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Review by MIA_Dogs 
UPDATED: 1.4 years ago
member for 2.5 years, 91 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
 Miami,Miami-Dade,FL
 $69 per month (12 month contract)
 about 60 days
 BellSouth
 "Good price for Home Phone & DSL Service"
 "Outsourced tech support can't help for anything but the simplest issues."
 "Be very careful about entering a contract with Earthlink. The risk is not worth the small amount you are saving in my opinion."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
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We were using Bellsouth phone service with their DSL 3.0 down and never had any major issues. When Earthlink offered Home Phone & DSL service at a higher download speed (up to 8.0 Mb/s) and for slightly less per month we decided to go for it. The first thing that should have caught our attention was the 12 month contract. It's a good way yo tie you into the service by hanging an expensive ETF over your head.
The problems began immediately after we switched. We couldn't get a connection at 8 or 6 Mb/s, understandable since we can't make them move their CO closer to us so we were reprovisioned to 3.0 and although we were getting a connection it was unstable. Still we spent countless hours on the phone with their worthless outsourced tech support (they are Filipino or Indian - I'm not being prejudiced against these cultures, but the language barrier is very real sometimes and their technical expertise is questionable as well as the case logging and escalation procedure). We went past the 30 day window before we were tied into the contract, but by then we were having techs dispatched to our house to check out the lines. Finally we were able to get a stable connection after a Bellsouth tech was dispatched to our house. I'm not completely sure what was done, but it worked.
Fast forward to a few months ago, we had a heavy rain and started having DSL sync issues again. I mentioned tech support being ineffective. I was a Tech Support Representative for over 5 years and when I'm dealing with tech support I know there are hoops to jump through as far as basic troubleshooting goes, but either they don't take proper notes or they are absolute script monkeys who are there to waste your time on the phone. They seem to not understand the meaning "intermittent". They didn't know what to look for beyond the most elementary issues. If hey were going to bother giving me a case number and taking notes about my problem they really should have thought about skipping some of the troubleshooting steps they are programmed to spew out.
My particular problem was never resolved, but there were about 9 case numbers for it. This is important because of what happened later. After they found out rolling out Covad techs to check for any issues in my house was not going anywhere, they sent a couple of Bellsouth techs to look for a line problem. Since Bellsouth is only required by law to provide a working phone line, their tests went through without a hitch and it didn't take long for them to determine my lines were Technically Not Feasible or TNF. After that there was no more possibility of getting this checked out by Bellsouth. Since Earthlink tech support wouldn't give a good explanation of the problem when calling for the Bellsouth techs, I'm pretty sure they screwed this up for me. Since Earthlink support saw so many case numbers opened up for my DSL line they even started giving me their "best effort service" shpiel. That basically meant "we can't provide any more support, you might as well quit trying to have your problem resolved".
I learned my lesson that when you deal with a company like Earthlink you better hope you never have a problem or else you can almost be sure it will be like pulling teeth to get your service back up. I'm pretty sure Earthlink is going to be bought out or will fold within a couple of years due to the way their service has gone to hell. I really wish we could have made it work with them.
Oh and the DSL sync issue, it was never resolved, but I did notice a workaround and this was due to Earthlink support shutting down the "phone port" of my service. When the "phone port" was locked - meaning my phone service was completely shut off - my DSL issue went away. I mentioned this many times to a lot of their phone support reps and only one of them even hinted that this should be followed up. As a tech person I would have seen this as a very important clue towards resolving this issue. Earthlink tech support lacked any kind of escalation procedure or just lacked the brains to resolve this problem. I'd like to add that I was talking to "TRON" or the third level support department. I believe this was as high a level of support they offered. My contract ended thankfully and now we are getting set up for Bellsouth again. Bellsouth is actually pretty competitive now and we're getting basically the same service for a little bit less than what we payed at Earthlink with no contract. If I have a problem that they can't fix at least I know I can just say forget it and get cable.
Followup comments:  MIA_Dogs
join:2007-05-08
Miami, FL
 ·EarthLink
| One thing I didn't mention I'd like to thank dslreports.com for providing so much knowledge and even tech support once upon a time. When I had my initial problems, an Earthlink tech who posted in the Earthlink forums here was the guy who was able to resolve the issue by opening a Bellsouth ticket with proper notes. By the time I had my latest problems, Earthlink had gotten rid of these guys. I had to rely fully on their outsourced phone support and coincidentally my issue was never resolved. | |
| Dust_er
join:2002-11-16
San Marcos, CA
1 edit | Agree with you 100% word to word! I just moved to a new location so I contacted Earthlink and they moved service to new home. They automatically put me back in new contract for 1 more year. Then they switched my 6.0Mbps DSL to 1.5Mbps with out notifying me. Now my connection is 320/320. I called tech support so many times but always end up with the same problem. I've never had to manually configure anything in my Network properties (IP, DNS, gateway, etc...), until now. I have to set those settings to specific number in order to go online with very slow speed. I can't cancel because of the early cancellation fee. I've never filed/sued no one before, but EL is making me to have that kind of thought lately.
PS the speed is 320/320 when tested on dslreports but the real download speed with I download something is 30K - 40K max. | |
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