Speakeasy Web Site Is Broken

[Janina Sajka]

This morning I sent the following note to the Billing Department at 
Speakeasy, with a CC to their CEO:

>From janina at afb.net Mon Mar 18 13:12:56 2002
From: Janina Sajka <janina at afb.net>

What have you folks done with the Speakeasy web site? It seems there is no 
longer any way for me to access it, and this a serious issue from my point 
of view.

Ever since establishing my account I have used the online pages to pay my 
bills, check for local dialup numbers, and perform other system tasks 
related to maintaining my account with Speakeasy and to maintaining my 
service from Speakeasy. Frankly, I have been praising Speakeasy to the 
skies from the day my RADSL circuit became active--until today. You were 
exemplary in that all your services, including the entire provisioning 
process for my RADSL circuit,was fully accessible to me. When I say 
"accessible," I mean that I, a blind woman, was fully able to use your 
services with my technology. I did not require sighted assistance. You 
were my example of outstanding compliance with Sec. 255 of the 
Telecommunications Act of 1996--until now.

All of this has now changed. I sincerely hope you can fix what has been 
broken expeditiously. Please be advised that I'm using very up to date 
technology which perfectly renders web services which comply with the 
consensus industry standards as published at http://www.w3.org/wai/. I am 
running linux with lynx 2.8.5dev.7 (06 Jan 2002) ([1]development version), 
which certainly supports the latest in TLS security. My SSL is also very 
up to date. I don't believe I am at fault here. While I have not attempted 
to obtain your pages to evaluate what you have done, my guess would be 
some kind of javascript, or some similar, proprietary scripting.

Please advise me as soon as possible how you intend to resolve this 
inequity. I would like to pay my bill, and I would like to continue using 
your services, but you have radically changed your service for the worse 
in making these changes. I sincerely believe this was unintentional, but 
it cannot be left unresolved.

I wait to hear from you--credit card in hand.

Then, I get the following response. Grrrrrrr ...


On 18 Mar 2002 billing at speakeasy.net wrote:

> Dear Speakeasy Member,
> 
> Thanks for writing to us!  However, we no longer provide standard
> customer support via email communication.  A copy of your email
> has *not* been saved in our system.
> 
> As of July 2001, we switched to a more robust system of online
> support.  By providing you a completely trackable support history
> and access to our comprehensive FAQ, this system gives you
> improved management of all your support, billing, or other
> related requests.
> 
> To access this invaluable tool, please login to MySpeakeasy,
> located at:
> 
>                 http://www.speakeasy.net/myspeak                                    
> Submit your request via the Customer Support tool -- or give us a
> call at 800.556.5829.
> 
> Thanks again!
> 
> The Speakeasy Crew
> 

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
http://www.openebook.org