Internet Service Provider Poaching

Do you remember a few years ago there were constant reports about various long distance companies switching customers to their service without any real approval from the customer? This most often happened when a telemarketer called up a customer and received little to no approval to make the switch, but did so anyhow.

Well, the same thing just happened to me ... and without any phone call whatsoever! I have happily been with Shaw for months when suddenly a few days ago the speed of my connection slowed down and I could no longer send out e-mails using Shaw's SMTP server.

I finally detected the problem and found proof in the process through a little known DOS command:

C:\>tracert shaw.ca

Tracing route to shaw.ca [204.209.208.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 10 ms 13 ms 9 ms CABLE-72-53-32-1.cia.com [72.53.32.1]
4 22 ms 13 ms 12 ms colo.vanc.isp.cybersurf.net [209.197.149.253]
5 11 ms 10 ms 12 ms h66-38-129-158.gtconnect.net [66.38.129.158]
6 12 ms 14 ms 26 ms GE4-1-81.WANB-VANCBC.IP.GROUPTELECOM.NET [216.18
.31.166]
7 10 ms 10 ms 14 ms GE4-0.PEERA-VANCBC.IP.GROUPTELECOM.NET [66.59.19
0.18]
8 19 ms 11 ms 24 ms GT-SHAW.VANCBC.IP.GROUPTELECOM.NET [209.139.199.
226]
9 80 ms 25 ms 24 ms rc1so-pos11-0.cg.shawcable.net [66.163.76.9]
10 36 ms 22 ms 26 ms rd1so-ge6-0.cg.shawcable.net [66.163.71.130]
11 22 ms 26 ms 21 ms rd1no-pos5-0.cg.shawcable.net [66.163.71.26]
. . .

Line #3 above clearly should show "shaw.ca" or "shawcable.net" but instead it indicates that my service is being handled by 3rd party provider that goes under several names: "cia.com", "cybersurf.com", and "3web.com". I had actually tried them a while back but only stayed with them for a week because their customer service was so poor; typically one would wait in the queue for 45 minutes and then their system would hang up. Lovely. So I switched back to Shaw and everything has been fine ... until now.

I realize in the big picture of life how pathetic it is to be worried about one's Internet service but it has become one of those things we depend on, especially for home-based entrepreneurs like myself.