The Apocalypse Contract

CHAPTER 3 - SYDNEY

Bexley Cable held the regional cable television monopoly for much of the east coast. That also meant they were the only viable competition to phone based DSL Internet service. Previously, Sydney had gotten her Internet through Bexley until finally tiring of their poor customer service. It was a widely known dirty little secret that Bexley implemented a 'soft cap' on their residential Internet customers, causing slowdowns and forced outages for the people who used their Internet connections the most. After bumping up against the cap one too many times, usually in the middle of some important work project or during the critical moment of an on-line gaming session, she had decided to walk away from the cable provider and never look back.

Sydney dialed Bexley's sales number. She was greeted by the typical annoying automated voice, forcing her to punch numbers on her phone until finally summoning a real human.

"Hi, this is Jack in pre-sales. How can I help you?"

She gave a long sigh before answering. "I would like to sign up for your gigabit Internet service."

"Oh wonderful. Just give me your zip code and I'll verify we serve your area."

"Your website says you do," she replied, but then provided the number anyway. She could hear Jack tapping away at his computer.

"Yes, we do handle that area. We have our symmetric business class service that is split between 500 megabit upload and 500 megabit download, or our standard business service that is mostly download."

"I'll be more like that second one, mostly download."

"Wonderful. I can put that order in right now if you like."

Sydney had a sudden image of Jack sitting at his desk, phone headset strapped to his head. In her imagination, he looked like a vacant eyed mannequin. She shuddered, causing Pixel to complain and jump from her lap. "And you can hook that up right away?" she asked.

"I can have a technician out to your address by Friday afternoon." Jack seemed very excited to be telling her this.

"And there is no way to expedite that?"

"That really is the earliest time slot available."

"Even if I paid extra?"

"Their schedules really are very full."

"Even if I paid you?"

There was a long pause on the line. "Ma'am, there's really nothing I can do. That is the earliest possible install date."

"OK fine, I'll take it. Wait. Do you have a soft cap on this service? How much can I download before you start throttling my traffic?"

"Our business class service comes with guaranteed throughput and uptime. We provide a ninety-nine point nine nine nine promise."

"So no soft cap?"

Jack paused for a couple of seconds before answering. "Bexley Cable takes great pride in providing the highest quality service to it's business class customers."

Sydney nearly laughed. "OK, I get it... the first rule of the soft cap is to never talk about the soft cap. I'll take your answer to mean you only crap on the residential customers."

Jack remained silent.

Sydney couldn't restrain a small laugh. "Don't worry about it, Jack. You've made the sale. Well, as long as the price isn't over the top. What's the damage on all this?"

"We have a range of pricing options based on contract length and bundled services. If you're ready to move forward, I'll transfer you to the sales department."