
Andrews and Arnold is xkcd 806-compliant (2010) - edward
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrews_%26_Arnold
======
jonathonf
Not that you'd ever need to.

Their support is excellent. Email, IRC, usenet, SMS. In fact, I bet RevK
(company MD) is on their IRC channel right now.

Added bonuses: native IPv6, no CGNAT, no traffic shaping, anti-censor stance,
black-box canary. You can even send them GPG-encrypted email.

Disclaimer: very satisfied customer.

~~~
dingaling
As a dissenting voice I never found A&A to be half as good as they presented
themselves to be. I was a customer for just over two years.

I had poor, lossy line performance for most of my time with that ISP, with no
resolution to any of the support tickets I opened. No interest from any of
their staff in investigating. Eventually I had to contact BT Openreach on my
own initiative, not an easy process for a retail customer, and arrange
engineer visits to correct.

Yet the MD boasted on his blog of how he bullied BT into fixing his parents'
broadband over Christmas one year. Nice if you're in the family.

When I migrated to another ISP ( using the correct migration process ), A&A
put a broadband cessation order on my line and killed Internet access a week
later.

My current ISP doesn't require 'shibboleth' code-words. They listen to the
enquiry and respond appropriately.

------
ultrasaurus
I've been keeping a running tally of the real-world things invented via XKCD
comics, I'll add this one. [http://euri.ca/2013/xkcd-is-the-new-donald-
duck/](http://euri.ca/2013/xkcd-is-the-new-donald-duck/)

~~~
geuis
Curious about the amazon random bit that was mentioned. I read the author's
tumblr page but didn't see the results of the bot.

~~~
bergie
He has been posting some of the monthly shipments in his blog:
[http://randomshopper.tumblr.com/](http://randomshopper.tumblr.com/)

------
post_break
After working for a company similar to comcast, I wish there was a password to
get to tier 2 or the NOC. "Yeah I'm at your hub site, it looks like one of the
cards in the CMTS I'm on has a faulty uplink cable" "Sir can I get your
account number again?" "kill me"

[http://i.imgur.com/UANtI.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/UANtI.jpg)

~~~
smackfu
The one that blows my mind is when Comcast installers have to call in to what
seems like the normal help desk.

~~~
post_break
We had a FIOS installer call and be on hold for two hours just to get our
fiber setup. He just sat on the carpet and started to snooze.

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jot
Worth every penny. I find it staggering that so many people make cost the
biggest factor in their choice of ISP. The last two years of being an Andrews
and Arnold customer have been my happiest with an ISP.

~~~
collyw
I wish there was something like this in Spain. Huge opportunity for someone
who knows what they are doing in that area I would say.

~~~
davidgerard
People just won't pay for it. I pay £25/mo for Zen (A&A offer a similar plan
for the same price), but TalkTalk and Virgin are a third of the price. For a
third of the service, but SHEER CHEAPNESS is actually a marketing point.

------
Daviey
Based on every interaction i've had with A&A, I can't think that this is
needed. Always been a pleasure, and I'm not even a customer.

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kefka
So is Indiana University.

They use Shibboleth as an intermediary authenticator across their data
servers. Saying something regarding Shibboleth means you get someone who knows
4 languages (at least). And usually, when that layer fails, you NEED someone
from the data center.

Last time that happened, the rack was on fire...

[https://kb.iu.edu/d/bdag](https://kb.iu.edu/d/bdag)
[http://shibboleth.net/about/index.html](http://shibboleth.net/about/index.html)

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kosei
This is the problem with treating every customer similarly. Frankly,
considering the user data and customer segmentation that a company like
Comcast (or other providers) should have, you'd think that it would actually
be a significant cost savings for them to be able to tag customers as "tech-
savvy" or not. This way when tech-savvy customers call, you don't waste their
time (increase chance for churn) or the Tier 1 CS rep's time (hard hourly wage
cost).

~~~
jauer
Might work if there's a way to filter out the tech-savvy posers from the
people that are actually tech-savvy. More charitably there's a wide range of
tech to be savvy in. I've had a customer tell me they were a expert in last-
mile access systems because they "are a expert WinSock programmer".

People that think they are tech-savvy but actually aren't tend to do things
that are worse than the normal user and have a attitude about it. You can't
afford to waste your Tier 2 rep's time or burnout points on them.

On the business side we do tag customers as tech-savvy but it's based a bit on
trick questions. E.g. When assigning static IPs do they understand CIDR or do
they insist on talking in terms of Class A/B/C subnets? Do they throw a fit
about /31 subnets not being valid? Do they insist that a /32 subnet mask on
their PPPoE connection is invalid and that the gateway can't be outside the
subnet?

There's nothing worse than a IT consultant that presumes to know more than the
ISP about running a network (they almost never do).

To a degree we use how much they pay for their connection as a proxy for
knowledge. It seems like customers that optionally pay for higher end service
or business products have a understanding of the business value of the
connection and are pretty reasonable about their expectations.

Example: customer with a $3k Dedicated IP+BGP link that's called in for a
outage and the call went "oh, outage? how long? ok, call me if you think it
will take longer than that". Customer with a $60 DSL calls in yelling and
screaming about losing thousands of dollars in sales and such. We're like,
really? Thousands of dollars a minute and you didn't see business value in a
backup link, redundancy, or a SLA?

When I have a problem with my cable connection at home I focus on helping them
get through their script as quickly as possible to reach the escalation or
dispatch stage. If this means I'm dragging out a Windows 7 laptop because
that's the fast path through their script, so be it.

~~~
davidgerard
> Might work if there's a way to filter out the tech-savvy posers from the
> people that are actually tech-savvy. More charitably there's a wide range of
> tech to be savvy in. I've had a customer tell me they were a expert in last-
> mile access systems because they "are a expert WinSock programmer".

Actual tech support call: "Now, before we start, I've got four Microsoft
degrees." That to someone with an _actual_ degree.

------
edward
See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth)

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pokstad
Is xkcd becoming a RFC/ISO replacement for no-nonsense protocols and
compliance standards?? If so, I welcome it.

------
davidgerard
I'm with Zen, but if I wasn't I'd be with A&A. They are the only two ISPs in
the UK worth spit.

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topbanana
They offer a great service but you really do have to pay for it.

