Poor ISP Service Leads to Arrest

No, no one at the ISP was arrested, so strike that from your mind. In this case, it was Carol Sinclair, a 53-year-old Halifax actress and playwright. Not your typical criminal, mind you.

She had the experience many people have during an outage. You try to open a browser, and it will give you an error message or time out. For someone like me, I'll start looking at the cable modem to see if it's synched or not, check the router, etc. etc.

Nothing annoys me more than when I've gone through all those steps, call Comcast, or whoever, and they make me walk through a script which basically repeats everything I've done. Of course, that happened to Sinclair as well, but from what she told the Globe and Mail:

"I was polite the first 20 times I talked to them (Aliant). But each one gave me the same routine: 'Is the modem connected. Are the lights blipping?' And then each one would say, 'It should be working, it should be working. The problem must be with your computer.' "

For me, at this point I'll get really mad, because I know what I'm doing, and I'll start ranting. I can usually get them to send someone out. Sinclair could not.

Since she was behind on her latest project, a stage adaptation of CBC broadcaster Linden Macintyre's memoir, Causeway, she lied ... and no, that's not why she was arrested. She said the service was for a business, and they said they would send someone over the next morning.

Unfortunately, they still couldn't find an issue. And that's when the episode turns bizarre, sort of Rashomon-like.

According to the Halifax police, Sinclair was incensed with 21-year-old technician David Scott, and told him she was holding him hostage, implying she had a gun. Sinclair disagrees, saying that she asked him to call another technician, and then:

"I don't want to hold you hostage, but would you mind hanging around until the other technician arrives so that the two of you can sort it out. All of a sudden, he says he can fix my connection after all. He just needs to get a disc from his van."

After reaching his van, he then sped off. Later in the afternoon, responding to a knock at the door, she opened it to see five police officers. Apparently the word "hostage" was the only thing he heard. Once again, "he said, she said."

The police found no firearms in the house, but Sinclair was arraigned in Halifax Provincial Court on Friday anyway. She is now free on condition that she have no contact with Scott or any Aliant employee, and is due back in court Sept. 30.

I think it's time for Sinclair to move to a different ISP. If she can't get have contact with any Aliant employees, she sure as heck isn't going to get her issues resolved.