 Review by Titus Pullo 
UPDATED: 107 days ago
member for 4.4 years, 1572 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Charlottesville,Charlottesville City,VA
 $40 per month (12 month contract)
 about 3 days
 Sprint
 "Good service; price so-so"
 "None"
 "Good to go"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
8/20/08
Teh system logon message for me today (aren't they cute!) told a heart warming tale of how my last update was framed and, to this day, leaves the staff in tears. After finding their hankies, I was implored to update my review.
PS: The HSI price here is $39.95 + the no-frills landline brings the total to $60 and change.
No downtime since February. At least none that I was aware of, anyway. I may have been asleep, so I can't say for certain. I'm so very sorry the previous review brought such emotional responses from the BBR staff that I'll keep this one short (-:
2/15/08
Embarq is currently rolling out 10MB plans, as well as re-structuring tier prices. I was offered 5.0 for $5 more than I'm paying now for 3.0 ($44.95 w/POTS). I called in and renegotiated my current price for 3.0 to the new price of $39.x, with the understanding that I've renewed my contract for another year rather than go month to month come April. The service has been very good; speeds are spot-on with my caps (with only one brief period of high latency -fixed fairly quickly), and with no downtime. I'm happy with the service, and the price drop was most welcomed.
12/21/07
It's been one year since I signed up with Embarq. The service, up until a week or so ago, has been excellent, with no downtime and consistent speeds. There is a promise of "new equipment" in my area by 11/23/07 to address these issues. However ...
Embarq appears to have joined in an industry trend of appallingly bad support. Everything is geared towards sales, and problems are addressed (or not) only by repeated calls because you can't get through or you get erroneous information when you do. Service interruptions always cause clogged queues and their online chat system buckles like a dollar store beach chair.
I'm downgrading my rating to reflect the poor support and lack of accurate information from Embarq. I'm also not happy with what I'm paying at this point given the quality of support. There was also confusion as to what occurs when your lease expires at one year: I've received different answers from different reps. This is not acceptable.
Bottom line after one year: very good connection reliability (much better than cable) but with near terrible support (on par with cable).
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7/10/07
There has not been a moment of downtime since my last review, and speeds are consistently spot on. The price ($50 for 3000/640) is still a bit too high, IMO, but the service -- compared with cable in this area -- is solid as a rock. Cable goes down here with half the passing storms.
Latest test to speedtest dot net's DC server was:
D: 2988
U: 637
L: 19ms (DC server)
4/3/07
I'm updating my review due to a recent experience with tech support. There's a world of difference between phone messages (management) and the people that man the lines -- both phone, email and chat. These guys are on the ball and deserve a lot of credit for the time they take in helping us out, even with matters of little concern. There is a tech here on BBR who posts in the Embarq forum that is also a valuable asset to the BBR community and Embarq. Perhaps I shouldn't mention the name, but it begins with dsl.
Kudos to all of you that work hard to make the little things possible for us!
3/19/07
My first trouble with the service and I'm totally unhappy with tech support. There has apparently been a fiber cut somewhere that occurred midday on the 17th. Phone tech support has been horrid, with messages stating everything from their business hours to 'all lines busy' to some nonsense about weekends being their busiest time and to try my call at another time.
36 hours to fix cut fiber is one thing, but their communication on the matter is worse than Adelphia - and that's saying something.
If not for Comcast being my only alternative, I'd pay the $99 and go with another provider. If customers don't talk with their wallet the companies never hear you. If this problem doesn't go away by next Saturday my next review will be for Comcast.
I dropped my TS rating to 3 and the Value for money rating to 2.
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Update: 12/8/06
I upgraded to the 3000/512 tier for ten more dollars a month, as all speed tests were right under my 1500 cap, line quality was good and latency is bearable. I notice I'm paying a bit more than some areas for my middle-tier speed. I've no idea what metric Embarq is using to determine price points per area, but income in my neighborhood certainly isn't above the national average.
I've included some links to tests run via BBR:
Speed tests from both coasts:
»/im/19732034/46256.png
»/im/19761057/86700.png
Line test:
»/linequality/nil/2142177
I'm quite happy with (A) no longer being a customer of Adelphia/Comcast and (B) the performance of Embarq so far. The connection can lag a little more than cable at times, but pages pop open and downloads generally run better than 250KBs. I've actually hit above my cap a few times, as illustrated by the image below.
The upgrade was done completely from the CO, on time and with no problems. I did have to reboot the modem in order to gain connectivity after the upgrade.
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11/21/06
I called Embarq last Friday and I'm up Tuesday (today, the 21st) on their 1500 tier. Installation was a breeze (5 minutes), and speed tests clock me nearly up to the 1500 I'm paying for (I'm within a mile of the CO).
So far so good -- I'll update after some time passes.
Attachments:
Followup comments:  
shinji
@Level3.net
| Issue was not Embarq equipment related I'd just like to respond to your review about Embarq just so you know. The issue that occured on Saturday, March 17th was due to a network issue that affected 4 states. VA, NC, SC, and TN were all affected and customers were down for about an hour. This caused a huge spike in call volume hitting the 1000 mark and preventing any additional calls from coming in. As of yesterday it appears all remaining issues have been resolved for all 4 states. Embarq worked with SprintLink (the backbone provider) in getting this issue resolved. This issue was more likely due to bad routers in the backbone network rather than a cut cable. A cut cable affects small areas but a router that dies or stops working properly can affect a large region. SprintLink and MCI had to both re-route traffic. Other providers in those 4 states may of been affected by this issue. | |
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Titus Pullo
I came, I saw, I slept
join:2004-06-26
 ·Embarq
| Re: Issue was not Embarq equipment related Yes, if you check the thread for this issue within the Embarq forum on this site, you'll see that I found the fiber cut claim dubious at best (one of my posts).
The issue here, in my opinion, is not so much the three days where customers were unable to reach many sites, the problems were (a) that PTS was unprepared to deal with the problem and (b) why the fiber cut story was the official line offered to customers when they were able to talk to support.
The service, by and large, has been good in the time I've been a customer; however, I was taken slightly aback by the inability to reach TS during a three day problem. | |
| | |
shinji
@Level3.net | Re: Issue was not Embarq equipment related I don't think anyone could of been prepared for it. A 1000 call queue would fill up most companies queues. I think customer service was probably getting some of the overfill. To top it off I think they said it knocked off half of their phones. | |
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