But there are instances where even if you think you have a guarantee, you often don't. I have a backup business DSL account from Megapath, a national broadband ISP which is the only DSL provider here in Charleston who offered static IP addresses when I was shopping around. Of course the DSL actually comes from BellSouth, which I think of simply as The Devil for its poor service and vindictive ways, from which Megapath presumably would protect me for only three times the price. My Megapath account even came with a Service Level Agreement that guaranteed 99+ percent uptime with money back for any interruptions that exceeded certain reassuringly slim limits.

Then my Megapath service went out for a whole week and I learned the bitter truth. Lucky for me this was my backup account used regularly on just a single notebook in the bedroom, but its failure did put a temporary crimp in my wife's eBay obsession.

Of course I filed a trouble ticket with Megapath, which they cheerfully acknowledged, then 24 hours later told me what was already obvious -- I had no Internet service. The problem was a bad DS3 leased line to Atlanta that was giving them trouble, but it would be back up in a matter of hours. It took days. And the problem (this was last year) continued to happen intermittently for months. One thing I learned from this experience was that Megapath, seeking good customer service stats, times out its trouble tickets WHETHER THE PROBLEM IS ACTUALLY FIXED OR NOT. If you want them to keep working on the problem you have to keep opening new trouble tickets. And one important measure for them of customer satisfaction is the percentage of trouble tickets that are closed which, of course, has to be nearly 100 percent.

But the worst part of this experience came when I tried to invoke my Service Level Agreement and get some money back. They should have owed me a free month of service. Nope. You see the service they were guaranteeing wasn't actual Internet connectivity, they explained, but my connection to the DSLAM half a mile across town at The Devil's office. As long as the log showed that I had a continuous connection to BellSouth (a connection that I am sure was guaranteed by BellSouth under THEIR Service Level Agreement with Megapath) then Megapath was off the hook.

The ever-cheerful Megapath customer service agent explained that just because I couldn't get on the Internet for days at a time that wasn't their problem. They guaranteed presence, not utility. In fact, the whole Service Level Agreement scam wasn't even their problem since all they were really guaranteeing to me was something that they were, in turn, guaranteed by The Devil. And when all you have left is a guarantee from The Devil, well you know you are in trouble.

Then they closed my trouble ticket, chalking up another satisfied customer.