Telus is the Western Canadian telephone company who was recently featured in church bulletins for selling pornography through its cell phone system -- at $3 or $4 a hit. "Why should the pornographers make so much profit?" Telus executives must have wondered to themselves. "We could also be profiting from the exploitation of young women (and men)!"
Fortunately, the Catholic Church (and shareholders with consciences) raised their voices in protest (and pulled their share holdings) in sufficient numbers that Telus pulled the feature. Silly company: they forgot the difference between being a service provider (which they are) and content provider (which they ought not to be).
Unrelated to the Corporation-as-Pimp scandal, my telus.net email stopped working this morning. I could neither access my email through the client software (Eudora) nor directly through the Web interface.
(Fortunately, I have Internet accounts with three different ISPs, so I could still get my work done. I have found it is crucial to have Internet access with at least two different providers for those occasions when one screws up, like today.)
I phoned Telus support, who answered quickly. After hearing my problem, I was quickly put through to tech support. They found that my account had been canceled due to non-payment, and so put me through to accounting.
I pay automatically each month through my credit card, but Telus accounting found that the Feb 22 payment had been rejected by the credit card company. While I waited, they attempted to put through payment again, and it worked, and they reinstituted my email.
But they were unable to answer these questions:
Q1: Why had Telus not alerted me of the credit card problem? This is the same company that refuses to email monthly invoices to its customers.
Q2: Why was only my email cut off? My high-speed Internet access is the same account (the email is just a free feature of the telus.net DSL connection).
"Congratulations," remarked my wife. "You have solved your first crisis of the day."
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