FCC says “too bad” to ISPs complaining that listing every fee is too hard ( arstechnica.com )

Currens_felis , 10 months ago

We’re scamming our customers so much, we can’t keep track of all the ways we’re doing it.

lib1 , 10 months ago

Imagine the size of their codebases. Imagine the amount of things that can be added automatically following a flag set by a manual human review or audit. Imagine the canary branches and the internationalization and the regional offers and the legacy contracts. They may be looking at months just to be able to definitively list all the possible ways they may in theory fuck over their customers

The FCC may as well start fining them now party-sicko

quarrk , 10 months ago

Until recently I was a Verizon Wireless customer. Their website is a complete mess. Typos everywhere and I would encounter exceptions every visit. Many times I would encounter loops in their flows and never be able to complete a task. I very frequently had to call in so that a supervisor could just force through what I needed.

And that’s just the front end.

I completely agree with you, the back-end billing and other processing is probably a nightmare. From professional experience I can say it can either be quite manageable, or nigh impossible, to make small changes like this depending on how shitty the foundation is.

I think the ISPs are overdue for a complete overhaul but they can’t/won’t because there is no market or regulatory pressure to spend the money. They literally don’t care how shitty their services are.

Ubermeisters , 10 months ago

They know exactly how shitty their services are, they pay people to use them to make sure that they’re still shitty enough

lib1 , 10 months ago

I’ve found that building rules systems that are accessible by middle managers of various departments to be good at keeping the inevitable complexity of business logic away from the codebase itself, as well as in one place.

Before:

FooBarMeeting’s integration team has started their testing with our API and the registration endpoint is broken. Looking back through my notes, I was under the impression we’d sorted out their registration requirements six months ago for their last event. We would really appreciate a notice prior to any large changes to these systems so we can prepare. Can I can get an update on this ASAP? Their next event is in three weeks and they’re kind of freaking out!

After:

Hey! Just wanted to put something on your radar. FooBarMeeting’s next event is about two months out, so I was going through my prep checklist and spot checking their registration rules. For their last event, we added a new rule that would stop users from registering if they hadn’t completed the disclaimer form (reference ID is 52d7517d-d6a9-4a3c-b28d-68bfd9b2a643). I saw you left a note on it that it would break once they launch their v3 Compliance API, which they say is happening in a couple weeks. I have a follow up with them on Tuesday, so I’ve for details on what breaking changes they expect. I’ll get you the info when I have it. Are you good to get me an estimate for the next sprint once they do?