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Review by oldblargger 
UPDATED: 50 days ago
member for 50 days, 3 visits, last login: 32 days ago
 Seattle,King,WA
 $100 per month
 "Helpful to have additional technical support, not always have to talk to Qwest"
 "Have gone downhill since changed to Avvanta"
 "Not the same company as Blarg, no longer worth the premium they demand"
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I have been with Avvanta since their early days as Blarg. They used to be a premium ISP -- one run by sysadmins who knew their stuff -- but I have watched their service steadily go downhill since the name change.
For years, things have been getting worse with Avvanta, with outages, slow speeds, and other annoyances. The last straw was when I noticed my speeds on a 7Mb premium line were down around 2Mb. They did not notice the problem -- I had to report it -- and they were unable to resolve it. I finally just dropped Avvanta and switched to Comcast.
Avvanta used to be good enough to deserve the premium they charge, but no longer. I cannot recommend Avvanta/Blarg anymore.
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Review by bruxx
UPDATED: 2.8 years ago
member for 6.7 years, 21 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
Yakima,Yakima,WA
$65 per month
 about 5 days
 Qwest
"Quality, Connectivity, Support"
"Qwest as carrier, need faster speeds."
"Excellent DSL provider, highly recommended."
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I have had few successes out trying numerous ISP's in my area. I had been using Charter and was at a point of extreme frustration, high latency, inconsistent speeds, random drops of service with no explanation, virtually no support and staff who out right lied about technology I work with daily. I had tried other DSL providers with disappointing results.
I ran across Blarg (Now Aavanta) and upon contacting them I was pleasantly surprised, I called for information on their services and found I was speaking to a tech who knew what they were talking about, and they were not arrogant or condescending about it! They were helpful and pleasant to talk with, once I signed up the kit with modem arrived within three days, and the carrier had the circuit lit up I was on-line in a matter of minutes.
I've been with Aavanta for almost a year now, the service is excellent. Speeds are stable and with low latency, I have their fastest service available in my area at 7Mbs/896Kbs for $26.95 per month, plus QWEST circuit rates at $38.00 per month.
The only negative points I will make against Aavanta is I hope to see higher speeds offered in my area and perhaps a carrier other than QWEST.
Lastly, during the wind storms in the Puget Sound region on 12/14/06 Aavanta went dark for about 3 and a half days, although I was not directly affected by the storms the lack of Internet service was inconvenient. I understand that Aavanta has implemented an emergency NOC in a different geographic region to avoid that problem in the future.
I highly recommend Aavanta if you can get them in your area.
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Review by bruxx
Posted: 2.8 years ago
member for 6.7 years, 21 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
Yakima,Yakima,WA
$65 per month
about 5 days
Qwest
"Excellent service, Consistant connection, Low latency"
"QWEST as carrier, Need more speed options"
"Good DSL provider, Highly recommend them."
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I've had many experiences with DSL and cable providers and most have left me disappointed and frustrated. When I discovered Blarg (Now Avvanta) it was a nice surprise. When I called asking for information I expected a sales person or phone tree but the phone was answered by a technician who not only answered my all of my questions but was pleasant to talk to and didn't try to baffle me with BS. He helped me through the specials that were being offered by QWEST and Avvanta, and he didn't' try to over sell me on services. I received the modem kit within 4 days, and after an initial problem with QWEST which Avvanta helped me work with them to resolve it, I was up and running after only 5 days.
Since using Avvanta for over a year now, I've had at least 8 down times. Three were due to problems with Avvanta, the rest were on QWEST's end. Most only lasted 5 - 45 minutes, but there several that lasted more than a day or two due to a fire and then faulty equipment all at QWEST's end. Each time this occurred when I contacted Avvanta they quickly identified if the problem was on their end or QWEST's and ether resolved it within a short time or assisted as best they could. The exception to this was during the outage on 12/14/06 when much of the Bellevue area was without power for almost 6 days, Avvanta was dark for 3 1/2 days before resuming service.
Great DSL provider, you will do a lot worse going with someone else.
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Review by Spyder550
Posted: 2.9 years ago
member for 2.9 years, 2 visits, last login: 2.9 years ago
Seattle,King,WA
Contract price not specified.
about 14 days
"Untill 12/14/2006 -- Great Uptime!"
"non-existent disaster recovery plans and communication"
"There are certainly worse providers out there"
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Pre-Sales:
Been so long (4.5 years), I forgot. But they had want I wanted, DSL/SPEED/Static IPs. So they get a 5 for having what I needed at the time I signed up and the benefit of the doubt.
Install Co-ordination:
This was average. It was about 2 weeks.
Connection Reliability:
Before 12/14/2006 they would have gotten a 5 star rating. But, considering they didn't bother to get online to let folks know how long they'd be down, they get a 4* rating.
Tech Support:
They have addressed my issues until 12/14/2006, but they were often kinda of snooty about it. So, they get an average rating for solving problems, but never beyond that.
Services:
Average for the cost.
Value for Money:
Currently, I am thinking about more cost effective options. Qwest, for example, has been great about notifying me of service upgrades that are free with my subscription. However, Blarg/Avvanta haven't never notified me about service changes at my current subscription rate. And after the 12/14-17/2006 down time with no communication, I am looking at my other options.
Followup comments:  jdmt
Premium
join:2002-05-06
Seattle, WA
| Avvanta is a Quality ISP I agree with bruxx that Blarg can't be beat. I suffered through the outage like everyone else and certainly it was painful, but my experiences with Blarg (Avvanta) have been too good over the last 7 years to consider changing for this one incident.
For a quality, local ISP, go with Avvanta. | |
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Review by K7AAY
Posted: 2.9 years ago
member for 2.9 years, 0 visits, last login: 2.9 years ago
Portland,Clackamas,OR
Contract price not specified.
Qwest
CLEC party: Qwest
"When they're open, tech support is good"
"Down, hard, since 12-14 with no explanation: No phone service even!"
"Looking for a new ISP"
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Been using Avvanta since they were Blarg.
On 12-14, their service went down, and have not come back up.
Not even an explanatory web page, which could easily be hosted elsewhere.
Their phones don't work, either.
I expect an ISP to be able to tell its customers when it's down for an extended time, and why. Redundancy and multi-homed connections is such a basic precept of the Internet that's it's a shock when an ISP fails to provide even basic service to its customers so dramatically.
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Review by kevinhutchin
UPDATED: 3.5 years ago
member for 8.5 years, 28 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
Bellingham,Whatcom,WA
$55 per month
about 14 days
Qwest
CLEC party: Qwest
"Most reliable ISP i've ever had"
"Not much storage space for basic residential e-mail accounts/personal webspace"
"Best value for the price of any broadband provider i've used in the past seven years"
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One year ago i was so fed up with Comcast cable broadband (formerly AT&T Broadband here in Bellingham, WA) we decided to switch to DSL. The package sold to us by Blarg in combination with Qwest is about the same price as what we paid for cable. Comcast was supposed to give 3Mbps but their connection was totally unreliable, disconnecting repeatedly all day long. Blarg is a 1.5Mbps down/ 768kbps up DSL service, and they *always* give us our advertised speed, and they have almost never disconnected. We have only had a few hours of service outage during our entire first year as customers. They are definitely the most reliable of any broadband ISP i've used in the past seven years. I've previously had Verizon in the state of Vermont, Adelphia in the state of Vermont, AT&T in the state of Washington, and Comcast in the state of Washington... none of those compare to the reliability of Blarg (with Qwest). None of them are as inexpensive as our package from Blarg+Qwest.
The monthly pricing is actually $21.95 for Blarg, and about $28 for Qwest service plus $5 for Qwest DSL modem rental, plus taxes. This comes to $55 plus taxes, roughly $60 altogether. This is almost the same as our former rates with Comcast.
The cable companies were theoretically faster (3Mbps instead of 1.5Mbps) but in reality, they sucked. The speed is useless if the connection keeps dying every few minutes in the middle of a download or the middle of an online game. With our Blarg service, i have never been disconnected in the middle of any activity, and i only know of two times during the entire past year when they had some technical issues which resulted in service outage of an hour or two. That's something like 99.99% reliability, which is why i am happy to be a loyal customer.
I'm afraid that regulatory changes are soon going to allow the companies like Qwest to start squeezing smaller ISP's such as Blarg and put them out of business. This will be terrible, because i don't really want to be exclusively a Qwest customer, i want to remain a Blarg customer. It will really suck if the companies like Qwest or Verizon manage to monopolize the broadband over phone lines in this region. The FCC is really harming competition by allowing these deregulatory moves to go forward, because we will be left with nothing but Qwest and Verizon, and all the smaller ISP businesses will be unable to afford the monopolistic/oligopolistic access.
Addendum May 20th 2006: After being their happy customer for over a year, i am informed that Blarg has changed their name to Avvanta. We had a major outage today when Global Crossing had a fiber cut between Seattle and Portland, affecting Qwest and MCI customers (our Avvanta service is via Qwest).
I have no major complaint about Avvanta because this was Global Crossing's problem, and this is only the second outage i've experienced in the fifteen months since i subscribed. The previous incident was also a weekend event, when there was a major distributed denial-of-service attack against Blarg servers, causing a couple hours of outage and some hours until total restoration. These are the only two times i have ever lost connectivity during my heavy daily usage of Blarg/Avvanta. This is wonderful compared to my previous crappy experience with Comcast Cable (formerly AT&T Broadband), which had aggravations literally daily and sometimes repeatedly during the course of a few hours. What a world of difference.
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 Review by dg3274
UPDATED: 5.7 years ago
member for 10.1 years, 2387 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Lynnwood,Snohomish,WA
$20 per month
Verizon (ex GTE)
"Fast, reliable connection with 0% packet loss, good ping times and unmetered transfer."
"Extreme amount of spam through Blarg, but their filters keep most of it away"
"Choose Blarg if you want a no-hassle, professional ISP."
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Blarg Online Services turned out to be my DSL refugee camp. I switched to them from another ISP who was giving me well below average service and refused to answer any emails regarding my disappointment.
When I called up Blarg they were ready to pull me out of the ditch and give me the kind of DSL service we all deserve. That's just what they did. I have the Bronze Plus package (768K/128k) from GTE and switching to Blarg was as easy as pie. They gave me a new circuit ID and DLCI and setup my email account instantly for use on their web mail site, www.blargmail.com. I then called GTE and gave them the new ID and DLCI. 2 business days later, my existing service was cut and I then called Blarg back and they turned up my new circuit within 5 minutes. The tech support guy seemed very knowledgeable and was right on the ball getting things up and working.
I've been using Blarg for almost a week now and the improvement from my previous ISP is incredible. I went from 10-12% packet loss on my line to 0%! Online gaming went from frustrating to fun. My speeds are now steady and strong with no bouncing around and I am definitely getting what I am paying for.
The only bad point I have is the $25 setup fee to get a static IP but it is well worth it in the end. I also had to pay a $35 fee to GTE for the ISP switch but that is no fault of Blarg's. They are also sticklers on user name and password restrictions but it is all in the name of security I guess. Blarg also only gives you one email address with the Bronze Plus package and it is $3 a month for each additional address. Wait... I take that back! I just called them and they said that was changed a few days ago. You now get 2 email addresses!
This ISP is definitely looking to make life better and as of right now I highly recommend them if you want a QUALITY ISP.
~David W. Gray
8/26/00
Blarg was down for about 24 hours from 8/24 to 8/25. I'm not positive whether it was them or GTE but for now I'll have to drop them one star for Connection Reliability. That's an unsatisfactory down-time for an always-on service.
8/27/00
Appears it was GTE. Other Blarg users were on at that time so I give Blarg back their one star!
10/03/00
Blarg just dropped their price from $24.95 to $20 a month. Now if they could just loose the $25 setup fee for a static IP!
11/06/02
I would just like to take the opportunity to say how pleased I am with Blarg as my ISP. I've been using their service now for over 2 years and they have been an outstanding service provider to date. The quality of service and support they offer are second to none! The only problem I see with Blarg at this time is their pricing structure. I would very much like to upgrade my service to a faster package but due to the way Blarg prices their services they have made that FAR from a reality. As time goes on and technology improves, the need for faster Internet access becomes a concern for a lot of us. When we look to our ISP and see that they have nothing left to offer (at a fair and reasonable price), it tends to make us loose hope and fear that there is nothing we can do. It’s certainly enough to make us start to look elsewhere for our broadband needs.
Blarg prides themselves on the level of service and support they offer and I don’t blame them one bit! But as time goes on I don’t think that is going to be enough to survive in the game of broadband. They most certainly need to keep that level where it is (I don’t think it gets much better!). However, I think that Blarg needs to become aware and realize that eventually quality is not going to cut if you can’t, in a competitive and consumer friendly nature, offer the quantity to go with it.
I can tell you one thing…. If Blarg’s quality of service and support were any less than it is today, I would’ve undoubtedly switched to another ISP by now.
02/23/04
Well, I up and left Blarg about 2 weeks ago. I decided to go with Speakeasy and their 3.0/768 package. A friend of mine has had Speakeasy for about 8 months and the quality of his service impressed me enough to make the switch. I was a little skeptical at first; going with a national ISP, but the change was well worth it in my opinion. I felt like I was trapped, with nowhere to go with Blarg. Their service offerings just could not compete with those at Speakeasy. To get any faster packages (than my 768/128) at Blarg would mean paying almost as much as I am now with Speakeasy, but only getting about half of the service and features I have now. Blarg has also been increasingly flooded with spam email lately and their filters (set on their maximum setting) were still letting more through then I felt like dealing with. Other than just wanting more than I was getting I have no other reasons for leaving Blarg. They are a fantastic ISP with excellent staff and near perfect quality of service. But like I said in a previous paragraph the year before last, "...Blarg needs to become aware and realize that eventually quality is not going to cut if you can't, in a competitive and consumer friendly nature, offer the quantity to go with it." However, I noticed that right after I made the switch that Blarg did some major reorganizing with their packages and pricing. Things look much more reasonable than they used to. I didn't notice this till after I had switched but I still have no regrets about switching because even the new pricing can't compete with what Speakeasy has to offer. So Blarg, I bid you farewell and thank you once again for the great service you provided me.
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Review by rhrob
Posted: 5.7 years ago
member for 5.7 years, 2 visits, last login: 5.7 years ago
Bellevue,King,WA
$48 per month (24 month contract)
Qwest
"Rock-solid ISP, No outages, Good/configurable spam filtering"
"None"
"Excellent, works well w/ QWEST"
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I've been a DSL customer for 2 years, and a Blarg customer for most of that. I have 640K (up) and 272K (down) speeds on a Cisco 678 modem, w/ 5 e-mail boxes and dynamic IP. QWEST now charges $28/mo, w/ Blarg DSL Standard for $20. I VPN to my employer w/out problems.
Blarg has even helped me through QWEST processes as well. Blarg proactively sent out notification about the new 1500K/894K Service from QWEST today. QWEST took my order, but failed to tell me that I would need to switch from CAP to DMT on my Cisco. Blarg told me about that and also recommended I download (not install) the update now so when my service is switched, I won't get stuck without the software I need to upgrade to DMT.
Blarg has a configurable spam filter as well. I can put my kids on e-mail without having to worry about countless inappropriate messages.
Blarg runs a tight shop and they know what they're doing. Very reliable service.
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Review by bdwinters
Posted: 5.8 years ago
member for 5.8 years, 0 visits, last login: 5.8 years ago
Vancouver,Clark,WA
Contract price not specified.
Qwest
CLEC party: Qwest
"Never got that far."
"No grasp of basic WA geography."
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When Qwest finally made DSL service available in my area, I wanted to sign up with Blarg because their SOHO packages are amazing and they have received great reviews. Three weeks later, it has all gone horribly wrong. This is partly Qwest's fault and partly Blarg's.
At www.qwest.com, under DSL ISPs, state of Washington, Blarg's entry says they serve "All cities". Since Vancouver is a city in Washington, then it should follow that can get service from Blarg in Vancouver. It wasn't until at least my fourth conversation with Qwest that Qwest figured out that Blarg doesn't provide service in Vancouver. This is after Qwest had two different work orders in to connect me with Blarg. It turns out that Blarg doesn't offer service outsite the greater Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia area. That is a far cry from "All cities".
Even though Blarg has no control over Qwest's web site, I hold them partly responsible. One of the first things Blarg wanted to know when signing me up for DSL service was where I live, i.e. Vancouver. So right from the start Blarg had the info they needed to realize that they can't provide me with DSL. Vancouver is the only major city in Washington west of the Cascades and south of the Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia area. Now granted, the people in Seattle often act like the rest of Washington doesn't exist, but I never realized that they genuinely don't know the rest of Washington exists! If you live in Washington, I think you should have a general idea where at least five cities are: Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Spokane, and Vancouver. When I called to Blarg to cancel my service the guy on the phone initially couldn't even tell north from south. "No, if you serve Seattle then Bellingham can't be the southern end of your service area. It's north of Seattle. .... OK, Olympia, alright, that is south of Seattle. Vancouver is a good 80 miles south of Olympia." At that point I'd just spent an hour on the phone with Qwest cancelling the MSN service I wasn't supposed to have, so I don't even have the energy to cry.
Other than having no idea where Vancouver is, Blarg seemed to be great, but I never got far enough to really find out.
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Review by sbakker
Posted: 5.8 years ago
member for 6.8 years, 35 visits, last login: 324 days ago
Bremerton,Kitsap,WA
$58 per month
about 7 days
Qwest
"Tech support, value"
"None so far"
"For the $30 I pay to Blarg I get great service, and a 8 IP subnet."
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Blarg tech support is always willing to be conferenced in on a tech support call to the telco to assist in getting service back faster. I have only lost connectivity twice and both times it was a bad card in teh DSLAM and both times Blarg had to explain that fact tot he telco tech support people.
I get Up to 640K up and up to 256K down the ability to run servers thanks to my 8 statis IP's and unmetered transfer. There are also a lot of other features such as DNS for 2 zones that I am currently not using.
I used to work part time for an ISP and I can honestly say Blarg is awesome!
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Avvanta Communications Corp
