Thread by @_centrists_

@Venture_Tech I had a lovely experience with a fully owned subsidiary of Venture Technologies, and I just HAD to share.

https://twitter.com/_centrists_/status/1159488066597412865

Really. It was special. 🤬

@Venture_Tech Short form: One of their employees threw out all of my data, including some of the last surviving copies I had of some of email I got from my deceased mother.

According to the employee, he did that to save himself a little time. This wasn't a free service, either.

@Venture_Tech They were being paid to hold onto that data.

They threw it out, and then continued charging me for services they did not render. When I called corporate to try to get this worked out, all I got out of them was a lot of handholding and footdragging.

@Venture_Tech One of their execs gave his personal word of honor that they'd have somebody go through the backups and recover what the lazy (and, at the time, snickering) supposedly rogue employee had just discarded.

Over a year later, no such recovery effort has even been attempted.

@Venture_Tech That was a lie Venture Technologies told me, in order to get me to pay for another year of a worthless, now empty account.

@Venture_Tech In effect, they were holding my mother's letters as hostages, using the false promise of attempted recovery, and they got a year of ransom payments out of me, until I had the sense to see that I was getting screwed, again.

Laissez-Faire, the gift that keeps on giving.

@Venture_Tech I talked to a lawyer, and made the disgusting discovery that ISPs are free to do this to their paying customers.

@Venture_Tech I can (and did) pay them money for an account (and the diskspace that comes with it) and even though the company is being paid to hold onto the data in that diskspace, the company can toss it out on a whim, willfully and wantonly, and one can't sue them for that.

@Venture_Tech They can destroy the users' digital property with legal impunity.

All one can do is pass along the word that Venture Technology is that the kind of company that treats its paying customers this way, and that one should avoid doing business with them for this reason.

@Venture_Tech The problem is that having done that, having told those reading this how untrustworthy this company is, I know these guys will pay a few hired trolls to come in and give some fake testimonials to cancel out my complaint.

@Venture_Tech Bad actors in the Market play that game, constantly. Not a conspiracy theory, either - Google it. There are companies that hire people to do that sort of thing.

While I have earned some credibility and that should help, in general, it is a problem.

@Venture_Tech Where did people ever get the idea that lawlessness was a good thing?

We shouldn't have to rely on word of mouth to sink companies that disregard their customer's rights. There should be such a thing as law and order.

Yes, even online. Digital property is property.

@Venture_Tech An ISP should no more have the freedom to discard its paying customers' data, than would a storage facility have the freedom to discard its paying customers possessions.

@Venture_Tech Word of mouth should never be seen as being a good substitute for having a working system of law, because it doesn't work.

Not in a world that's so big that the people in it can't hope to know the people they're working with. Think of the fake reviews on Yelp.

@Venture_Tech Fake testimonials have been a thing since the days of snake oil and patent medicines, because there will always be dishonest people ready to be bought.

No. If we have to deal with strangers, we need laws to protect us. The Market is not enough.

@Venture_Tech Incidents like this one just go to show that.

@Venture_Tech Before anybody asks "didn't you have any other copies" - we lost the family home after the yuppies "discovered" our neighborhood, moved in and had the local school system splurge on luxuries, sending property taxes through the ceiling.

@Venture_Tech We have to move quickly and a lot got lost in the move. I was knocked offline for a considerable length of time, because my computer was boxed up and in storage.

But we went on paying Netsource (a fully owned subsidiary of Venture) for that account.

@Venture_Tech The digital originals should have been safe. They should have been there, allowing me to burn more to CD and to print out more copies.

They weren't because an employee chose to throw out my data, and then snicker on the phone to me about the fact that he had done so.

@Venture_Tech I know somebody is going to bring this up, because the head of Netsource, himself, attempted that victim blaming rationalization of the destructive actions of his subordinate, and then expected me to feel grateful to him for his "help."

@Venture_Tech In real life, as opposed to some anarchist's fantasy world, in the absence of laws to protect us, one will often find oneself in such a chaotic setting that one can't plan for it, because one never knows what some untrustworthy person will do next.

@Venture_Tech This is the reality - we are dependent on others to get through our day. Nobody could ever be as self-reliant as some people like to expect others to be, because that's not how modern societies work.

@Venture_Tech People have to be expected to live up to their obligations, to do their jobs conscientiously, and what does it say about the subculture we're in that I even have to say a thing like that?

@Venture_Tech "People should be expected to deal honorably with each other, and to pay a real personal price for their misdeeds when they don't. Period."

That should be common sense. One can't have a working society when people think anything else. Nor can one really have an economy.

@Venture_Tech Think about it. Money has changed hands, Netsource discards my data anyway, and I have no legal recourse.

What has just happened to my willingness, as a consumer, to pay for that kind of service, if I'm at all thinking about what I'm doing?

@Venture_Tech How, on these terms, is a paid service any better than a free one?

Right now, the biggest difference between Gmail and the paid service, is that Google has never lost any of my email or other data.

@Venture_Tech A market in which businesses are absolutely free to ignore their contractual obligations and screw over their customers with impunity is no market at all, because it is going to send the otherwise would-be customers fleeing.

@Venture_Tech Nobody is going to do business that he doesn't absolutely have to do (eg. buying food) on such terms. In such a free for all, the bad actors will make a little profit off of the customers they rob, in the beginning, and then the whole industry will be screwed.

@Venture_Tech People will get used to the idea that to be a customer is to be fucked over, and having that thought, not want to be customers, any more.

This will hurt the bad actors, but it will hurt the good actors, too. As the saying goes, the well will be poisoned.

@Venture_Tech I get enough web traffic that I'll be able to extract my pound of flesh from Venture, but most customers don't have that privilege.

They will sit and stew in impotent rage. Remembering that sense of violation, they'll avoid commerce.

@Venture_Tech A rationale I've heard for letting online firms do just whatever the Hell they want (and contractual obligations be damned) is some vague idea that this promotes "innovation." But how much "innovation" is there going to be if there are no customers?

@Venture_Tech To say that contracts shouldn't be enforced isn't even Libertarianism. It's just nuts.

Yet, it's a position that I see some people keep returning to. And some of those people work in the most overrated suburb Chicago has ever had.

Naperville sucks.

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