Review by shucky 
UPDATED: 261 days ago
member for 7.6 years, 139 visits, last login: 156 days ago
 Hacienda Heights,Los Angeles,CA
 $62 per month
 about 8 days
 Verizon (ex GTE)
 "Awesome speed, flawless connection reliability."
 "Webmail better now, but tech support has been suffering."
 "Still better for now, but looking out for another ISP."
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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On the day everything was supposed to be hooked up, they called me and said that it would be delayed 3 more days (man Verizon sucks), but it was working the next day. In effect, my service was turned on 2 days early, but a day late. In the past couple months, I've had service crash not once. I always test in the neighborhood of 735/137, and that's on a 768/128 Verizon line!!! W2K tells me I'm connected to the network at 864k!!! Pings to my favorite gaming servers go down to 20 sometimes, and are usually at or below 40. It stays this good 24/7. I very rarely experience web congestion, something I encountered regularly with every prior ISP. Everyone in Hacienda Heights that is struggling with cable should just get DSLExtreme. I had @Home and AOL DSL before this, and, to make a LONG story short, STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM AOL. PERIOD. Although, I did keep both the modems AOL sent me, and they both work quite well with DSLExtreme. No need to run any resource sapping connection software, as you are given a static IP. It's not much different than a LAN connection, and windows recognizes it as such. Simplicity = stability.
I've been running a CS server (something impossible when I had cable), and have found that, on my current 128k/up line, I can only sustain 4 people on my server at any one time, plus myself on my LAN. So theoretically the increased bandwidth will be able to sustain 12 people, plus myself on the LAN, making for a better game of CS. I'll report on that when I upgrade my service.
2/16/02 - After initially rejecting my order twice, my order for silver plus service (1500/384) service finally was accepted by Verizon. All I can say now is that my DSL now is positively AWESOME. Phenomenal speed. Tests about 1415 down/380 up, regardless of time of day. I downloaded a 20MB driver file in less than 2 minutes today, at about 170KB/sec. Pings are still great, as always. Although $80 a month is alot, I'm getting alot for my money. Did I mention I have no car/life? My home connection performs better than that of the internet cafe near my house.
3/18/03 - On February 28th, I called and told them I moved, they informed me that my service would be disconnected at my old residence on the 7th and I would be reconnected at my new address on the 14th. Bummer, I thought I was looking at 2 weeks of dial-up. Bummer. On the 8th, I decided to plug in my modem just to see if I'd get a connection - BINGO!!! My DSL was connected 6 days early. However, I was paying for the 1500/384 verizon plan, but was only getting 370/384 test speeds. I had this same problem at my old house, which is only two blocks down the street. My house has a mix of old and new wiring, and I suspected the old wiring as the culprit. Instead of calling Verizon and paying $200+ to install a separate phone jack, I got a DSL Splitter NID to replace the NID box on the outside of my house (bought it off of eBay for $5), and rewired one of the newer phone jacks in my house for just the DSL line. Fixed all my problems, I'm now getting a consistent 1400k+ download speed, just like my old house, despite the fact that I'm almost 13,000 feet from my CO, as reported by a Verizon tech.
I'll also add that the Verizon tech, on a three way call with a DSL Extreme tech, didn't diagnose my problem, luckily I had been through this before and knew what to do. He was suggesting that maybe my distance was a factor, and that 1500k download would probably not be available to me, both the techs had decided that I should go with a lower-speed plan - I told them I'd try replacing my NID first, to see if that would help. They still tried to convince me to downgrade my plan, I said I'd get back to them later. He is probably the first techie I've talked to from DSL Extreme that didn't completely know what he was talking about. Verizon quoted me $60 just to replace the NID with the DSL specific model I bought off eBay ($40 visitation fee + $20 per 15 minutes of labor), I said screw that, I'll save money and just do it myself. It only took me about an hour. Anyone that has an older house with older wiring, and is experiencing speed and/or connection problems, I would suggest getting an external DSL Splitter and rewiring your box outside. With the splitter in place and the DSL isolated to a specific phone jack with good wire, you do not need individual filters installed on every phone jack in the house. I basically spent $5 plus an hour of my time to fix my DSL. I'm kinda mad that I was told to downgrade, especially since DSL works to 16,000+ feet. Had I not been through this before, I'd be unhappily settling for way poorer speeds. I expected DSL Extreme's usually knowledgeable tech support to suggest rewiring before suggesting a cheaper package. Overall though, I am happy with my DSL service, and the dial-up I used from DSL Extreme was better than any dial-up I've had before. I would still recommend them to anyone looking for DSL.
Update 6/28/08:
Webmail is horrible. I regularly experience slow load times. Interface is OK, but doesn't always work well with FireFox. I sent an e-mail using the online contact page letting them know that I regularly experience problems with webmail load times. Got a call back from a tech who wanted to try and troubleshoot my DSL connection. I insisted it wasn't my DSL connection, as the webmail is slow everywhere I go.. I let him know that I do this kind of thing for a living as I am in I.T., still wanted to troubleshoot my connection, which I wouldn't do because I don't have time to patronize stuff like that. Not his fault though, dude was just doing his job, which is understandable. Ultimately, the best they could do was suggest I use Outlook. Which I promptly explained would be a nightmare as I don't use just one device to access my mail (cell phone, laptop, desktop, etc.) and POP3 is pretty limited in that respect.
Service is still rock solid, though. I can't say I've been 100% satisfied with everything else, but in 5+ years of service (I can't even remember how long) I've never had a service outage due to them. Only time my service went down, someone from Verizon bumped a card down at the CO. Recently moved, and have Qwest at the new place, and service went out for 1 night after the first month. Speed is excellent as well, although that's ultimately decided by your distance to the CO. I should also add that Verizon had discontinued the 3mb connection in my area, and no longer offers that to anyone in my neighborhood, and I was going to be forced to downgrade to 1.5mb. However, I called DSL Extreme and after they spoke with Verizon, they were able to keep me at the faster rate. Pay attention ISP's, that's customer service.
Basically, I would still recommend DSL Extreme in a heartbeat. Now if they could only fix the webmail...
Update 10/15/08
Switch to gMail was a headache. Changed my password per the received email, was locked out of my account for a couple of days. The best excuse I was given was more or less "oops." That was a couple of months ago. Now, gMail is up and running 100%. Works more or less OK. Except for the fact that I started using Outlook per their recommendation, which is not a big deal except for the fact that I was "enlightened" that I should use IMAP instead of POP. Yes, but unfortunately, in this MS dominant world, Outlook prefers POP. Which I can deal with the inconvenience of the transition, except for the fact that NOWHERE in their FAQs does it recommend IMAP over POP. And I wouldn't even bother posting this, except for the fact that the tech support person that assisted me (fortunately, they were stateside, I believe) gave me the impression that I should've known the best way to interface my devices with their mail, kinda like it was a "surprise" that I was having issues. After waiting a LONG time for a chat session (I thought the benefit of online chat was speed?) the person I connected to was kinda smug, and seemed more like it was not their problem that I was experiencing difficulties, like I should have known the best way to deal with this transition. Granted, I understand that "chat" sessions are subject to a certain degree of informality by common usage, but anytime you see three periods (i.e. "OK...") it is generally considered rude, and conveys a certain sense of impatience and arrogance. Pardon my hyper-sensitivity. And I'm sure their people dealt with a good deal of unhappy customers regarding the inconvenience of the transition, and were probably operating at their tolerance levels. I will add that in the past I have, for the most part, received friendly and more-or-less knowledgeable assistance, but this time I was left frustrated. Ultimately, however, my e-mail works now. I will also add that I still have yet to encounter problems with the DSL connection itself, after quite a few years of service. Additionally, I did not choose DSL Extreme for my new residence, but still maintain my account at my prior residence. But unfortunately, in this "Day and Age," the best I should probably hope for is an 8X% positive rating.
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