Review by xrobertcmx 
UPDATED: 1.3 years ago
member for 7.4 years, 2130 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Herndon,Fairfax,VA
 $39 per month (12 month contract)
 about 9 days
 Verizon
 "Stable, works well with ViaTalk (VOIP)"
 "Running at 50% of advertised speed, auto opt-in to telemarking, information gathering"
 "Don't bother. Go with Verizon directly or get cable"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
---08/05/2007-----
After much difficulty we finally managed to have a trouble ticket entered regarding our speed problems. After closing it without calling us Earthlink now claims that we are at 20,000 ft and that they are going to have to downgrade our speed from the current 1440/384 to about 800/180 in order to correct our loss of signal, and we did not know we had this proble, intermittent service. After some interesting questioning we discovered that this came about because the tech entered a trouble ticket for loss of service, not slow speeds.
Due to the issues with Technical Support, the difficulty communicating, the over all lack of support, and most importantly the speed downgrade that we can not talk them out of we are canceling the service and can not recommend it to anyone.
Surprisingly, Verizon is telling us that we are at 10328ft and they can deliver the full 3/768 service and checked the line distance twice. We however have opted sadly for cable until Fios gets here.
------------Original--------------
When moving back to Loudoun county we had to decide what internet provider we wanted. Having had some issues with Adelphia, now Comcast we decided to look into DSL as FIOS has yet to be deployed.
We noticed that previous owners had used Verizon, so we checked with them and then Earthlink. It took two telephone calls and it was clear that to provision a dryloop Earthlink was clearly the better option. So we placed the order about 10 days prior to our move in, and a few days before we moved in, I took the router and Earthlink welcome kit over and set it all up. It work, and it worked fairly well, but I didn't run a speed test.
After a day of use it became fairly clear that the Earthlink DSL connection was not nearly as fast as I was used to, but also that it seemed to operate just slightly faster then my old Verizon 768/128 connection from several years ago. So I ran a few speed tests and then contacted Earthlink support. After being told to reset the modem and reinitiate, I was also given directions on how to access the Earthlink modem. I was fairly happy about this, because the modem itself claims to be connected at 1.5/384, or half of the 3.0/768 which we had ordered. As long as the VOIP service we use works, I could live with these speeds, but the promotion we are on would have to change because I don't like to be paying for something we are not getting.
One thing Earthlink wants users to do is install a huge selection of software onto their machines, from what I can tell, this is not a mandatory requirement. I happily have my own anti-virus, spyware scanner, etc... and have no desire to switch to theirs.
Something else they do is opt the user in for information gathering, email, mail, and telephone advertising, and then bury the opt out screen somewhere in the MyAccount page of the Earthlink website without telling the customer where it is.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of EarthLink |
|
EarthLink
(35)
·