When I first moved to Decatur, I needed to set up high speed Internet access.

Given my job, the first thing I tried to do was get EarthLink DSL. Nope, too far from the DSL switching point. I had friends who raved about SpeakEasy, so I tried them too. Same problem. Eventually, I gave up and went with the incarnation of evil, my local cable company.

Unfortunately, I’m still trapped in insane customer service hell with SpeakEasy.

I can’t get off of their email lists.

This morning, I got a message apologizing in advance for some mail server downtime that they will be having in order to implement new anti-spam technology.

I hit "reply" and sent them this one-line message:
I am not a speakeasy customer. Please remove me from your list.

Perhaps a minute, maybe two minutes later, I got this response:

Hello,

Based on the information in your email, our system could not recognize
you as Speakeasy customer with an active account. This typically means
you either have emailed from an address not associated with your
account. Because of this, we were unable to create a Speakeasy Service
Ticket for your account via email.

We ask that you try your issue submission again, online at:

http://www.speakeasy.net/myspeak/create_ticket.mpl  [login required]

It is important that your service ticket be associated with a valid
Speakeasy account so that we are able to research and respond to your
ticket in a prompt manner.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

They are a real, valid company. I don’t WANT to report them as spam and try to get their authentic customer service email messages made undeliverable. I know how frustrating that can be for companies that send legitimate, non-spam email that their customers wrongly report as spam.

But I feel like I may have no other escape route.

When I first moved to Decatur, I needed to set up high speed Internet access.

Given my job, the first thing I tried to do was get EarthLink DSL. Nope, too far from the DSL switching point. I had friends who raved about SpeakEasy, so I tried them too. Same problem. Eventually, I gave up and went with the incarnation of evil, my local cable company.

Unfortunately, I’m still trapped in insane customer service hell with SpeakEasy.

I can’t get off of their email lists.

This morning, I got a message apologizing in advance for some mail server downtime that they will be having in order to implement new anti-spam technology.

I hit "reply" and sent them this one-line message:
I am not a speakeasy customer. Please remove me from your list.

Perhaps a minute, maybe two minutes later, I got this response:

Hello,

Based on the information in your email, our system could not recognize
you as Speakeasy customer with an active account. This typically means
you either have emailed from an address not associated with your
account. Because of this, we were unable to create a Speakeasy Service
Ticket for your account via email.

We ask that you try your issue submission again, online at:

http://www.speakeasy.net/myspeak/create_ticket.mpl  [login required]

It is important that your service ticket be associated with a valid
Speakeasy account so that we are able to research and respond to your
ticket in a prompt manner.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

They are a real, valid company. I don’t WANT to report them as spam and try to get their authentic customer service email messages made undeliverable. I know how frustrating that can be for companies that send legitimate, non-spam email that their customers wrongly report as spam.

But I feel like I may have no other escape route.