Slashdot Mirror
Earthlink Pulling A Bait-n-Switch?
Matt LaPrairie writes: "Many of Earthlink's DSL customers signed up during their $39.95 per month promotion. This contract required a 6 month commitment on the part of the customer and they were told that the price would stay the same for the lifetime of the account. Well, Earthlink has raised its price to $49.95 for new customers (which is fine), but Earthlink is now charging everyone $49.95 - even those who signed up for the $39.95 "lifetime" promotion. They didn't even wait until the six month contract was up, much less honoring their promise of keeping the $39.95 price for the life of the account. The full story, including emails from customers and an Earthlink sales employee, can be found here: http://www.earthlinksucks.net/dslscam2.htm." While this site talks about a "quoted" price, does anyone have this claim in writing, or a screenshot of an ad with this price? Even if Earthlink has a good escape clause regarding the 39.95 price, this kind of situation seems a good justification for "-sucks" sites.
The phone company raised their charge for DSL lines...EarthLink makes _no_ profit from the price increase. All DSL companies will be raising their rates shortly. I should know, I work here.
Before AOL was AOL it used to be called Quantum Link (division of Quantum Computer Services) and served the Commodore computer user market. In 1986 they offered a "lifetime membership" for $150. So I signed up. As long as you stayed under 6 hours usage/month it was free forever. Q-Link lasted until 1994 at which time the lifetime membership was honored into AOL under the same rules. When AOL went to flat rate a few years back, they "upgraded" my account too and started charging fees. I demanded my old plan back and got it. Thus AOL is still hourly for me beyone 6 hours per month, but since I hardly use it. It's free forever for me! Woo hoo! Besides, they owe me anyway, all the cash from those lifetime signups was used to fund the start of AOL (for Mac users only) back then.
Don't be so sure - to get in on Bellsouth's DSL as an alternate provider you have to buy quite a bit of expensive new equipment (understandable - it's new tech), get a relatively expensive line back to the CO (somewhat understandable - but they'll overcharge you), *and* pay bellsouth $35 a month per line *you* service - when they're selling the same service for $40 - fair pricing anyone? Yes - I know they are a company and have make money/recoup losses, but upgrades are *operating expenses* not losses - but all BS see's is a chance to gouge their customers more...
when i started a server at home they sent me a email saying they would cancel my account if i didnt shut it down...
Clam!
Sympatico?
Sheesh...its like using AOL!!!
Is that your reference point for your statement?
If you need service, try some smaller guys like vif or aei.ca.
There are quite a few in Montreal which offer DSL for even better rates than Sympatico and from the feedback I got, most people are very happy with the service.
I'm with AEI and ended up using my own Alcatel external. Sympatico only rents their modems for $10 a month, "Were doing it for your own good, wedont wnt you to buy one and get stuck with it when a 'new and faster' modem comes along" bullshit.
And their tech guys are awesome....
I have a friend who had problems with dropping connections (ended up being a split wire outside) and the techie spent over 90mins with him. The few questions I ever had were dealt qwith quickly and professionally (if you show them that you understand TCP, DNS, gateway address and other terms, they kick it in overdrive....Sympatico talks down to ALL their users and spends countless time on "Is your computer plugged into the wall!?!?!" crap.
Im paying 29$ (thats about 20$ US) a month for AEI and dont have any problems.
I cant believe that some people pay $50 for DSL. I converted in Canadian currency and felt nauseous and pity...
z
I find this quite amazing, I got an email from my Cable Provider last week indicating the price of my cable modem (512k/128k, no limits) was dropping $10, it used to be $45 (£33) and has now dropped to $35 (£25).
Considering it was $70 this time last year and now $35, it's not too bad, and actually cheaper than some of the cable services in the US because of the price increases over there.
It seems the DSL services in the states are now the same price as BT's ADSL service, which takes the piss. My American friends used laugh at BT's (former) monopoly power, however it seems they've equally being shafted these days. What's the point of a competitive market place when all the providers are carteled?
I get my TV, phones, broadband from Cable these days, BT can kiss my arse, their recent descent into chaos garners no sympathy, and it seems they're finally working out that electing another "Sir Idiot" to the board doesn't actually achieve anything. Fuck `em.
Although EL was founded by a Scientologist (sky dayton), Earthlink is a public company owned by its stockholders.
The wide majority of EL employees are not Scientologists.
Reed Slatkin has been accused of defauding mostly other Scientologists.
I would never put secret databases and monitoring behind the CO$, but until I see some kind of real evidence that EL itself is a party to this, it's just a rumour.
Would you rather have your service provided by a bunch of Cox?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
The rest of the CV&Bs are here.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Keep in mind that many of the things you're complaining about - poor support, price gouging, complaints about what you're using the line for, networking multiple computers - are entirely dependent on the ISP you choose, and there are a LOT of ISPs to choose from, with different policies. If you don't like it, choose a different ISP.
Here's a rant against @Home that might interest you.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
According to this recent AP story he's "only" in debt for $100m, with the action for a claimed "phony investment scam" worth $35m. I guess that's what you're talking about...
Sheesh, no wonders why JustThe.Net is offering an amnesty program (one year contract with two extra months free). It's just straight home-grown service, run by antispammers. (DISCLAIMER: I am *NOT* a JustThe.Net employee or affiliate)
--
WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
running a proxy does not use any more of thier IPs, so they probably dont care. its not like they could do anything about it anyway since many large company sell "dsl routers" and the like. the bad press would destroy them in such a competitive market...
The actual limit is something like 53k due to phone line max voltage regulations. The equipment is perfectly capable of doing 56k, but the telcos wouldn't like it.
Also, the 56k protocol will renegotiate the speed as line conditions improve/worsen, but your 'official' connect speed will not be updated to reflect this, I don't believe there is any feedback mechanism for this.
If you're constantly getting low connect speeds on 56k, rest assured it's not the ISPs fault, it's the phone line, there's nothing they can do for you.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
At 1200, I could read the text, and would wait impatiently.
At 2400, I could barely keep up--and only if I had scrooling by pixel rather than line (otherwiseit kept jumping).
but 256? At that speed, you can just watch the 1's & 0's and manually convert to ASCII . . .
:)
hawk
>the technology precludes it.
If that were the case, maybe. It's not the technology; the phone system and the modems *are* capable of the 56k connection. In fact, this is the connection they use for 52k. It's the FCC that prohibits them from pumping data that fast.
If the other companies would start advertising 52K rather than 56k*, they could do it. Doing it alone would be suicidal, and getting together so that they could all do it simultaneeously would violate antitrust law . . .
hawk
It is unfortunate to see that Earthlink are now tarnishing an image which could have forced other ISPs to clean up their freedom of communication credentials.
--
...like they want to charge more money if you use the connection for more than one computer...
Just out of curiosity, how the hell would they know if you were running a proxy server? Or is it just done on the honor system?
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
For some reason, /. insists on inserting spaces randomly into comments
proper link
I started with Southwind which got sucked up by Onemain which got sucked up by Earthlink. :-( I haven't had problems so far but fortunately I use a non Earthlink email account. A friend of mine who uses his old email says email's been shit since the Earthlink merger.
Fully buzzword compliant, but missing the point entirely.
DSL requires copper pairs from the DSL CPE to the DSLAM at the CO. Works great in "older" neighborhoods whose COs, known in Telco parlance as "wirecenters" really are that, wire centers. A building that has thousands of copper pairs running into it from the entire surrounding geographic area. The wire center makes a great place to put DSLAMs, since it has switching equipment, air conditioning, and more than likely an ATM OC-3 or OC-12 back to the regional central office.
Many new housing developments (new as in the past 5-10 years) are part of entirely new, far-flung semi-rural suburbs whose explosive growth coupled with developments in technology have made the traditional, high-density wire centers impractical. Instead copper is pulled from houses to a neighborhood concentrator and backhauled via fiber to either the "original" wire center or a new wire center.
In these cases DSL doesn't work because there's no place to put the DSLAMs. The neighborhood concentrators are in small metal boxes or in vaults where there's inadequate power, environmental controls or upstream connectivity for DSLAMs. However, some ILECs like Qwest have been talking about "extending DSL" by placing more DSLAMs in the field near the customers instead of relying solely on copper to the wirecenter. It's expensive because you need a mini-building or a hardened DSLAM, upstream connectivity, etc etc.
Your second line about use of frame-relay is pure BS. Many CLECs like Covad lease an essentially dry voice pair from the ILEC, but to the best of my knowledge they are not running channelized DS1 signalling and frame-relay encoding on these, they run DSL. Whether leasing a pair from the phone company is cost effective is debatable, but running DSLAMs in a zillion wire centers more than likely isn't.
DSL customer service sucks because the DSL business, at least from the ILEC perspective, is a huge capital investment and a major growth effort which saps people, management and cash resources quicker than they can be replaced. ISPs have *always* had shitty tech support, and that the most critical part of their customer connectivity is being handled by a third party (ILEC or CLEC DSL vendor) only makes it worse. That there's no competition doesn't help, but they have such a huge customer backlog that the whiners in the crowd who don't like it really don't matter.
I believe the claim is that the prices were raised before the contract expired.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The table nesting is definitely off by one.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
More like never heard of DHCP with a 3 minute lease time.
---
I'll agree with the first reply here -- SpeakEasy has been a reasonably good DSL ISP. Not that they're perfect, but as far as Telecom companies go, they're OK.
I did have problems getting my connection set up initially; Covad kept complaining about all sorts of things. The one thing SpeakEasy did that I really appreciated is that they were in constant contact with me during the installation process... like 3 emails a week for a month telling me what was going on. Getting DSL in general is a painful process (welcome to the Bleeding Edge!), but they certainly do all they can to help.
--Mid
First, let me say, I fully recognize that a company promising one thing and then changing the deal like this (possibly in violation of contract) is bad, evil, and they should get what they deserve (if, in fact, they actually did this). That's not what I'm about to talk about though.
If I think back a few years, there were lots of 'unlimited access dialup' providers, back when there was no cable/dsl to speak of. These providers usually charged $20-$30/month.
Then one day, these providers started changing the terms of agreement going from 'unlimited' to '300 hours a month' and then steadily adding restrictions. Why? Simple. It was only economical for them to offer unlimited access as long as they were growing like mad and the users were not internet savvy. What they were selling was not based on paying for actual resource use. The growth of these 'unlimited' providers also managed to drive a lot of ISP's who actually charged a reasonable per-hour fee for using their services out of business...
Now we look at Cable. Cable makes sense...$50/month is CHEAP for the kind of speed you get... try purchasing *real* bandwidth sometime, you know, the kind where you don't get a TOS that says 'no servers' and you can get your old IP networks routed in. In most places, that's still very expensive by comparison.. even though the T1 you bought is SLOWER than your Cable. Now.. sometimes, Cable got really slow. Lots of times people blamed this on high use in a segment.... but in all the cases where I have reliable knowledge, the real problem was upstream bandwidth from a certain point in the network. I saw a cable company (in the same small town) bring in 512Kbps Frame-Relay to thier regional network and then deploy cable modems to everyone blabbing about the multi-megabit speeds. Surprise.. it was *really really slow*.
Now DSL. DSL, as a technology, is great. I've done homebrewed DSL connections between offices in a small town (actually, between an ISP and a related company a few blocks away) and it's great.
DSL is nothing more and nothing less than a point-to-point technology. The problem with DSL is how the supporting networks are managed (or not managed).
Regardless of what technology we bring in... we should keep two things in mind.
Any internet access technology will suck unless managed properly.
It costs money to run these services, no matter how you slice it. Current services have sold at a loss for quite some time.
Though what you say is absolutely true.... let's analyze.
So you mean, the company cannot stay in business because it's stock is down? What ever happened to PROFITS?
Oh. Right. I forgot. It's acceptable for a company that will never be profitable to use the stock market to get funds and drive lots of small, profitable companies out of business only to go bankrupt later on in life, having never actually made more than it spent.
I was paying $49.95 when they lowered it to $39.95. I convinced them to lower it and have been paying the lower cost. I will wait and see if they raise it for this next month. I only have about 10 more days to wait.
----------
----------
Twisted Little Gnome - The Podcasting Network http://www.twistedlittlegnome.com
Nope. I had 64kbps uplink, 1.544Mbps downlink. They've since raised the uplink to 128kbps. And yes, I got those rates -- downloads frequently approached 200kBps.
Nope. About 90% of the city I was in at the time could get DSL.
My DSL provider was the local phone company itself -- hardly a "smaller redistributors".
In short, you're generalizing and have no breadth of experience to back it up.
--
Twoflower
According to the linked story, "They didn't even have the courtesy to wait until the six month period was complete before raising the prices."
Maybe ISPs shouldn't advertise 56k service if they know full well that the technology precludes it.
If you sell me a service as having performance x, and then try to tell me I shouldn't complain when I instead get only 85% of x, you're half-right and half-wrong. I shouldn't be complaining about the technology, just the knowing false advertising.
So fraud is okay when everyone else is doing it. Gotcha.
I am paying for 56K and I usually connect at 48 or 33.6!
DISCLAIMER: I work for a national dialup ISP doing technical support.
Yet another uninformed modem user, I deal with you people all day long.
You will never get a true 56k connection on analog dialup. I do believe the actual upper limit is around 52k, in which 48k is quite good and definately nothing to complain about, 33.6k can happen during storms, telco outtages, bad phone lines, distance between you and the dialup server on the telephone network, the phase of the moon and the price of tea (or AOL now apparantly) in China.
If you're getting 33.6k connections consistantly then get your lines checked by your telco and throw away your lucent winmodem and get a real one.
-- iCEBaLM
Maybe ISPs shouldn't advertise 56k service if they know full well that the technology precludes it.
Sure, and the Modem companies shouldn't advertise that the modems are 56k because nobody ever gets that speed, so maybe they'll say 52k, and when no one gets that because line quality varies they'll still complain, not only that, it's only downstream, you only ever get 33.6k top speed upstream, no matter what you connect at, the horror!
And when you're the only ISP advertising your ISP at a blazing 33.6k you'll have fun explaining to the shareholders why all your customers changed to AOL or MSN who advertise 56k.
Theoretically you can get 56k connections, if you live right beside the ISPs PoP.
-- iCEBaLM
Try different modem init strings, modem updates, etc.
Visit 56k=v.Unreliable. Pretty deceint site for modem troubleshooting.
-- queef
The "lifetime" mentioned was not that of humans, but of some summer moths. That was somewhere in the fine print, I am sure of it.
--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Ooops. Sorry, a couple of the guys in PHX told me you still worked there. SOrry for the misunderstanding. =.)
Here we go, this might get long. I am a former Earthlink/Mindspring employee. Matt still works for Earthlink, as noted on earthlinksucks.net. He's a good guy. One of the greatest techs over in the PHX office.
.. when it was rolled out it was given as a disclaimer of "for new customers only" so those in which we told "yes" we actually had to sit there and tell them "Oh, we lied. teehee! Your loss, our gain!"
But ever since day one, EarthLink has experienced issues. I was there before the DSL department was officially created. I started off as a Dialup Customer Service in the SJE (San Jose, CA) office. Later on, my department was chosen (oh yay, at least I thought in the beginning) to become the first DSL Customer Service location. We were given a crash course in the products and services and how to contact/talk to vendors (At this time, it was still Mindspring so the only vendors were Covad and BellSouth). We got a lot of pissed off customers, believe you me. We still did when I finally left.
Customers set unreasonable expectations for us, as usual. But later on, the merger happened and everything and I do mean, everything.. went downhill.
First off, lets go over Earthlink's systems. They use Vantive. Vantive is the most ram hogging note taking database system I have EVER SEEN. You have to start up everything else before starting up vantive, because it's hardcoded into the program to take 80% of the available ram.
Then there is the inhouse accounting system. If you are a customer, may your account never become corrupted. It has really bad corrupting abilities. I begin to wonder if there's something in a hidden preferences section "Corrupt accounts when you 3 or more changes". If your account becomes corrupt, it can take 3 months or longer to get it fixed. Customer suffers because no one can put a priority on it, we have to let the account team take care of it. It's a hard to read system, espically billing.
We have access to vendors databases but that's not Earthlinks fault that those databases suck, or how much the telco's suck. One of them can be so inacruate.. very much so, that we see a date set for an appointment and it truely isn't set for that date, but we have no way to verify because 90% of the people who deal with the customers are not allowed to contact that specific vendor, so they are unaware.
The only thing from Mindspring that was taken into Earthlink was the CV&B's. Everything else was discarded, including what spirit there was with the employee's. After things went downhill, employee's started leaving because the spirit was shot down so badly.
Later on, a internal memo was posted from someone very high up in the company talking about how the stock was going downhill and the internally happenings and how he felt about them. There was a specific section that pissed off most of the employees. "If you do not have the power to cause changes, I don't want to know you or work with you". That cause a great war within. It took him 3 months to retract that statement, even then, it was only a minor appology.
Earthlink customers started calling when they heard rumors that they were going to reduce their price to 39.95, started calling and asking if they were able to recieve it. Now it had not been implemented at that point yet. We were told to tell them that "in time everyone will be switched over to 39.95"
Those are only some of the things that have happened. Covad is going downhill rapidly and is in the hole more than some telcos. There will be no one to pick up the pieces from that one.
There is more ugliness coming. I have it in good word. I congratulate those employees who stay there. I really do. I couldn't do it. I went completely bonkers after 1 year there.. and that was an extremely eventful year at that.
The lifetime promotion expired. Okay, this is like "Unlimited" dial up accounts where the ISP defines "unlimited" as X number of hours a month, right?
Bait and Switch is more accurately seen in credit card spam, where they 'offer' a platinum card with great rates but have (in the fine print usually) a clause saying if you aren't fully approved for the platinum card they will instead issue you a normal card. At the time I was receiving these offers in college, I wasn't even old enough to receive the platinum card in the first place (also in the fine print, required the applicant to be 25).
The computer situation mentioned above isn't bait & switch, per se. It's a simple con. If you actually could buy a good $100 PC upon approval, but will otherwise receive an inferior PC, that'd be bait (the good one) and switch (most people get the crap).
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
"Veni; Vidi; Vi C++"
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
Ya, sympatico is evil, I don't know about you, but my IP address changes every few minutes . I called up tech support, and they told me that's normal, so I asked him how I stream video, because the connection is getting screwed. He said you just click the link! hahahah! So, I asked him.. when the IP changes, it's hanging up on me right? He goes, Yup... I go, wow.. that sucks.. my cable modem never does that to me :)
He Just kinda.. hummed and hawed.
DSL sucks. Cable for life.
-=-Ze End-=-
That's not entirely true. I've gotten 56k analog connections before. (Of course, I had control of the hardware on both ends.)
/. isn't in the US.)
And I always get 56k connections from my courier -- the analog part is only 6 inches long before it goes into a netopia. It will still link at 56k with 200ft of cord on it, but it drops to 53k after a few minutes.
If you're outside the USoA, you can certainly get 56k analog connections -- over distances of miles. (All of
Actually, the frame-relay part is to manage traffic flow between the customer and the ISP. And yes, that's the the foundation for the 11th level of hell (currently under construction.)
If you work for an ISP that sells Covad service (for example), you know first hand how much of a pain this is. Frame is the encapsulation between the CPE and DSLAM [note: the DSLAM doesn't have to be in a "CO".] From the DSLAM, there's a PVC or DLCI that maps that DSL ports traffic back to the ISP. It's an unbeleivable nightmare -- sometimes I'm amazed by how little Covad screws this up.
(In CopperMountain terminology, this is a "cross connect". I don't know what Nokia calls it.)
I have had no problems with Earthlink over the past year or so. I have never had busy signals and have never had to call tech support or customer service. The other good thing is that it works with Linux :-)
Don't bother to visit the site if you use Netscape. Somebody doesn't know how to use tables properly.
Netcom...
Netcom's stuff was changed, as far as I understand, because the equipment was outdated at best, and just a total mess.
As far as a 2 week downtime, that's bad. I wasn't around back then, so I'm not sure.
Exactly. The price went up at the end of the contract, to $50/month.
Personally, I've always paid $50/mo for my DSL. So I'm not complaining.
I had signed up for $39.95/month service about 3 months ago. After I read this story, I checked my bill and sure enough they had chaged me $49.95 for this month. I emailed customer service, and got this reply:
Hello GeorgePBurdell,
Thank you for contacting Earthlink Customer Service.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
According to our information, this was an error in the billing of your account. We have credited back the charges and we are doing everything
within our power to prevent this from happening again.
If you have further questions, please feel free to contact us.
Thank you,
ECS Representative
EarthLink Customer Service
Why the hell did this get modded up?
Hello little man. I will destroy you!
What speed DSL? What kind of DSL? Over your existing phone line or do they also have to pay for an additional loop?
I pay USD 39/month for 768K down / 384K up ADSL over an existing phone line. I own the equipment (installation was free and equipment was paid for within one year of service).
I even am able to host web servers, quake servers, whatever, on the service, and not worry aboot the IP changing, even though they use DHCP.
Hello little man. I will destroy you!
From the following, looks like they have to send at least a management droid of some sort: "The Illinois Supreme Court rules provide that a CORPORATION may not appear as a plaintiff without an attorney, but may appear as a defendant through an officer, director, manager or supervisor if the amount claimed does not exceed $1,500. Corporate officers should consult with their lawyers regarding interpretation of this rule."
--
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Yup, I had the same problem with two hours charged for simultaneous access - they told me that they had a problem on their side, and refunded me the money. Of course, it took me 3 emails before they even paid attention to me.
-jerdenn
BTW it is PPPoE and he is getting 256bps downstream at peak hours and up to 110KB/s during off-peak. Beats dialup, but still a bit pricey.
When he talks about frame relay, he is talking about the transport layer (I think - haven't looked at the OSI stack in over a year), which basically IS frame relay. We're not talking about the physical layer, but the protocol they use to encapsulate what is going over the line, which is of concern to the gear that authenticates (if it does authenticate) and assigns IP addresses (the RedBack, Shasta, or whatever is used).
You think that EarthLink fucked up your dialup? LOL! Yeah, they went around and tweaked settings on all the dialup gear. Just because. Uh huh. Mergers have next to nothing to do with hardware and I've watched enough of them to know what I'm talking about.
Here in Sweden, I am on BoNet. 2.5M/750k, static IP, server rights, for about $25/month.
/Dervak
> Earthlink has the single best internet service around, bar none
Then why are you an ex-customer . . . ?
Here in SE Michigan, the impression I get from friends with DSL is that they all suck. I'm use a cable modem, with MediaOne, and think they're great, as do a few people I know who use their service. They have some policies you might take issue with, Terms of Use stuff, like they want to charge more money if you use the connection for more than one computer. But as far as delivering the service they advertise, they've exceeded my expectations.
I've been up for 40.5 (yes, that's right) simultaneous hours. Haven't been screamed at by Qwest yet. :)
Speaking of Qwest, they uniformly suck in almost every other area, but I've been damn happy with their DSL service here in Colorado. I've been a subscriber in two different locations; the first was a duplex built in the 30s and now I'm in an apartment complex built in the 50s. I'm farther from the CO now, but at both places I consistently got/get almost instant connects (Qwest DSL isn't "always on", you have to go through their router pool), fast speeds (640Kbps down and I believe 256 up, which isn't important to a leech like me--for $39.99/month), and the connection is rock solid--I've never once had a disconnection until I manually did it.
I'm not selling Qwest service. Like I said, they suck in every other department, but their DSL service in Colorado is outstanding.
The only thing I regret is getting the Intel 2100 win"modem" instead of the external Cisco 675 router for $100 more. I was hoping someone would come out with linux drivers by now, but Intel still hasn't bothered to release detailed specs. Does anyone know where we are with a way to get the 2100 to work under linux?
-Legion
-Legion
Here in Ottawa there are multiple DSL resellers, plus the cable company. IStop has good tech support, let you run servers, and has the best local prices.
Example? I'm in a highrise condo and am paying $29 Canadian (That's just under $20 US) for 1.2M/128k line. For an extra $12 Canadian ($8 US) I could move up to a 3M/800k line with a static IP.
Looking for a great DSL provider? Move to Ottawa and get IStop.
(Biased customer rant ends)
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
This guy suggests that we should launch a class action suit against Earth Link. Come on, this wil only fill the coffers of lawyers, Earth Link will get a slap on the hand, nothing will change, and you may see a $5.00 check in the mail for your troubles. There is nothing you can do, they are a corporation, above the law.
Patrick Carroll
Once in a while I lose connectivity to part of the Internet. It's Earthlink's fault. It seems like they block my account from accessing certain IP addresses. After I complain by e-mail, the effect seems to go away.
I think I had a busy signal once. That's it, though. I'm sure YMMV depending on what POP you access.
If you are a competent user and can handle yourself on the net, and you don't want specially provided utilities, Earthlink is good, raw Internet. Additionally, one advantage of national ISP's is that you can log on all over the country.
I was thinking about going with DSL in a few months. I believe Earthlink does not offer static IP's on residential DSL, though. Unless they offer static IP, I'll probably go with another DSL provider.
I am not a lawyer.
Probably a lawsuit or WTO proceeding over "domain squatting," since we poor little consumers might be confused by the name earthlinksucks and think it was actually Earthlink.
--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Bait & Switch is simply offering one thing with every intention of selling the interested party something else entirely when they express interest.
Advertising a $100 PC and then not having any when customers arrive is poor inventory control. If you go on to refuse to offer a raincheck or honor the price in some fashion, that's Bait & Switch.
There's nothing wrong with trying to up-sell customers to a more profitable item. Refusing to honor the advertised price is Bait & Switch if it's not available at any price, and fraud if you have it, but won't sell it at that price.
--
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
I can't speak to the rest of it, but PacBell (an SBC subsidiary) is currently offering free self-install for those who agree to a 1 year contract.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
ever since mindspring was taken over by earthlink, there have been problems like this. i have recently switched to @home b/c EL wouldn't offer dsl to this area, a huge tourist/metro area. EL also, after receiving 0 emails after being on their DSL priority waiting list for a year, suddenly send me 3 in 2 days to inform me they still don't have it avaliable here. early mindspring was great, but new earthlink made me switch.
Service?!? I never got any service from Earthlink. Gotta bill, though, for 2 months worth of it. Our ISP (coollink, not sorry to see them go, really) got bought by EarthFink, we had one month left on our long term contract, which we had paid in advance.
We got a notice saying welcome to Earthlink.
We stopped being able to connect.
We got this bill.
...Time is the best teacher, unfortunately it kills all of its students.
-------
-------
"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
Minor Threat
-------
-------
"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
Minor Threat
Well, of course not. DSL is not a retail business, they do not benefit from strong customer satisfaction or repeat business. Their primary (and really, only) duty is to the investors and stockholders.
I experienced this during my DSL trial by fire with NorthPoint. The ISP was VERY quick to sell me a circuit but by the time it was installed, I was already looking to get out of the contract. Horrible support, ridiculous hold times, outages everywhere. A virtual nightmare.
There's just no real way to compete in a market where someone else owns your infrastructure, and wins the race by breaking your legs - although, I should qualify, several court rulings since Northpoint bit the dust have compelled the telcos to allow competitors free use of their copper.
My point was, as a DSL reseller, you have no duty to the customers, hence they are expendable. There will always be more customers, or so goes the (actually very practical) saying - investment capital brought you here, investment capital is your first priority. End of story.
No advance notice by either e-mail or snail mail.
Naturally a change in my e-mail address is a major pita, but why fight what can't be changed?
Customer service is actually fairly competent, we presumably get the billing straightened out, and I hook up to the new e-mail account.
And I have mail ...
So we go thru this e-mail exchange .
I'm not nice, I'm not polite and I'm definitely not too happy with Mindsprung.
When you are dancing with wolves, never limp
So, it appears that Earthlink IS charging this increase retroactively, or at least midway through some people's $39.95 contracts.
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
I'd hate to have to knock on wood for this, but I'll say that I'm glad that I'm an @home subscriber.
/[\w\-\.]+sucks/i
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Here's an abbrivated version of my trials with Earthlink: For years, I was a netcom customer. A very happy customer. Then Netcom was bought by Mindspring, and I was a less happy customer. Then Mindspring was assimilated by Earthlink, and I became a very angry customer. I am now an Earthlink subscriber, not by choice, and I am leaving them just as soon as I can find a good DSL provider in my area. But I digress. Since Earthlink took over, the quality of service has plummeted. I get busy signals when I never did before, I am paying for 56K and I usually connect at 48 or 33.6! When I complain, I'm told that it must be a problem with my modem or my wiring, and when I reply that there was no problem until Earthlink took over, they DON'T REPLY! Recently, Earthlink "phased out" a bunch of Netcom dialups, and changed a bunch of DNS servers, and we Netcom subscribers couldn't login, and I wasn't able to get Email for two weeks. They did this without any advance warning, although they did see fit to send us Emails encouraging us to get our friends to switch to Earthlink.
Earthlink does suck, and why shouldn't they? They are the 800 pound gorilla of ISPs, and they really have no incentive to improve their service.
Unless you advertised "while supplies last".
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
---=-=-=-=-=-=---
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
---=-=-=-=-=-=---
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Around here, Verizon is the local phone co. and they offer residencial DSL for 39$ per/mo. With Earthlink, you can get a package which includes a static IP for only $10 more. Or, at least, it was just 10$ more... Things may have changed.
---=-=-=-=-=-=---
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The contract did not state the price would not change. Customers are mistaken.
or
Earthlink made a mistake along the line of command and will quickly fix the problem.
As I said, I'm just an ex-customer, but I think someone needs to defend earthlink since they are probably the only decent national ISP left.
---=-=-=-=-=-=---
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Bzzt. Several older DSL implementations used frame-relay from the DSLAM to the customer's CPE instead of the (now) more typical ATM. Take, for example, the Lucent DSLPipe product, which in its product description says:
| Support for Frame Relay Network Access Protocol.
Or what about the classic Copper Mountain CopperEdge SDSL Line Card, used by many of those formerly on NorthPoint's network:
| Standards Support
| RFC 1490 Multi-Protocol Encapsulation over Frame Relay
| RFC 1973 PPP over Frame Relay
| Multi-link Frame Relay
I could go on and on. Lots of providers, at some point, have used Frame Relay in their DSL implementation instead of ATM. Plus, many providers (such as GTE) have used frame relay circuits to connect their DSLAMs to a central switch site to connect to external bandwidth.
I will agree, however, that it's not a particularly important point in the grand scheme of things. AFAIK, Ethernet encapsulation over frame relay has far less bandwidth overhead than, say, either PPPOA or PPPOE, so it's sort of a moot point.
Eschatfische.
I really am starting to feel that DSL companies are doing everything to lose their users... It's like here in Quebec/Canada, Sympatico, they are REALLY fast at installing your setup and activating your account... but they SUCK terribly when you change address... and I won't mention the ping pong race when you call for anykind of support other than setting your email account ;)
It's too bad, I don't know a single large DSL provider that doesn't have a web site running against it's suckish service.
I can understand that an unexpected big growth sometimes screws up the planning, but if it's the case, why are they still advertising on just about EVERY media available to grow their userbase and give such a bad name to a great technology? sheesh..
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Make sure you get the right firmware if you do get an 67x external! When I moved about 8 blocks and had my Qwest DSL service transferred, it took them over a month longer to get my service restored than they had initially promised. I was about ready to tell them to shove their service up their noses when a particularly clueful tech support guy was able to determine that I had, indeed been provisioned correctly, but at my old apartment the DSLAM had been CAP and at the house I moved to, the DSLAM I was provisioned on was DMT. Three days and a UPS delivery later I was back up and rolling, but it was a 5 week (7 weeks if you count the _TWO_ weeks they said it would take) nightmare of long hold times, head scratching, and frustration. So MAKE SURE you get the right firmware for the DSLAM you're provisioned on.
There are two major products that come out of Berkel
Exactly. Better to try small claims court, and make them waste a few hours of their lawyer's time. Or would they just send a customer service peon to small claims?
Are we just tilting at everyone, or is there a DSL provider where the general consensus is that it "doesn't suck"?
Remember, any monkey can set up a -sucks.com domain name. And any large business has problems keeping the left hand aware of what the right hand is doing. That doesn't mean you should necessarily avoid that particular ISP at all costs becuase they're obviously out to screw over their customers as much as possible.
NO CARRIER
Some 2,000 Irish dialup users of Esat Fusion's "No Limits" ISP service (unmetered evening and off-peak access) get cut off next week for "abusing the spirit of the service" by remaining connected for hours at a time (what was that service called? O yes, "No Limits" :-).
This has spawned a new campaign, Ireland OffLine, pressing for better connectivity, flat rates, and -- yes -- DSL :-)
I'm not gonna try and defend ELN, but you really need to either get your facts straight, or take a trip to dictionary.com and look up the word retroactive.
Sheesh, and this post got a +1 from someone?
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Seeing that most of the comments in this story have been very negative towards Earthlink, could this finally be a chance for small mom and pop ISPs to take over some market share? I'm sure that the service of both Earthlink and AOL would be enough to drive a sizable amount of people away from them...
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Just yesterday, the FBI raided Scientologist co-founder of Earthlink Reed E. Slatkin over his role in the biggest Ponzi scam of all time, detailed at the http://slatkinfraud.com site.
Not to mention their vicious actions against free speech on the Internet.
That's not to mention the somewhat questionable affidavit of former Scientology agent Robert J. Cipriano. Now according to Earthlink they stood up for privacy against the FBI. By the rule of thumb that anything a Scientologist says is the complete opposite of the truth, they just did that becuase they prefer to do all the spying themselves.
From the Cipriano affidavit:
37. On or about March 26th 1998, Mr. Moxon and I talked about my re-entering the work force. Mr. Moxon suggested Earthlink Network, Inc., in Pasadena. Earthlink Network is a Church Of Scientology company. Mr. Moxon contacted Mr. Sky Dayton, Chairman of Earthlink, who referred him to Mr. George Williams, Director of Dial-Up Sales. An interview was arranged, and I was hired March 27th 1998, even though they were not hiring at that time. Earthlink created a new sales management position for a girl named Jennifer so they could move her up creating an opening for me in the sales department. On March 28th 1998, I sent an email to Mr. Moxon thanking him for the introduction (See Exhibit 11 & 12).While at Earthlink Network in Pasadena, California, I had access to the Internet Service Provider's internal operations.
38. I was befriended the first day of my employment at Earthlink by a Mr. Michael Hamra, another sales associate. I quickly started a friendship with Mr. Hamra and spent countless hours talking about various things including how Earthlink started with investments, by Kirstie Alley, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and other wealthy Scientologists, into Sky Dayton's idea of an internet service provider. Mr. Hamra told me how Sky Dayton had a coffee shop before starting Earthlink and that he, because of being a Scientologist and his friendships with celebrity Scientologists, he was able to build a multi-million dollar company that could, "Watch over the entire internet from within the internet."
39. Additionally, Mr. Hamra told me he was one of the founding group of Scientologist who ran Earthlink out of a Glendale one room office where he made sales calls from a bathroom in the office. Mr. Hamra said, "The Church of Scientology now had a database of information on every subscriber which included names, credit card info., credit reports, telephone info., computer info., who had referred them to Earthlink and who were their previous ISP providers." Mr. Hamra told me about the "other Earthlink building" which was next door on New York Avenue in Pasadena. Mr. Hamra told me that the other building was high security and is where Earthlink and the Church of Scientology did all the monitoring of the internet. Mr. Hamra was always very interested in my testimony in Berry v. Cipriano. It became clear to me that he was reporting what I was saying to other in Scientology.
40. I received many incoming sales calls while at Earthlink from individuals who would ask, "Are you a bunch of Scientologists?" We were trained to never admit that we were involved with the Church Of Scientology.
Not only is earthlink not honoring their contract, but the webpage hosting the story is www.earthlinksucks.net. Which we all know is so similar to www.earthlink.net that they will probably be sued by earthlink and be forced to take the site down. As the rich texan on the simpsons said "Score one for the bad guys."
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I guess more traditional practices include customer ripoffs.
I note, for example, this 23 May 2001 Press Release, where Earthlink announced
"EARTHLINK NAMES COCA-COLA EXECUTIVE TO HEAD ITS MARKETING EFFORTS
New executive vice president of marketing brings a wealth of experience to EarthLink"
The LA Times had this story about the ouster of one of the founders, under controversial circumstances.
I figure it is bloody in there.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Simultaneous hours in this sense is if I log on and then without logging out I login in with a different modem with the same account.
While non-RBOC DSL companies do have it tough, they are no longer paying out anywhere close to 75% of DSL revenue to lease the loop. This was largely true when the RBOCs would not allow them to add non-RBOC DSL service on a copper pair already providing RBOC telephony service. At that point the Covads of the world had to lease an entire new pair and put just data over it. This was both more expensive and much slower as it required the testing (and sometimes pulling) of a new pair. In the last year the FCC has ruled that RBOCs must allow competitive DSL providers to add DSL service to existing pairs already providing voice service. The regulated tariff (and true incremental cost) for this is much cheaper, less than $10 per month. So at this point the loop lease is much more reasonable. This doesn't mean it's easy to be a competitor to the RBOCs as they appear to make it as difficult as possible to share their facilities, but the 75% problem has gone away. What really should be done is to split the RBOCs up further. Create a regulated facilities company that owns and maintains the physical copper pairs and today's switches. The deregulated RBOC and competitors would provide services over those facilities, and over time the switches would be replaced by deregulated IP services. That way no one who controls the scarce facilities would have any preference for which company provides the service.
That claim is false.
R_V_Winkle
Understandbly most consumers are going to be upset when prices go up, for any service. Perhaps we are forgetting the nature of the game here. Nothpoint Verizon tried to stay in this game at a reduced rate and did anyone read their customer's comments when they just got the plug pulled? Most of them that got service restored elsewhere were down for at least 2 weeks. This price increase was to maintain a substainable service.
I don't know how someone could sign a 6 month contract and then feel like they were lied to when either side attempts to renegotiate that contract at the end of 6 months.
The prices of internet access are going up, advertising revenues are going down, and at this point everyone except the telephone company monopolies are paying out 75% of DSL revenues just to lease the loops.
No one is going to produce anything that said 39.95 was for a lifetime and to anyone who actually believed a 6 month contact was forever ? Well sometimes you just have to stop and think before you believe.
R_V_Winkle
Before this place becomes overwhelmed by claims that EarthLink is charging this increase retroactively. This price increase will only affect new sign-ups and customers whose original contract has expiried.
Something nobody has caught here yet as far as I have seen is that there is absolutely no charge for setup or equipment under the new contract. Where for a time there was a 100$ fee for equipment and provisioning under the 39.95$ deal.
A quick check of the math reveals this is basically the same deal (+/- 20$ a year) for new customers. For existing customers it is unfortunate but as revenues from advertising decrease and prices for bandwidth go up the market reflects those changes and prices reflect the market.
Not a scam just a sound business model. Besides this isn't exactly fair coverage as the decision to go to 49.95 a month was also made by SBC, Verizon, and others almost simultaneous to EarthLink's decision. Not all of them are offering free set-up at this time either.
R_V_Winkle
I'm in Alberta, Canada.. DSL via a local provider named Interbaun (www.interbaun.com), who is the biggest competitor to the local Telco Telus, which is basically the Canadian half of Verizon. I'm paying (after sales tax) $37 a month Canadian for 1.5 Mbit downstream, 640kbit upstream, no bandwidth limits (100% unmetered), web space, emails and two static IP addresses. They do not use DHCP. The modem is leased to me for the duration of my contract (which is a monthly renewal, so I'm not tied in to any long term contract). That's $37 a month Canadian, which equals out to about $24 USD a month for the service.
They let you run any server you want, don't port scan, and their tech support actually is very good. The service is extremely fast and rarely is there any downtime, and when there is it's usually because Telus (who owns the wiring throughout the city because they're the local phone company here) is doing something stupid in one of their wiring centers.
So it kind of seems to me like DSL is strangely overpriced in the US compared to here. Why, when there are more subscribers there, more bandwidth there, and (speculating here) more competition?
JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP IRRIGATE
I'm told there are still upwards of 10,000 charter accounts. 10K isn't much out of AOL's near 30 million subscriber base now, but it's a big chunk of the QLink leftovers. Probably damn near all of them ;)
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Not only would an outright refusal to sell the item be illegal, but merely speaking badly of it ("Sure, you can buy it, but it's a piece of crap. Let me show you a real computer") or even simply being unenthusiastic would have been over the legal line.
We were legally obligated to sell the item just as hard as, in fact harder than, anything else. Only if the customer asked about moving up could we do so -- the initiative had to come from the other side, because apparently everybody in the legal system knows that the typical American consumer is a complete idiot, with no defenses against fast-talking salesmen whatsoever, as helpless as a baby harp seal.
Of course, once the customer did express a doubt, or ask what made the other models different, then we could fix them with our Mesmer stares and have our way with them. :)
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Yeah, that's where I go to get worms and electrical parts (and doesn't everybody laugh when I get mixed up and run current through a nightcrawler!)
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
What is described here is, if accurate, either breach of contract or simple fraud. These customers weren't sold up the line, but rather down the river.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
As for support, forget it. The 12 hours of downtime I mention were at one time, and happened in the first month or two I had DSL. Trying to get any kind of helpful information from Earthlink is impossible. However, luckily I haven't needed to contact them since the one outage...
I have 5 PCs connected (though only one actually logs in and acts as a gateway/firewall), up 24/7, and have sucked tons of bandwidth, and never heard any complaints about it.
As for pricing, I've received the $39 fliers in the mail, but I was pretty sure that only applied to new customers and didn't give it much thought. Plus I'm paying $95 for the 1.5 MBPS (384k up) service anyway (and, even though a cable modem would run me $26/mo, having seen the speed of cable around here the DSL is worth every penny IMO).
Just my thoughts... maybe I'm one of the lucky ones... My only complaints about Earthlink are:
Support sucks (but I have only needed it once in 2 years)
They block port 25 on dialup (but not on the DSL, yet...)
- J-Man
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
I think my DSL actually goes through Sprint, so in reality Earthlink might not be providing any of the services there. I do have a dialup account as well (that comes free with the DSL subscription).
As for port blocking, I have several domain names that I send and receive email through. When I'm home, it works fine, but when I'm working out of town and stuck on dialup, I have to change my outgoing mail server. Then, when at work, I must change it back. If it were consistant either way I probably wouldn't mind so much...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
DSL companies got hammered on Wall Street. So, for them, it's either raise prices or go out of business. Which one would _you_ prefer? Believe me, many people would prefer to pay extra but keep the service. The other choice for them would be to go through a painful process of switching to a different provider and paying more anyway.
Well, I assume that we're talking the USA here. What speed were the accounts connected at? Anyway what I wanted to say, is that in Denmark there are three good DSL suppliers at this time, Tiscali Denmark (formerly World Online Denmark, formerly Image Scandinavia), CyberCity and TDC Tele Danmark. I pay app. 80 US$ a month for 512 kbps both upstream and downstream, I think that's a pretty fair price. Although I think it will get cheaper, there are a few more DSL providers rolling out their arms here, such as Orange and some smaller ones. ;)
What I'm really looking forward to is Finnish VDSL Systems to start in Denmark. I talked to the Danish manager, he said 10mbps both ways, and that he'd seem 20mbps both ways
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
I own earthlinksucks.org. Right now the site sucks as I haven't had time to get back to it. Earthling is doing nothing new for them. All the small isp's they have gobbled up had a good customer base. They are screwing them over too. The service level has dropped to nothing while the cost of holding an account is going up. The bigest piss off is they have screwed over everyone who has had a website hosted by one of the merged isp's. What they consider "free" was something I was paying for. 21.95 amount for a dialup is steep around here add 19.95 more for another dialup account for my 82 year old mom's use and the are making some money. If I didn't need to maintain email accounts with my original email address I would be totally done with them. I have RoadRunner cable now and it's worth every dime. My expectations from a cable company are nill and so far they have lived up to them, I have had NO probems. Earthlink sucked up my original isp who set a high level on customer service and replaced it with downsized horse crap.. 49.95 a month is cheap for good bandwidth. But if you promise 39.95 and then jack up the rates you are fscked IF you promised something else entirely. About what can be expected from a bunch of Hubbardites.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
The local provider of @home is Rogers cable.
Please forgive me if I have no wish to be "Rogered" for my Internet access.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
No, $600 million. Sigh! You're going to make me dig for this, right? Okay.
6 2.html
Try http://www.latimes.com/business/20010526/t0000439
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Maybe a cheque from Reed Slatkin, co-founder of Earthlink, failed to clear?
He's only in the hole for $600 million in a massive pyramid scam.
Favourite cult involved, film at 11.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
i've been meaning to ask this for a while:
why is dsl soooooo much cheaper in canada than in
the us? i mean, i pay 40$cdn a month including modem for sympatico. it sucks, but so does a lot of dsl stateside. but i pay the equivalent of ~26$US for it.
why oh why?
thanks
Tsk tsk... be a good geek, use Perl regex:
/\w+sucks/i
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
I had a bit of a negative experience that convinced me to get dsl elsewhere. I signed up under the $39 plan. I followed up a month later and was told that there was a slight hold up on the phone lines, which is understandable. I then followed up a month later and was told that my order had been canceled at my request, which I most certainly had not done, but I was welcome to place a new order at the $49 plan. Seemed it worked out for the best. For my new plan I placed the order, was told it would be running in two weeks and low and behold the router and everything was at more door on the exact date they said when I placed the order.
Last night I was doing tech support for a friend who is trying out trial subscriptions on three providers competing for her business. Set up three dialups all in the same exchange. Ran a series of connects to test: results on provider #1 never got above 28.8K, provider #2 varied between 33.6K and 48K and provider #3 hit 52K every time. This is the same computer, same modem, same phone line and same phone exchange on the same night. So there's some other factor involved besides phone line quality.
The referenced article and the links to e-mails from Earthlink customers inside the article and several comments in this thread say that Earthlink increased the price to $49.95 BEFORE the end of the six-month term, a clear breach of contract and not a sound business practice. Are these customers all lying?
Most CC companies don't accept this kind of bad behavior from companies and will deal with them promptly.
AC comments get piped to
BytesTemplar.com
with all the horror stories bandied about regarding dsl companies, the scams they run, the rotten connections people get from them, the company assimilations, and most of all, the ridiculous prices they charge (fifty bucks a month? Get outta here!), why does anyone bother? It seems like dsl is inherently too unstable to be bothered with. Right now, I pay $24.95 a month for cable internet. The only time it has gone down was when some shithead tried to dos the company, and that only lasted an hour and a half.
As for bandwidth, I sometimes grumble when I'm only getting 3mbps down and 1 up. I doubt that someone paying fifty bucks a month to a shady dsl company can get the same pipe. Of course, someone has to build the infrastructure for cable to work, but they have to do the same for dsl, too. And the range for cable is much, much better. My suggestion is to get on the provider's case for them to start setting up coax, or better yet, ethernet to the curb. I've yet to see a dsl solution that was worth a squat.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Yeah, it sucks that they're raising prices before the six month contract even ends. But then again, $50 for an ISP that lets you run your own servers isn't bad.
Now think about this: which is worse, paying $10/month more for a service, or having your ISP go out of business (like most DSL providers have been)? You are then dealing with downtime shopping for a new provider and then waiting 45+ days to get service with a new provider and a new contract and a new IP and not knowing anything about the new company.
A 25% increase in revenue for Earthlink from its current subscribers is probably enough to save them if they were in trouble (which they probably were if they had to raise prices). And if you're using DSL for business purposes, then the downtime would cost you a lot more than $50 per month.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
So, it probably wasn't 100% earthlink's fault, but around here (Pittsburgh) the standard dsl is 640/90 for $39.95 a month. Verizon offers it, and so does everyone else (tho sometimes at $50/month). Earthlink was running a 1500/384 for $40/month deal, and hey, everyone wants more bandwidth. I signed up, and lo and behold, it's 640/90. They offered me a month of free service for my troubles, but the fact is, there's no 1500/384 to be had. Ah well.
- I pay $49.95, which is the same rate as cable through @home but I don't have to have cable TV (which I don't have) to get DSL.
- I get 1.5 MBPS down and 200 KBPS up, and have actually seen these rates many times.
- I have had one outage. I logged onto my dialup backup account, went to bellsouth.net, and saw on the system info page that a DSLAM in my area had gone down. Several hours later service was back up. I didn't have to try to contact bellsouth since their website told me what the problem was.
- I live in a suburb 40 miles from New Orleans. It was equipped for DSL a year ago, but the cable modems still haven't arrived.
- Although bellsouth explicitly does *not* support home networking, I have a home network which I set up myself and have had no problem with it.
- I *like* PPPoE and the new IP address whenever I restart. Some of my cable modem owning friends have been owned by script kiddies. It's not perfect security but it keeps people from pounding my box 24/7.
While the theoretical max speed of DSL is noticeably lower than cable my speed never decreases. Most of my friends are on lightly loaded cable loops (so far) but some of the gamers have already noticed bandwidth clogs on upload during peak times. As someone else mentioned it's a lot easier to add DSLAMs and bandwidth than it is to split cable loops. I'll stick with the excellent DSL service I've gotten, thanks.Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I will use the preview button in the future.
"The initial term of this agreement is six (6) months from the date that the Service is first used ("Activation Date") and will continue on a month-to-month basis thereafter." That means they agree to charge you the "initial" monthly fee of $39.95 a month for six months. Before you interpret the "will continue on a monthly basis" part, maybe you should finish reading the agreement, including the clause that states, "EarthLink reserves the right to change the price of the Service at any time after the initial term upon 30 days notice." For those of you that have a hard time with comprehension, this means they may raise the price on the seventh month. After reading the contract several times, I could not find the word "lifetime" in it anywhere. It appears to me someone just wants to complain about paying $10 a month more. Most DSL providers charge much more than $50 a month, Even if you are paying Earthlink $65 for a static IP, it is still less expensive than most other DSL providers out there, except for the telcos that are making their best effort to run the competition out of business, which is why their competitors have to raise prices in the first place. And the posts in this thread that rant about Earthlink not providing DSL in their area amuse me. Earthlink has no control over that. In the city I live in, Earthlink is available wherever DSL is available. Unfortunately DSL is available in about 15% of the Sacramento metro area because PacBell refuses to upgrade. The story is the same in much of the Bay Area. So, before you blame Earthlink, Speakeasy, XO, Omnisoft, or other DSL providers, do some homework and take a good look at the constant roadblocks PacBell, Verizon (the worst of telcos), Qwest, and Ameritech throw in front of their competitors.
Mindspring has been an excellent service, and I have never had problems with their service or support. Someone mentioned the comment that the Phone companies are upping their prices, and that's why these companies are as well.
For those of you not aware, some DSL providers go through another company for DSL. For example, in our area we have three companies that offer DSL service, but every single one just takes your money and hands it to Verizon, as that is who the service is through. I personally feel that 49.95 a month is nothing to spend for what you get in return, and the cost was never an issue to me.
What is an issue is a company that does not honor their advertisments. And even though it was a bit of a challenge, they did that, and I have had no problems with them since.
I apologize for sounding like a complete moron and implying that I was upset because I got 5 months service (about $200) for free. If I was, I deserved to be WTF'd all day long.
Random Musings
Seriously, my story is a bit crazy with them. I was a mindspring dial-up customer for nearly two years. I loved their service, and when DSL came out, I was quite excited. So I signed up for it, and on the mailer, it said $39.95 per month, and I could keep my existing email address to boot.
What I have no found out is that, while they pretend to be one company, Mindspring and Earthlink are two different entities. They maintain seperate customer databases, seperate support (oh, you are a mindspring customer, hold on), etc.
Anyhow, what it comes down to is this. For the first five months of DSL I paid absolutely nothing. Why? Because I would log on to the DSL account using my Mindspring username and password, like I was told I could. But apparantely their systems didn't recgonize me as a DSL, because their billing does not start until the first time you log in using your DSL username and password.
Eventually they caught on, and sent me a bill for 19.95 (my dial up) and 49.95 (DSL). I quickly called them, and after about an hour on the phone, I finally asked for the lady's head supervisor. She asked me to hold on, and when she came back, she informed me that I would be credited $60.00 so that I would only pay $39.95 a month for the next 6 months, and I was on my own after that.
Regardless, we have a provider who I can get a dedicated connection through (784kb up and down) for 69.95 a month, so I will be switching as soon as possible. It is a shame, because Mindspring was awesome, just too bad they had to fall to Earthlink.
Random Musings
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
... and $39.95 isn't enough.
The current DSL pricing scheme is a child of the late 90's Internet boom. Everyone was thinking that products & services other than raw 'net access would be bundled with the service. Most notably, Video On Demand and "Virtual Shopping Pleasure"-type services. Hence it made sense to sell DSL as a loss leader for $40 - $50/mo because MAYBE, just maybe, another $40-50 of extra services could be tacked on.
Well, for the better part of North America, those other services haven't surfaced. On the contrary, telcos & large ISP's have learned that DSL is maintenance intensive, and that they can't convince residential customers to shell out $300-600 for the CPE - which must be practically given away. By the time your $40-50/mo customer is set up, you don't stand a chance at breaking even for 6-12months.
But wait, we've just established connectivity! What about the other Internet Services?
Well, you'll want some nice fat OC3->OC12 pipes in order to deliver content at >56k speeds between 7pm-11pm (peak time). Well, UUnet will sell you an OC3 for $100k/mo, or you can go for the somewhat cheaper SprintLink. Whatever pipe is purchased, you can bet that it's going to be oversubscribed to death: think NO MORE than $2-5/mo/cust for the bandwidth, that's 10kbps/cust if everyone requested something simultaneously. As you can see, a fat pipe gets you a hell of a lot less mileage than it did with dial-up.
And, of course, you have to shell out for mail, web, and news servers.
But the killer is still SUPPORT. Many others have mentionned this, but it's a fact of life. The average user is an idiot. But when he/she pays $20/mo more than they did for dial up, they'll expect much better service - the sort of stuff that's practically unseen, with short hold times and stoned technicians that will actually take the time to explain things after you've called 12 times in 3 days.
My point in all of this: WHY WOULD A COMPANY WANT TO PUT THEMSELVES THROUGH THIS HELL? I just don't get it. Sure I love cheap high speed access, but I'm not paying enough for it. Consider this:
You can get a business customer to pay you $200+/mo for essentially the same service that is sold to residential users for $40-50/mo. Along with this extra money, a business will also:
- buy the cpe/router/whatever.
- probably have someone on staff who's at least somewhat technically saavy. This translates into far less tech support calls.
- use the net for e-mail, maybe a bit of e-commerce, and a lot of websurfing. Much less potential to max out the bandwidth for MP3's, movies, warez, and the latest distro's ISO's.
So there you have it. If you were a telco/isp and could fill your DSLAM with $40-50 with a pain in the arse customers, or $200+ with a low maintenance customer. Which would you choose? Obviously the later. How will you improve things so that you don't become the next Northpoint? Jack up your price, reduce your quality of service, AND HOPE TO HELL THAT RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS CANCEL THEIR ACCOUNTS. Hence freeing up space in the DSLAM for immediate, real revenue. This is (North) America after all.
Phew... I've been wanting to get this off my chest for a while. And yes, I do feel much better now.
CoS are nazis not jews. Are you afraid of anything else where we might help you?
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
I'm doing a report on UCITA for my high school english class, and this post seemed very relevant. My guess is that somewhere, buried deep within the terms of Earthlink's shrink-wrapped contract agreement, are terms that state "the guarenteed price of $39.95 per month is not in fact gaurenteed, and we can change it whenever we want, and you can't do anything about it cause you signed this contract." Seems rediculous, right? Companies have been doing this for ages, putting rediculous terms in their contracts, and no one complained, because no court ever honored them.
But that's changing, and heading it all up is UCITA. UCITA would make this sort of contract entirely legit. According to many judges, it already is. Even though these sort of terms of agreement usually only apply in limited distribution channels. Even though we (assuming the royal 'we' have signed up for earthlink) never got a chance to read these terms until after we'd bought the service, much less negotiate them. Even though they are in blatent violation of consumer protection laws. This is what UCITA is doing, and although I can't be sure of it (I didn't actually read the terms of agreement. I guess you could say this is hypothetical), this is a perfect example of what we need to protest.
Up in arms, fellow slashdotters! Protest this blatent violation of our rights! Wouldn't it be great if, instead of having to argue over our right to register -sucks.com domains, companies like earthlink simply did business without angering our basic human decency?
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
Sounds like a good class-action suit. Unfortunately, ripped-off customers will get a coupon for $1 off and the attorneys will get $1,000,000.
I've had ADSL for two years come October, and I've been paying a steady $39.99 a month. This is including modem rental. Shame, SHAME.
Just a thought...
So ya wanna email me, eh? Change
6 hours a month. On 300 or 1200 baud modems. On very slow compuers. Those were the days. (of course, I would burn up 6 hours in one night :)
This smells like a myth. Why five years? Why in "storage?" Does someone each day go through that storage and delete those emails that have rolled over?
It also reserves that right in the quotes given on the earthlinksucks site.
We are believers in the Golden Rule
I take it they refer to the golden rule...
He who has the gold makes the rules.
That pretty much allows them to do anything.
http://www.dslreports.com/town?tid=5380 Google "earthlink" AND "39.99" Don't forget googlecache didn't look past first 10 results
The deal I was quoted then was that if I was to buy the DSL modem (I forget how much but around $100 I think) I would get an indroductory price of $39.95 for 6 months and then in would go up to $49.95. Otherwise I could sign up for 12 months and the modem would be free but the price would be $49.95. I skipped the 6 month promotion because it actually would have wound up costing me a little more. I'm sure it's likely that some customers were'nt explained how the promotion worked as well as I was or maybe they were and didn't understand the salesman. Of course if they raise the price before the 6 months then Earthlink is wrong for that. I can understand DSL prices being on the rise for ISP's. The phone companies provide crappy service and everyone who wants DSL has to deal with them. I first had DSL with Pacbell and I would experience annoying timeouts every now and them for a couple minutes. With Earthlink I havn't had any problems and I doubt I'll end up on hold for 3 hours if I have a problem like I was with PacBell tech support.