Thread by @_centrists_

@Venture_Tech You've wasted your money acquiring a slimy, untrustworthy company.

https://twitter.com/_centrists_/status/1159486869752729606

What use is a local ISP that discards its users email and other data on a whim? I called your corporate headquarters about this, you said you'd look into this, and nothing ever happened.

@Venture_Tech There was NO effort made on the part of "Andy" or anybody else at Netsource to recover anything, and no sign that the person running Netsource even understood the concept of a company being paid to store data, when I talked to the clown.

@Venture_Tech He tried to convince me that Netsource did nothing wrong when it willfully and wantonly threw out data that I was paying it to hold onto. When it refused to perform the work for which it had collected payment.

He had the nerve to tell me that he was trying to "help me."

@Venture_Tech So, really, what did I get out of your subsidiary for my money, other than another story about a gaslighting?

Does anybody really need more of those?

@Venture_Tech I just got called by somebody named "Mary," who complained about the way I was talking to her, when I reminded her of what her co-worker did, and expressed amazement at the thought that a company can discard my data, my virtual property, from a paid account on a whim.

@Venture_Tech That, and that it can do so with no legal consequences following.

If a company did that with any other kind of property it was being paid to store, that would be called "larceny" and prison time would follow.

@Venture_Tech But ISPs get a special exemption from that common sense bit of law, because reasons.

@Venture_Tech It's the Wild West out there on the Internet, even with paid accounts, because the government refuses to regulate your industry, even to the extent that common sense and common decency would demand.

@Venture_Tech Obviously, one should not be free to throw away somebody else's property when that somebody is paying you to store it for him, at the price one's company has set.

But apparently, one is. Not much I can do about that.

@Venture_Tech But I certainly can (and will) pass along the word that Netsource Communications in Naperville (YOUR subsidiary) is the kind of company that does things like that.

@Venture_Tech The kind of company that hires the kind of people who screw over their own paying customers, and then act like they're the victims when the customers object.

@Venture_Tech Among the other bits of virtual property lost forever because of the irresponsible behavior of your employees in Naperville are the last surviving copies of email sent to me by my dead mother.

What kind of people are you? Who would do a thing like that?

@Venture_Tech I am not ever going to forget this, and neither will Netsource's corporate reputation. This was disgraceful.

Yes, I called your corporate office. I got what I guess is the usual handholding, but that is not enough.

@Venture_Tech If you want to get paid to provide a service, you should expect to be expected to provide it, not just a few kind words of consolation over the damage done by your employees, because they felt that doing their jobs would take too much time out of their busy days.

@Venture_Tech Which I didn't even get out of the people in Naperville. All I got out of them was an attitude. They expected me to be deferential to them, after they did what they did.

@Venture_Tech The head of Netsource dared to threaten to delete my account if I didn't start minding my place.

"Would that be my empty account" I asked him.

"Oh," he said, suddenly realizing how little leverage he had left himself with.

"Yeah." I said.

@Venture_Tech And today, G-d bless her soul, there's Mary calling me up and asking me to send in more money to renew an account that has nothing in it, any more, because you threw it all out.

@Venture_Tech Then acting like the affronted snowflake when I point out that Netsource gave me nothing for my money.

Hard to believe this woman is well into middle age.

@Venture_Tech Guys, it's been over a year since I talked to you about this. Over a year since one of your execs gave me his personal word of honor that he'd look into this, get Andy off his lazy ass, and get that data recovered.

A year later, no such thing has happened.

@Venture_Tech The people at Netsource did nothing other than try to bully me into not objecting to the outrageous shit they pulled, and as for what Venture Tech has done in response to that refusal?

A year later, the same people are working in the same office. After screwing over a customer.

@Venture_Tech So, I guess I have to ask, is Venture Technologies any better than its Netsource subsidiary?

All you guys seem to do is bullshit customers and collect payment for services not rendered.

@Venture_Tech I have since switched over to a far larger company (AT & T) which, while not a perfect experience, is incomparably better than Netsource.

I have yet to see AT & T chuck my data, and then tell me to be happy about that or else, the way Netsource did.

@Venture_Tech Maybe this is because people know who AT & T is, and if they ever acted as horribly as Netsource did, their reputation would precede them everywhere they went. Or maybe this is because AT & T hires better people. People with a sense of decency.

@Venture_Tech People who know how to act like human beings.

@Venture_Tech Not much to be said about this, other than the fact that for reasons that elude me, I'm already a B list blogger. Just barely, but site stats tell me that I'm getting a few hundred thousand unique visitors per year.

@Venture_Tech When I start blogging more seriously, that will almost certainly go up. I say this, not to brag, but to make the situation clear to you.

You're probably thinking "yeah, we fucked this guy over, but LOL, who is ever going to know about it."

@Venture_Tech Answer:

The equivalent of the population of Cincinnati in the first few months.

No, I'm not a big name, but I'm big enough that I can already put a true and outrageous story into circulation, and get it to go far and wide - and this was sick and outrageous.

@Venture_Tech You are going to be hard pressed to find anybody who doesn't work for you who is going to disagree.

A quirk in the badly written laws governing your industry is the only reason you haven't been sued and your employees haven't been arrested. This was not OK.

@Venture_Tech I'm going to spread this story, using my main blog to do so. Maximum exposure.

I'll tell the story. I'll tell the whole story. If you want to do more than just handhold after this, that will be part of the story. If I find out about it, I'll mention it.

@Venture_Tech But at the very least, since he did choose to make the damage irreversible (at least according to him), and because you have a recording of the phone conversation I had with dear old Andy (the one in which he gloated about the damage he did), "Andy" needs to go.

@Venture_Tech PLEASE do not tell me that "you had a talk with him." I'm an adult. I know what that means. It means that you did nothing, but you want this to blow over.

Not going to happen.

@Venture_Tech If your employees can behave with such a willful and wanton disregard for the rights of a paying customer and still hold onto their jobs, then what you're saying through your actions is that you think that what they did was acceptable.

@Venture_Tech What possible excuse could you offer for retaining a tech support person who, by his own account, deliberately threw out the digital property of a customer, because he felt that this would save him some time as he did maintenance on the system.

@Venture_Tech That, and judging from his lack of professional composure during that phone call, because he thought that this would be funny.

At a time when reasonable, responsible, highly skilled people in IT are pounding the pavement for years, what are you going to say?

@Venture_Tech That you couldn't replace somebody who was too lazy to do his own job?

No. If you keep this guy on your payroll after what he did, you're as bad as he is. There has to be some kind of personal accountability for personal actions.

@Venture_Tech If Venture's official position is that there shouldn't be, then why should anybody ever trust your company enough to do business with it, ever again?

@Venture_Tech People don't enjoy getting screwed over. I know I didn't, and I'd have a hard time picturing anybody else liking it, either.

I'm done playing with you. You asked me to be patient, and I was, patient beyond reason, but enough is enough.

@Venture_Tech You're either willing to do the right thing or you are not.

No more excuses. No more delays. No more bullshit. Or there are going to be financial consequences. Count on it.

I'll see to it.

@Venture_Tech To anybody who was wondering which company I was speaking of, it's this one

netsource.com

a local ISP based out of Naperville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

@Venture_Tech If you want to do business with them after what you just read, I guess you could get into contact with them

netsource.com/contact-us/

web.archive.org/web/2019080817…

and I'm sure they'll be happy to set you up, in every sense. Tell them that Joe sent you.

@Venture_Tech But don't say you weren't warned.

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