MOTM

Funny story. I had cable modem service with a small
cable company. Things were good, awesome download
speeds, very little outage (well, maybe after the
first couple of months of setting up the service).

Then the company was bought by Charter Communications.
Shortly after that our Internet service went out
and stayed off for *five weeks*. I was livid.
I called everyone in the company and still nothing.

I finally did some research on the net and found
Paul Allen's email address (cofounder of MS, owner
of Charter). I sent a polite yet angry email to
him, suggesting that if this was the best a 
monopoly cable company could do, that perhaps
open access (a curse word for cable operators)
should be something I would support more actively
in the future.

Several days later a got a call from the head
of Charter Communications Internet Division:

"Uh, Mr. Hudson, I just received an angry email
from Mr. Paul Allen. We'll have someone out
to fix the problem immediately."

By the time I had hung up the phone a truck
pulled up and two guys got out and had our
connection back up within the hour.
They actually had to run cable along the 
curb from up the street.

Tomy