[phtrivier]

Forza to the poor soul navigating this (not an insurmountable problem, especially on 2020's scale, but annoying for sure.)

Anecdotally, it seems to me like this kind of horror stories only happens with ISP/Telco (to the point were I dread switching ISP for years)

Is that just an impression ? Was there an industry as prone to mishandle basic customer service like this in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc... Before ISP came to basically ruin our lives once every few years (and provide access to the greatest source of info in between ?)

I conjectures that the industry is so new that there has never been a "decent ISP" to set a gold standard, and that everyone is just operating into a "well, we shitty but so is everyone else" mindset. Is that accurate ?

[phil21]

It started when vendor lock-in began, which was the late 90's/early 2000's when dial-up died and broadband took over.

Before that the phone company was the one with the poor customer service, but nothing at this level that I recall.

Dial-up days were the golden years for the ISP business. When every marginal NFL city had 30+ ISPs to choose from, and switching was simply changing a dial-in number you actually had decent competition. You had any choice you could think of - want a high quality ISP catering to highly technical users? Done. Want an uber-cheap ISP catering to the masses? Got you.

This all went away and service went greatly downhill once you had 1 or 2 options to choose from in the DSL/cable/fiber era.

[phtrivier]

So this is one of those situations were either "a single monopoly with great customer service and / or a sense of public mission" and "lots and lots of competition in a very fluid market" can be sweet spots, but anything in between is bound to fail ?