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.  Her service went down, and in a typical finger-pointing episode, the ISP pointed a finger at her PC, and she pointed at the ISP. 

Eventually, she lied to get them to come out (that's not the reason for the arrest, however), as she had a deadline to meet and was running out of time. 

"I was polite the first 20 times I talked to them," she told The Globe and Mail. "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.' "

Ah, yes, and that's where trickery came in, as they wouldn't come out.

The actress said she called her provider, Aliant, one last time, disguising her voice to sound like a man and telling the company she needed her connection right away because she was a businessman.

"Lo and behold, they said someone would be over between 8 and 11 the next morning."

Just wonderful, right?  But then, they couldn't find anything wrong.  And that's where the story gets more bizarre, and diverges, depending on who you ask, in Rashomon-like fashion.

According to Halifax Police, Ms. Sinclair was enraged with Mr. Scott. "She told the technician, in a tirade, that he was not leaving until her Internet was working and she told him she was keeping him hostage," Constable Jeff Carr said.

"She implied that she had a gun, although he didn't see one."

Ms. Sinclair, on the other hand, said that when Mr. Scott couldn't find a problem with the connection, she asked him to call another technician.

When he told Ms. Sinclair that someone else was on his way, she recalled saying, "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."

At that, the tech made an excuse to go to his van, and sped off.  A few hours later, after feeling she had wasted another afternoon with Aliant, she was visited by the police and arrested.

She's since been released, but still has the deadline to meet.  And the worst part: she can have no contact with Aliant personnel.  We think it's time to switch to another ISP, and she sure as heck isn't going to get her issues fixed.