorisation to terminate your acount to:

+44 1332 855072

Sincerely,
[redacted],
U2ME3 Internet.

You should certainly be willing to accept an account termination from the EXACT SAME EMAIL ADDRESS that you just emailed account information to. And quite frankly, all the telephone time to England is quite expensive from the United States. I *will not* spend more of it faxing you needless paperwork.

This email is a NOTICE OF CANCELLATION. It is the *second* email I have sent you notifying the cancellation of my account as of 1 Nov 1999. If you have any questions as to the validity of this emailed notice of cancellation, you may feel free to call me at [my phone number], which is my home telephone number. I am most likely to be there between the hours of 7PM and 10PM Eastern Standard Time.

Sincerely,

[my name]

account: stoner.u2me3.com

Sorry, we can't accept electronic-mail as a form of written notification. We must have it on paper in black and white, so if you'd prefer not to send us a FAX then a mailed written letter will be fine.

Address:

Attn: U2ME3 Internet Billing
101 Park Lane
Castle Donington
Derby DE74 2JG

Sincerely,
[redacted],
U2ME3 Internet.

This is your third NOTICE OF CANCELLATION. Any charges for service beyond 1 Nov 1999 will be disputed, and you will be responsible for any and all fees or penalties accruing to your merchant account due to fraudulent charges. This and the last two notices of cancellation, as well as replies from you indicating their receipt, are being kept on record in both electronic and printed form at my location. I strongly suggest you accept the notice of cancellation you have now received THREE TIMES from the same address to which you email sensitive account information, because I *do* monitor the billing to that credit card and I *will* dispute any charges for service beyond 1 Nov 1999, as you have now received *three* notices of cancellation.

You may make any inquiries you desire at the US telephone number [my phone number]. I am typically available there from 7PM Eastern Standard Time to 10PM Eastern Standard Time. If I am unavailable, there is a voice mail system in place which will receive any messages you care to leave. If you prefer to make a written inquiry, you should direct it to [my address]. You should already have both this address and phone number on file, as they were both listed on the original sign-up form I faxed to your location when this account was set up.

I repeat: any charges made for service beyond 1 Nov 1999 WILL BE DISPUTED, and you WILL BE HELD RESPONSIBLE for any penalties or fees incurred.

[my name]

http://www.u2me3.com/order.htm

Please read it, this is the agreement under which you are contractually bound by law.

Sincerely,
[redacted],
U2ME3 Internet.

You clearly believe that you are corresponding with the owner of the account. This has been shown by your emailing of sensitive account information to me, and the statement "YOU are contractually bound." I have notified you three times that I will cancel this account on 1 Nov 1999, which is well over the 30 day grace period that you ask in your contract. You have refused to accept that cancellation WHILE acknowledging the fact that I have given it to you - and stated repeatedly that any questions you have may be directed to my mailing adress or my home telephone number, which you both have on file AND have been given again. If you check the content currently at http://stoner.u2me3.com, you will note that the cancellation is even posted THERE.

I am more than sick and tired of dealing with you, and with your "service." I did not appreciate the smokescreens you gave out while you were restoring your equipment from the crash, I did not appreciate your failure to notify me when you had the equipment functional and a new password for my account, and I do not appreciate the games you are playing now.

I warn you once more - if you attempt to bill my credit card for any service beyond November 1, 1999, the charges WILL be disputed. I strongly suggest that you consult an attorney if you believe that you will have any success dealing with Visa's legal department due to any penalties imposed upon you for billing me for a cancelled contract.

As always, if you have any questions, you may feel free to contact me directly by mail or by phone.

[my name]

Hey,

Our attorney was the one who strongly recommended this system for cancellations, hence its stated in the contract.

We'll be passing all future invoices for your account to a collections agency in light of your reluctancy to pay.

Sincerely,
[redacted],
U2ME3 Internet.

In that case, just prior to midnight on 30 Sep 1999, I will post this entire email exchange to the webspace provided at http://stoner.u2me3.com, complete with the proper keywords and search engine registration to give it a decent placement in lists of "webspace providers" on all popular search engines. This will be the last use to which I put your service, it will include the disclaimer that the account has been terminated and is no longer owned by me, and it will not be modified in any way, shape or form by myself thereafter. I will not log in to any FTP or POP3 server registered to u2me3.com after midnight, 30 Sep 1999 - and contrary to what you have claimed in email "support", you do not have functional SMTP service available on that account in any way that I have been able to discover - regardless of the multiple SMTP accounts I *do* have set up on *other* providers on various of my machines - so of course I will not be utilizing any SMTP service of yours either.

If you choose to leave that exchange publicly posted and attempt to bill me for the "service" which I have already notified you of intent to cancel, you are welcome to do so. You have BEEN notified on multiple occasions that I wish this account terminated, and have made it abundantly clear that you believe yourself to be corresponding with the rightful owner of the account in question. You have refused to attempt to contact me yourself in any other fashion, and have in general failed to provide a reasonable facsimile of the "superior service" you claim on your sales page, in addition to a nasty and unhelpful attitude.

VERY sincerely yours,

[my name]

Hey Jim,

I don't get it - what is the problem with sending a simple FAX or written letter asking us to terminate your account?  There is *nothing* else I can do ... we *have* to have this by law.  fyi: You do have access to SMTP, and if you don't know hwo to use it you could have asked us.

Sincerely,
[redacted],
U2ME3 Internet.

Frankly, [redacted] - and I'm honestly trying NOT to be nasty here - at this point I'm simply sick of dealing with you. I have tried to work with you on several different customer service issues, and you have come off as an utter and complete snot on each one.  I *have* attempted to get support from you on the SMTP issue, but you simply acted as though I were an idiot, and never gave any actual support. Frankly, I *know* how to set up SMTP - I have three different SMTP accounts set up on my NT box at work, two on a 95 box at home, and I just set up my first SMTP account on the Linux box I'm writing to you from right now. All work flawlessly. I have been computing since 1979, and in fact am a professional systems administrator, and have been since 1988 - I *very* strongly resent technical "support" that consists merely of behaving as though I'm a clueless idiot.

I don't know what the configuration problem might be - you told me two different SMTP server addresses - one being gnr.u2me3.com and the other being stoner.u2me3.com, my subdomain URL - neither of which worked. I attempted to configure both of them, and I tried them both with unauthenticated and with authenticated procedures - neither of which worked. Originally, unauthenticated SMTP *did* work at gnr.u2me3.com, but it mysteriously ceased functioning on ANY of my three boxes at the precise same time a few months ago.

You were snotty and rude about the whole thing, INSISTED that SMTP worked and that I had done something to "break" it, and didn't even bother to ask any questions about configuration such as authentication procedures. You even attempted to blame the problem on overseas connectivity - even in the face of me telling you that I got sub-200ms ping times to both servers.

Then the crash came down, and you did nothing to alert me to the fact that the system HAD crashed, or whether you had initiated recovery procedures, or how long you expected them to take. Several days later, I finally had to call you by telephone - which is extremely expensive internationally, as you must be well aware - and got complete and utter non-information from you on the phone.

You assured me that no actual files would be lost, and said that you expected to get everything completely restored by the next day. Several more days went by, with no apparent progress. I finally called you AGAIN, and you AGAIN assured me that all was well, nothing was lost, and that you hoped to have everything restored within a few hours. Several days after THAT, I wrote you an email, having noticed that u2me3.com was back up, and you snottily told me that you had already sent me an email with new password information - which you had NOT - and that the information that you HAD lost all the files was in that nonexistent email.

While this aggravated me to no end, I didn't want to have any bad feelings between the two of us - so I simply began looking for a new hosting service, as I had been EXTREMELY unsatisfied with your service, and notified you that I wished to be billed immediately for service through November 1st and then have my account terminated. It was my intent to use the account for nothing more than a redirect page to my new host. Then you told me that you wanted me to FAX you paperwork, and frankly, I blew my top.

I do not feel that I have received anything even CLOSE to acceptable service from u2me3.com. You have subjected me to more needless paperwork than any other ISP or web host I have EVER encountered or even heard of, you have actually lost my credit card number and asked me to RESUBMIT it once -again, utterly unheard of as far as I'm concerned - you managed to display nothing but attitude with a complete lack of helpfulness on the one tech support issue I had, you did not notify me of your server crash or keep me adequately informed of progress in recovery, and you made promises you could not keep ABOUT that recovery. When on top of that you decided to stand on your "rights" by that contract, [redacted] - when you CLEARLY realized yourself to be communicating with the rightful owner of the account - it frankly pissed me off.

This whole thing strikes me as nothing but a power play - ESPECIALLY considering the fact that if you do NOT believe the email exchange you have had with me to be secure, then you have third-party disclosed confidential monetary account information in the mail where you accused me of "reluctancy [sic] to pay." I will be the first to admit I'm not particularly familiar with UK collections law, but in the USA, third-party disclosure of financial information - such as threats to use a collection agency - left on answering machines or other unattended devices is a civil statute violation that incurs a $10,000 fine. You have NOT appeared to me to be attempting to simply conduct your business in a legal fashion, but instead to indulge in a little one-upsmanship in the attempt to "get the last word". The message I am replying to now is the first one I have seen from you with what I would consider a reasonable tone.

[redacted], I DON'T particularly want to get in a flamewar with you. As unsatisfied with your service as I have been, I'm not a nasty person that particularly WANTS to go do something like create an anti-u2me3.com page including all of the email exchanges we've had - which, if you'll review, I think you can see would portray you in a VERY unflattering light to potential customers. But at this point, neither am I inclined to jump through any more hoops. The past few months have been nothing but an unending headache for me as concerns your service, and I would greatly prefer to just put it the hell behind me. I WILL certainly never make the error of dealing unnecessarily with an extra-national hosting service, or for that matter an *american* service too small to keep toll-free telephone numbers and make a big effort to provide real customer support.

I don't want your service anymore. I am aware that you would prefer to have a handwritten termination of account, which would for one thing forestall any complaints from me that you falsely terminated my service. You, I hope, are aware that I am utterly and completely fed up with the unending hassles, that I genuinely DO wish the account terminated on the date specified, and that I just want this to all be OVER with without the necessity of me incurring more international long distance charges or hassling with the post office to figure out how the hell much postage I need to get something to the UK, and the expense OF that postage. I think we are BOTH aware that the attempt to send any "debt" to a collections service given the correspondence we have had via email as well as the notice POSTED to the web service in question will be utterly futile.

I ask you that, if you really feel that you need a more direct proof of my desire for termination than this email exchange, and the notice posted ON YOUR SERVER as the index file at http://stoner.u2me3.com, you do me the favor of contacting me YOURSELF - after all, you have my home phone and my postal address on file. If you wish, you may feel quite free to make a recording of the conversation. If my hours of availability are inconvenient to you, I will even place a notice of termination in the greeting for my voice mail service for a day so that you may hear it whenever you desire to call. But I DO NOT wish to spend a single additional penny in all the paperwork and bells and whistles that you seem to desire to put all of your customers through.

Please. Accept my notice of termination, and let's both just put this whole thing behind us.

Sincerely,

[my name]

 As I have already stated to you, we must have it in writing.

Sincerely,
[redacted],
U2ME3 Internet.

Hey,

> I have tried to work with you on several different customer
> service issues, and you have come off as an utter and
> complete snot on each one.

Please elaborate more on this ... I'm quite surprised at your comments here... because we have won dozens of awards for after-sales support, and I ccan't even remember you asking for much help other than setting up an e-mail account for you ...

note: oddly enough, none of these "dozens of awards for after-sales support" are proudly posted on [redacted]'s site.   At http://u2me3.com/advantage.htm - his "About U2ME3" page - there is a line which reads "Read what our customers say about our outstanding Service, Network's Speed and our Support Team"... but, entertainingly enough, there are no actual customer comments to be found anywhere on that page or the rest of his site.

> I *have* attempted to get support from you on the SMTP
> issue, but you simply acted as though I were an idiot, and
> never gave any actual support.

You do have access to SMTP ... I even tested it from a local *and* remote location.

note: the problem is almost certainly that - like many webspace providers - [redacted]'s SMTP (SendMail Transfer Protocol, aka outgoing email) service was reconfigured to "blackhole" any IP address outside a trusted network.  This is done to fight spam - spammers like to use unsecured SMTP services to send their mail, so that it cannot be traced back to their actual internet account, but only to their hapless victims.  My current webhost also does this - the difference is, when I called my current host to inquire as to why their SMTP server rejected connections, they immediately asked me where I was trying to connect from and informed me that the IP address range assigned to my dial-up provider had been blackholed for security reasons.

Given that this apparently never occurred to [redacted] - and that in spite of all the blather about "sales team" and "support team" on his site, nobody but [redacted] himself ever answers the phone or responds to email - I can only suspect that, regardless of his claims to having a technically superior "U2ME3 High Speed Network", he is actually a webspace reseller, and not a true Internet Presence Provider.  This would also explain his utter cluelessness about the status of account restorations after the crash.

> Several days later, I finally had to call you by telephone - which
> is extremely expensive internationally, as you must be well
> aware - and got complete and utter non-information from you
> on the phone.

You did not *have* to call anybody - we have several emergency e-mail contacts available 24/7.

note: the nameservers for U2ME3.com were dead when I called him.  You can't email "anybody@u2me3.com" when there is no U2ME3.com currently on the internet.  Given that the only email addresses he has ever used were U2ME3.com addresses, clearly I could not use his "24/7 emergency email contacts" - this is why I said I *had* to call him, since he had not gotten in touch with me.  Personally, I would expect a decent web host to contact me if they kill a server and render me without service for a long period of time.   That's not the kind of thing you wait for your customers to contact you about.

>You assured me that no actual files would be lost, and said
>that you expected to get everything completely restored by the
>next day. Several more days went by, with no apparent
>progress. I finally called you AGAIN, and you AGAIN assured
>me that all was well, nothing was lost, and that you hoped to
>have everything restored within a few hours.

I did not assure you of anything. You pushed me into giving you an ETA, so I did. That ETA was wrong, I can't help that ... we got everything back up ASAP.

note: I'm not talking about his failure to meet his ETAs here, I'm talking about his failure to restore user files as promised.   And yes, he did reassure me on the phone that "no data was lost", "including user files", and it was simply a matter of restoring them.  I will note, however, that if you overshoot a guesstimated ETA you give a customer by more than a week, it would normally be considered good business practice to at least keep in touch with them and apologize...

>Several days after THAT, I wrote you an email,
>having noticed that u2me3.com was back up, and you snottily
>told me that you had already sent me an email with new
>password information - which you had NOT - and that the
>information that you HAD lost all the files was in that
>nonexistent email.

Actually, tah te-mail *WAS* sent ... I have it logged right here.

I don't have tine to argue with you anymore. If you do wish to cancel then follow the procedures states in the terms of service contract, under which you are bound.

If you do not wish to cancel, and have problems with your account, please please contact our tech support department (tech@u2me3.com).

If you would like to arrange some other means of payment for your account then please contact our billing department (billing@u2me3.com).

May I remind you that all converse between yourself and U2ME3 Internet is confidential - this means you are forbidden to publish any of it, in any medium.

Sincerely,
[redacted],
U2ME3 Internet.

> May I remind you that all converse between yourself and U2ME3 Internet is
> confidential - this means you are forbidden to publish any of it, in any
> medium.

Nice try, but there's no such thing in your beloved contract - if you expect this to be confidential, then I suggest that you REQUEST confidentiality. I can tell you right now that I will deny any such request.

I will write you in your cancellation letter. I will also publish this entire email exchange to the web. If you feel that your service has been so exemplary, then that shouldn't bother you, now should it?

Talk to our attorney about it. I'll ask him to give you a call next week.

Sincerely,
[redacted],
U2ME3 Internet. 

Good luck. I didn't sign any non-disclosure contract with you. I find your lack of desire to have your customer service practices disclosed rather interesting, too. DEAL with it.

So you're saying you're not under contract with U2ME3 Internet, even tho you were asked to agree to our terms *before* actually signing up with us? Very interesting.

No, [redacted], I'm saying there's no non-disclosure clause in your beloved contract, which I've attached to his letter, spelling and grammatical errors and all.  Interesting indeed.  I suggest you contact your attorney if you are laboring under the mistaken impression that there is any such clause there.

There IS a clause, as you have taken such joy in pointing out on several occasions, requiring a cancellation by writing or fax.  While you and I both know that you haven't a hope in hell of doing anything other than raising your blood pressure by attempting to "send my account to collections" if I don't send you such a letter, I have decided to make you happy by honoring the terms of that contract and sending you in your written authorization.

I have also decided to publish my experiences with u2me3.com, in the form of all of our email transactions.  There IS no non-disclosure clause in your contract, and you HAVE not specifically requested confidentiality outside any terms in the contract, therefore I consider this exchange regarding your service of my account to be in the public domain if I choose to publish it.

I will reiterate once more, if you wish any communication with me to be confidential, you must request it.  I will also tell you right now that I will deny any such request for confidentiality, and refuse to communicate with you on any such confidential basis.

You probably have a better idea than I do of the time it takes to get a letter from the US to the UK.  Expect my written notice of confirmation to arrive soon, postmarked with Monday's date.

And that, folks, is all that I can show you.   In his next letter, [redacted] specifically invoked this final clause in the U2ME3 contract:

U2ME3 reserves the right to revise its policies at any time.

Interestingly enough, when I responded that I would henceforth consider all communications from him to be confidential unless otherwise noted (and, incidentally, that I would also henceforth refuse to communicate with him on a confidential basis), he told me that all prior communications to his invocation of that clause were also confidential.  I do not accept his attempt to make retroactive changes to policy under the contract, and told him so.  (I will leave his response, which is technically confidential, to the imagination of the reader.  I'm sure, given the tone of the rest of the exchanges with this guy, that you'll all come to the proper conclusion.)

I responded only so far as to say that I would no longer accept any communication from him not clearly marked NON-CONFIDENTIAL in the subject line, and warned him that the email stating this was considered public domain, and that any reference to content contained in that email would be considered as acknowledgement of that public domain status and therefore also considered to be public domain.  Since issuing him a legally valid notice that I refused to communicate with him on any basis but public domain, he has not contacted me in any way... leading me to believe that either he really does have an attorney whom he had simply been failing to contact, or that he's not quite as dumb as he sounds.   There comes a time when you realize that the hole is just getting deeper and deeper, and it's time to drop the fucking shovel... and apparently, he's finally come to the belated realization that for him, that time is now.

I sent him a registered letter cancelling my service, and I will be inspecting my VISA bill very closely this month.

I would, however, like to contrast the "service" provided by u2me3.com with that of my current provider - I have been nothing but delighted with the service I'm receiving now since day one.  I have had occasion to call customer service twice and technical support once, and have immediately received friendly, helpful, technically knowledgeable, and intelligent service on every occasion.  Yes, that is quite a list... and believe you me, it's been justified; these guys have been awesome in the brief time I've been with them, and I have every confidence that they will continue to be so.