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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 $39.95 price for the life of the account. The full story, including emails from customers and an Earthlink sales employee, can be found here: http://www.earthlinksucks.net/dslscam2.htm." While this site talks about a "quoted" price, does anyone have this claim in writing, or a screenshot of an ad with this price? Even if Earthlink has a good escape clause regarding the 39.95 price, this kind of situation seems a good justification for "-sucks" sites.
I work here too, and you're full of it. DSL providers are raising prices because they can't afford not to - notice how many of them have gone bankrupt recently (Flashcom, Bazillion, Northpoint, et al). Earthlink is trying very hard to become profitable. Even with the increased prices, we're not yet, but not because of anything the LECs are doing differently.
Although EL was founded by a Scientologist (sky dayton), Earthlink is a public company owned by its stockholders.
The wide majority of EL employees are not Scientologists.
Reed Slatkin has been accused of defauding mostly other Scientologists.
I would never put secret databases and monitoring behind the CO$, but until I see some kind of real evidence that EL itself is a party to this, it's just a rumour.
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.
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$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)
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WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
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.
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...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
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.
More like never heard of DHCP with a 3 minute lease time.
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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.
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."
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
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?
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-=-
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.)
Don't bother to visit the site if you use Netscape. Somebody doesn't know how to use tables properly.
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."
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"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
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)
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Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
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.
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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
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
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.
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.
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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.
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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.
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.
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"
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.
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
People argeed to use earthlink for 6 months in order to get a special price, and then earthlink decided that to change the price
How you would react if ATT sent you a bill saying that they decided to put the price of their service for the past six months retroactively?
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
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.
/(www\.)?[\w\-\.]+sucks\.(com|net|org)/i
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
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:[.]
"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.
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
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.