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Review by doobo 
Posted: 9.9 years ago
member for 9.9 years, 0 visits, last login: 9.9 years ago
 Manchester,Hillsborough,NH
 Contract price not specified.
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings well below consensus)
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It was a sunny Fall day in October when a friend called and said "DSL is available in Manchester, NH from a company called Speakeasy.". I was excited because it is so difficult to log on to my dial up ISP. No the ISP was not the problem it was the idiotic Phone company (Bell Atlantic). I would dial the ISP and about forty percent of the time get an "All circuits are busy" message. I suppose I should have expected that after all it is the phone company and it is Bell Atlantic.
I logged on to the Speakeasy site at work to check my availability. Speakeasy showed that I could get a 784/384 connection at my address. I was skeptical but they assured me. Eventually Speakeasy e-mailed me the date for which the idiotic phone company (Bell Atlantic) would come out and install the loop. After waiting anxiously and lamenting the fact that I would have a super fast connection I received an e-mail from Speakeasy. Speakeasy informed me that Bell Atlantic had determined that I have a Copper/Fiber optic mix on my copper pair. Speakeasy said that this was not a problem because they could downgrade my connection service while upgrading my monthly fee, of course. I cancelled the order temporarily while determining if it was worth the higher monthly fee to get the lower quality connection. I eventually relented and agreed to get the 144k connection for $89.95 a month.
I contacted the speakeasy sales department to see what needed to be done with my second phone line. I was not sure if I should cancel it now or wait till after the install. the sales rep asked how many pairs of copper wire I had running into my apartment. "Why I have two pairs sir" I said. The salesman then informed me that since I had two pairs of copper wire and two phone numbers Covad would need to run more copper wire at an $80 an hour fee. Although the fee seemed reasonable. I doubted that the Covad people would be willing to run a new copper pair from the telephone junction box up sixteen stories to my apartment. The sales person then said I simply did not qualify for any DSL service. I told the sales person that I was willing to give up a phone number to free up a copper pair. He said that it did not matter I did not qualify. I generally live by the principle that most people are stupid and decided to get a second opinion from Covad. Covad set me straight and indicated that as long as I wanted to get rid of a phone number I would not need to have new copper pair installed.
The day of the line provisioning came and much to my surprise the phone company appeared to have done the work they needed to do. I called Covad to make sure and they assured me the line was all set. I invoked my principle of most people being basically stupid and called several times. Each time I got the same answer so I concluded that the laws of probability dictated that the line was ready for Covad and DSL.
I called speakeasy and they confirmed that the work that they needed to do on their end to get me the DSL service would be done on Friday 12/10/99. Saturday the person from Covad showed up and the install went smoothly. I had visions of fast downloads dancing in my head. I laughed and joked with the Covad installer and he said everything was all set, He just needed to get speakeasy to do their end to complete the install. I confidently assured him that speakeasy had done the work on their end on Friday 12/10/99. But he said that he could not ping their site. But that it is no problem it would take about an hour to finish up, after all speakeasy has twenty four hour tech support. The Covad installer stayed on hold for well over a half an hour and eventually was connected with a "technical support" person. Finally I heard the fateful words "You mean you have nobody there to provision the line". Yup, it turned out to be true. Although the installation took place on a Saturday, the people that actually know something at Speakeasy don't come in till Monday. So here I sit on Saturday unable to get my quick downloads all because Speakeasy is to incompetent to make sure that the lines are provisioned when they say they will. The Covad installer guy left and I figured I would call Speakeasy myself and see if anyone could possibly help me get my connection working. Of course I got the same brain dead responses. Basically Speakeasy does offer twenty four hour tech support but if you want to talk to someone with a brain its Monday thru Friday 9:00 to 5:00 (At least that's my theory it remains to be seen if I will be connected on Monday). So far speakeasy is rated below Bell Atlantic as far a customer service because ultimately they ended up dropping the ball.
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Speakeasy
