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Review by JHemingway
(review was emailed from domain AlienTechnology.com)
lodged 9 years ago
 Morgan Hill,Santa Clara,CA
 $49 per month- (12 month contract)
 Verizon "Nothing" "Extremely difficult to get up and running. Lousy tech (outsourced) support. Slow speeds, max 160KBS download." "Stay away from Earthlink. Unethical and incompetent. Refuses to release my DSL line."
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Very difficult to install. Tech support all by non-English speakers who did not know what they were talking about. Max speed achieved was 160KBS download. Earthlink did not seem to care so I cancelled.
Earthlink was veryquick to charge a $150 cancellation fee but seems to be unable to
release the DSL line so that I can sign up with another provider. To date it's been 3 weeks with no light at the end of the tunnel. Conclusion - Earthlink is both incompetent and unethical. STAY AWAY FROM
EARTHLINK.
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Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain earthlink.net)
lodged 9 years ago
- New York,New York,NY
- $51 per month
- Verizon (ex GTE)
- CLEC party: Covad
- "Great Connection. Great Newsgroups."
- "They outsourced tech support to retards."
- "It's great unless you need tech support."
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I was with Earthlink for 10 years and more, way back when they were
Mindspring. Tech support used to be great. I usually get disconnected
from their line once every 2 years. A call to tech support and they'd
have the line up and running within 24 hours, even that time when
Verizon was on strike and they couldn't get to their routers. Now, I
call tech support and get Indians who read from a script. I just called
them tonight when my line went dead again.
I figured I'll save time and effort and just immediately say my line's
dead. I told him I've disconnected the modem and powered off all items
for a full minute. All the green lights on the modem is green. No
software was installed in the last three months and the operating system
was Windows XP Pro. So could he please just call the tech folks and get
my line reconnected. He says please bear with him and just follow his
instructions.
What did the 'knowledgable' tech support ask me? "Is the sys light
green?" When I responded that I'd already told him all lights were
green, he insisted on asking again is the sys light green. After
figuring he can't be that dense, I said yes, the sys light is green and
so is the other three lights. Guess what his next technical support
question is? It's "is the atm light green?" Makes you want to strangle
the idiot that outsourced tech support to India.
I finally blew my top when he insisted that I start messing with my
Network configurations in the Control Panel. I'm not about to screw up
my OS just to follow his stupid script.
I'm now looking at Verizon or cable as alternative. Earthlink can
market to India for all I care.
(this email is being sent on slow POTS dialup)
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 Review by KAD Imaging 
member for 10.6 years, 1821 visits, last login: 2.1 years ago
updated 9 years ago
- Hialeah,Miami-Dade,FL
- $49 per month
- (12 month contract)
 about 10 days- BellSouth
- CLEC party: BellSouth
- "1100+ download speeds for being 19K' from the CO. Stable connections"
- "Customer service is so-so. Took a while for them to credit me for the modem ($99) which was part of the install offer."
- "I would recommend BellSouth over EarthLink in the Miami Area"
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UPDATE: (1/18/03)
Well due to changing addresses I am no longer with Earthlink. I had to switch to Bellsouth because my new address is 19,000ft from the CO and EL doesn't service beyond 15,000. (My old address was 14,000ft) EL gave my the complete run around by first trying to transfer my service to a location they could not. This back and forth resulted in me being a month and a half without DSL. On a good note, because of all the hell I went through with misinformation and bad CSR's, they only charged me $49 cancellation fee versus the $250 I would have gotten hit with.
The electronic portion of Earthlink is great, once the people get involved though, things seem to go down hill fast. If you have Bellsouth as an option in your area, seek them first.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------
UPDATE: (5/7/04)
After well over a year with Bellsouth, I am extremely pleased with the service. No outages at all that I am aware of, or at least I have not experienced this. I am still getting about 1100/230 on speed but considering the extreme distance I am from the CO, that's more than acceptable. The service is the following:
1500/256 ADSL (PPPoE) Service with self installation @ $49/mo.
Westell Wirespeed Dual Ethernet-USB Modem w/ Single Port Router.
1 Email Account w/ 10? Sub accounts
10MB Webspace
Dynamic IP Address
20 Hours of Dial up access
The few times I've had to contact tech support the techs were knowledgeable and got past the sync issue I had (once). I don't use their email service at all but there's about 3-6 spam messages a week in the account. I also do not use their web space as I have my own server elsewhere. The pool of IP's are fairly small and they are pretty close in range so you may be picked up especially by sites that log ip's (like message boards) I've not experienced any DoS type attacks with BellSouth and have not even experienced net congestion during the worm/virus outbreaks of the past year.
As a bonus, BS is now offering an "Xtreme" tier that for $5 more dollars a month gets you 3Mbps service, a sweet deal in my opinion. There has been lots of hooplah over issues so I am holding off for now. I still give my recommendation for BS in South Florida if you want a fast, stable, provider.
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Review by sundevil1
member for 11.1 years, 12 visits, last login: 9 years ago
lodged 9 years ago
- San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
- $49 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 30 days
- SBC
- CLEC party: Covad
- "Not very many any longer"
- "Bad speed, worse technical support"
- "You can't really call this high speed access"
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I have been with Earthlink for over 3 years. Time was the speed was pretty good but technical support wait times were long. Lately, the speed is terrible and the data loss is significant. Now, technical support is limited to people working out of a manual who do not know how to help and do not listen to what you say. If you mention that there has been a sudden drop in speed then you are repeatedly barraged with suggestions that you must have placed a microwave oven next to the modem, etc. The speeds over the last few months rage from 2 kpbs to 20 kpbs.
Getting Earthlink to give you a trouble ticket to the CLEC is nearly impossible.
Really not worth the money or the frustration.
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Review by sjddavis
member for 11.3 years, 14 visits, last login: 7.3 years ago
lodged 9 years ago
- Duluth,Gwinnett,GA
 Business customer- $19 per month
- "Sign-up was easy"
- "Tech Support and Cancelling account"
- "Pray you don't have any problems and don't travel with it."
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I found one day last march that my Bellsouth DSL account was somehow mistakenly cancelled by bellsouth when I called to have some features added to my phone service. To make matters worse they couldn't get my username back up for nearly a week. So I decided to get a dial-up account with earthlink in the interim.
Sign-up was easy and quick. I even had a good connection for a dial-up account. Bellsouth finally got my DSL up again and I decided that I'd keep the Earthlink account for when I traveled.
It was when I traveled that I had an extremely hard time getting local dial-up phone numbers from earthlink. I called Tech Support (Hah!). In other words I called India. I kept asking for a local dial-up number for Birmingham, AL and they kept giving me an 800 number that I had to pay for by the minute. I know that there a local numbers for B'ham and after 45 minutes and a call to a friend of mine that I finally got a number. I decided that was enough and since I get 20 hours of Bellsouth dial-up w/ my DSL, I'd just use that. It took almost an hour of waiting on hold to cancel the Earthlink account and the guy who finally got on the phone was real rude about it. And I thought Bellsouth could be a pain!
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Review by yeutronglong
member for 9 years, 0 visits, last login: 9 years ago
lodged 9 years ago
- San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
- $50 per month
- (12 month contract)
- SBC
- "Technical help usually immediately available and fairly knowledgable"
- "Can not trust them with your credit card - They ripped me off three times"
- "Maybe they're getting too big as they now seem to lack ethics"
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Started with phone modem service roughly six years ago (at two different addresses) and was impressed with their technical service. Switched to DSL just over a year ago. Everything went well until I had problems with trojan viruses being loaded into my PC HD. Customer service recommended that I buy a firewall; Sales would supply the hardware for a cost of $50, which I received within a couple of days. Everything OK up to this point.
Next billing period I noticed the monthly service charge had increased ~$60/month. Customer service explained it was for some service which would support me in getting the firewall configured and set up correctly. He told me I could cancel that service, but suggested that I keep the service for at least the first month until after I got the firewal set up and running smoothly. I went along with his suggestion, noting I was disapointed that I wasn't told of this additional monthly charge beforehand.
Recently dis-continued service (as I anticipated a move) - it had been 13 months since I initially went with DSL service. I received a $100 charge from tham a month after my service had been disconnected. I wasn't too concerned as I was sure this would get resolved; in fact, I was just about to re-order service with them this weekend if I could do so without any contract.
I called (to re-start service after I'd find out what the $100 charge was for); They replied "early termination (of my contract)". I reviewed my credit card statements closely and verified I did have the service for more than one year (the contract was for one year). Then they told me I renewed my contract by ordering "Home Network Support", which is apparently what I got when I ordered the firewall hardware.
I'd not received any verbal or written notice that I was buying anything other than the firewall hardware for $50, and definately would not have extended the contract for another year. The customer service rep simply replied that this was "their policy". I looked at my credit card statements to verify how long ago this service began, and at that time discovered they charged me $130 for the firewall, as opposed to the $50 that I paid.
I told the rep that my intention was to re-start my service with them, though on several occassions they'd taken more from my credit card account than what I'd authorized. I'd want to resolve these issues before re-starting. The rep told me that ther was nothing that could be done as this was "their policy".
It could have been that their sales rep wasn't trained well, or had flagrantly hidden details in order to boost his sales (if they have incentive to do so). In either case, Customer Service should have been able to offer some kind of restitution. But they offered none. They just lost a $600 / year account, and I'm going to let everyone know about the "service" I received so that hopefully it won't happen to you, too.
Also learned some lessons:
1. Never let any company have your credit card account info. You make yourself vulnerable to scams and fraudulent negetive credit reports if you dispute them.
2. Review credit card statements in detail every month (I thought I already did a good job of that but somehow the $130 charge slipped by).
3. Whenever possible, get month to month services and avoid those contracts.
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Review by bendair007
member for 10 years, 523 visits, last login: 3.9 years ago
lodged 9 years ago
- Santa Cruz,Santa Cruz,CA
- $54 per month
- (12 month contract)
- SBC
- CLEC party: UUnet
- "Line is stable"
- "paying for 1.5/128 and I'm getting 822/212"
- "I'm going to switch to comcast when it's avilable"
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I am paying for 1.5/128 my actual speed is 822/212 and earthlink tech support refuses to upgrade me to the new 3/384 speeds saying it is not offered in santa cruz when i have friends who have it. I pay about $54 a month with taxes. The order and install was easy, the tech took about 1 hour to install. The home equipment is a Alcatel speed touch home Adsl modem. The service uses PPPoE and i have it shared between 5 computers over a router and 3 wireless APs
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Review by wrokhed
member for 9 years, 44 visits, last login: 4.9 years ago
lodged 9 years ago
- Temecula,Riverside,CA
- $65 per month
- (month by month)
- about 5 days
- Verizon (ex GTE)
- CLEC party: Verizon (ex GTE)
- "Decent speed, until the last month or two."
- "Speeds have fallen badly, and connection drops frequently, lousy tech support."
- "I used to be happy, but I am planning to switch soon!"
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I got DSL about 3 years ago after using Earthlink for dial-up service for about a year. I was quite happy until recently. I had been using a single PC running XP home for all on-line activity and had no problems and was happy with the speeds I was getting with no tweaks of any kind. Then I built a new PC and added a wireless network. Initially I had no problems, except for using Bit Torrent due to the router firewall. Then I started having problems with my Internet connection dropping every hour or two (it happened while posting this review! Of course I saw it coming so I copied my text to a text file before submitting). My wireless network connection shows fine and the Earthlink icon in the task tray says I am connected, but I get nothing but "Can't find server" messages with IE and I also can't connect to the mail server. The only fix I have found is to reboot, about 5-10 times per day!
Also, I am paying $50 per month for standard DSL service, actually about $65 with various fees tacked on. AS I recall, when I signed up the speed claim was along the lines of 600k down and 120k up. After recently tweaking RWIN I ran speed tests here and got pretty consistent results of 400k down and about 120k up (distance to CO doesn't show up here, but it appears to be right around 8,000 to 10,000 feet). I could live with that kind of speed if it worked in practice, but even after opening ports for Bit Torrent I am rarely seeing better than 10kbps on the DL, and on average about 5kbs. And yes I have looked at the trackers and I should be doing much better. Plus, BT has the same problem with dropped connections every hour or two. On top of that, Earthlink is now offering 1.5m service for $50 per month while I pay the same rate for 400k.
Tech support has been of no help since I am not paying Earthlink $10 per month extra for "network support". I tell them I networked my home with a router and they tell me they won't help. End of story. Not very customer friendly given the level of competition in the market. I've seen all the glowing reviews for Surf City and think I may be headed their way, in any case I don't think I'll be with Earthkink much longer.
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Review by ktgeorge
member for 9 years, 3 visits, last login: 8.8 years ago
lodged 9 years ago
- Redlands,San Bernardino,CA
- $52 per month
- about 16 days
- Verizon (ex GTE)
- CLEC party: Verizon
- "Earthlink Used to be very good"
- "Now they more expensive and offers less bandwidth and service"
- "After trying to stay with Earthlink after 7 years, we had to leave. Now Verizon"
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I was with Earthlink for almost 7 years from dialup to DSL. Started with them when they were HQ'd in Pasadena.
I told them that I would rather stay, but they would not upgrade my hardware nor reduce my rates, they offer new subscribers!
What so strange, is that they know they are no longer competitive, and yet their managers are not empowered, nor of course neither are overseas tech and customer service, to improve their offering.
I was very saddened to see what has happend to Sky Dayton's company.
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Review by gui378
member for 9 years, 4 visits, last login: 8.9 years ago
lodged 9 years ago
- Baltimore,Baltimore City,MD
- $49 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 7 days
- Verizon
- CLEC party: Covad
- "Large National Company"
- "Horrible Tech Support and Consumer Relations"
- "I will never do business with them again!"
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In the beginning my relationship with Earthlink really started in the hands of Mindspring - about two years before their merger. Prior to the merger I was in love with my ISP. My download speeds consistently exceeded 1.5 Mbps, and my connection ran stable day in and day out. After the merger, I noticed that my speeds slowly decreased over time, but they were still manageable.
Everything stayed in check until about 1 year ago when my severice became intermittent and was down for one to two days here and there. I never complained because when the service was working it was great. Then, about a month ago, the s%*t hit the fan. I discoverd that my service was out yet again one Tuesday evening after work. By the next evening, my service was still dead, but I also noticed problems on my telephone line, so I place a call to my local telco. That weekend my telco came out re-ran my wiring and fixed the phone problems, but I still did not have my dsl connection. I placed a call to Earthlink tech support, spent an hour and a half on line answering the same questions over and over, and finally opened a trouble ticket. A dsl tech was on his way sometime the following Tuesday.
Tuesday arrives and by the luck of the draw, it was tech same tech who installed my service the first time around. After a confused start he finally figured out that based on the installation, when my telco re-ran my wiring the line that my dsl was on was still not connected to the pole from my nid. So, the dls tech re-worked the wiring back out to the nid and said that a ticket with my telco would be opened so that the dsl line would be reconnected to the pole. Before he left I asked if anyone needed to be home for this to happen since I had to miss work for this service call. His answer - NO.
Three days later,the weekend now, I still did not have any dls service so I called Earthlink back. Once again, I was placed on hold, in queue for a lengthy amount of time. When the support tech finally came on line I found out that my trouble ticket was closed because my telco could not get to my nid since my gate was locked. So, here I was no service, still, and no phone call when they ever so kindly closed my trouble ticket. I asked why I wasn't informed that someone needed to be home when I told support six time already that I needed to be home for anyone to access the back of my house, especially when their dsl tech said that I would not have to be on-site. He couldn't answer that question, but he could open a new trouble ticket to get everything resolved. Now we were battling to find a time convenient for me to get my telco back to the house, as long as it was Monday-Friday from 8-4, which did not work well with my business schedule for quite some time. I asked for a Saturday date, but unfortunately, they could get get my telco to dispatch one of their techs on a Saturday. I told Earthlink that my telco dispatched one of their techs to my house the previus Saturday, so I knew that it could happen. Finally Earthlink asked me to contack my telco to see if I could get them to come out since the telco was not being cooperative with them. We ended the call without a definite resolution, and the burden to have eveything fixed thrown on my shoulders.
After using the rest of the weekend to calm down, I decided that I had enough with Earthlink and that I was going to cancel my service. After work, two weeks after I first lost service, I called to cancel my account. Somehow I was convinced that they would resolve the issue, so I gave them one final chance to make eveything better. Once again I was transferred to their highest level of support to resolve my issue, and once again I was faced with trying to get my telco out to my house. When I talked with support that evening there were long wait times for Covad so I was offered a direct number that I could call later. I asked for the number and to be placed on hold for ten minutes to see if we could get through. I was immediately placed on hold without recieveing the number. Fourty minutes later, without hearing back from support, I hung up. Keep in mind that it was closing in on 11pm eastern time and my call started at 8pm.
By the end of the week I decided enough was enough and I called Earthlink's corporate number to speak with someone in consumer relations. We called each other back and forth over a two hour period. I explained to her that right now Earthlink's dsl techs cannot do anything else, my telco has to come out to my house to connect my dsl line to the pole. I tore into her and ultimately felt that I should apologize, afterall, it was not her fault that I was having this problem. By the end of the day I found out that everything was finally going to be resolved the following Monday.
Monday comes around and I am excited to get his whole ordeal over with. early that morning there was a knock at the door. I opened it and to my suprise and disgust, it was Covad ... not my telco. Now the same tired conversation once again. We have to get a trouble ticket opened with your telco ... blah ... blah ... blah. I thanked the man for coming out and told him not to bother opening the ticket because I was canceling my account with Earthlink.
The rest of my Monday afternoon was spent on the telephone getting Earthlink out of my life and signing up for dial-up service until my line was released from Earthlink to get new dsl. It appears that idiots work at all levels in Earthlink's organization. No matter how specific you get with them, you always get the same result.
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