Review by ominae 
UPDATED: 2.2 years ago
member for 6.5 years, 846 visits, last login: 15 days ago
 Columbus,Franklin,OH
 $44 per month
 about 5 days
 "consistent service and speed"
 "overpriced, first tier support is no support at all"
 "good deal at first, but not so much anymore"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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i've had roadrunner through insight communications for a few years now. i called on a thursday and set up an appointment for the following tuesday between 8am and noon. the tech showed up at 8:10, the service was up and running by 8:20. everything was good (so far). a few days later i came home from work and noticed i had no service. i called insight, went through the menu options for support and got a busy signal. called again, same results. i find it very strange that you could get a busy signal at 5:30 on a weekday (if not a live rep then at least let me listen to hold music until someone is available). finally got to someone saturday morning who took me through some basic troubleshooting and got my connection back. problem resumed later that evening, but i was left helpless since insight didn't (and still doesn't) have 24/7 tech support. tried sunday morning, god rested on the seventh day and so does insight. finally monday i spoke to a tech support rep who directed me to an 800# where they had a greater technical knowledge. got my service up and running again. a few days later same problem occured, called insight who said they would dispatch a tech. tech shows up monday as promised, replaces old com21 doxport modem with new arris modem. aside from the early hassle in getting the service going i am almost satisfied. great speed (2755dn/347up) but i'd kill for more upload since i'm a big online gamer. no outages even during major storms. first tier support is useless if you can't fix the problem by power-cycling the modem. they won't even discuss speed (fear of being sued for false advertising?). i'd keep the 800# for the second tier support techs. my greatest area of concern is price. where i live insight is the only option. they charge 54.95/mo for roadrunner alone, 44.95 if you get their classic cable tv service (everything you can get without the set top box). this blows because to get internet and cable tv you pay $80/mo (44.95 internet and 24.95 cable tv plus various taxes and fees). WOW has been offering cable and internet for $50 for over a year now and time warner is now offering the same roadrunner and cable tv for 44.95 to compete. problem is i can't get anything other than insight where i live (apartment) so they've got me by the short and curlies.
in summary: great connection once the bugs are worked out, incredibly consistent, install tech are prompt, tech support is great once you get past the local office to the second tier support, but if you can get WOW instead you can save $25-30 bucks a month and get the exact same thing.
UPDATE: I moved so I decided to update this review. I neglected to call to have my service transferred before I moved (as it turns out, the gods were smiling upon my ignorance). I moved over the weekend and was about to call to have my service transferred. I came home Tuesday and a sales rep from Insight was in my neighborhood going door to door. It turns out Insight had a promo good for a year offering internet and digital cable (with their new DVR) for $65 a month. I called Insight to see if I could get the new offer (instead of $80 for internet and classic cable w/o DVR) and was informed that offer is for new customers only. The sales rep then advised me to cancel my service at my old address and he would place an order for new service at my new address. I did, and the following Saturday a gentleman showed up to connect my new, cheaper service. I'm happy with the price break but I have a few complaints:
- Loyalty is dead. Why do new customers get a better deal than what is offered to long term, paying consumers? I have a buddy using Time Warner and they give him the newer promo's rather than upset a paying customer, but then Insight doesn't have a WOW to compete with. I know SBC is a competitor, but assuming you can get DSL it's still 34.99 (after the 6 month 21.99 promo) for internet and another $20 for the "required" phone that I don't need. Factor in the 1 year contract and the fact that I still have to pay for cable/satellite TV and DSL is not a viable alternative.
- How long do I have to wait until Insight decides to join the 21st century? 3000/384 is pathetic, even for RR. My aforementioned buddy at least gets 5000/512 from TW. It's nothing to brag about but at least it's a (very small) step in the right direction. How about a 5000/1000 tier? Whenever I hear about some ISP offering a new higher speed I get more annoyed. Who do I have to kill/hold hostage/sleep with to get true high speed internet at a reasonable cost?
- Just remembered I have to email everyone I know to tell them my new email address.
Overall I have mixed feelings and have updated the ratings above to reflect that fact. As far as the cable TV, I am greatly enjoying the lower total cost and the DVR (especially during the football season, no more waiting for the instant replay). But I am becoming more and more frustrated with the internet offering from Insight. Same old speed, same old price [$54.95 if you only want to get "high-speed" (read that as sarcastically as possible) internet]. RR has completely lost it's edge in the ISP game.
UPDATE #2: Insight notified me a couple of months ago that they were upping the speeds to 5000/512 for my area. The good news is the price stays the same and i'm still on the promo rate even though it's been over a year. The bad news is that i'm not seeing much of an increase. My speed test results ranged from decent to miserable. I called insight, the first tech came out, cut out some unnecessary cable and everything tested okay but still not what i was expecting (average between 3.2/3.3 down and 330/350 up). Went about a month without incident then started getting horrible latency (problem occurred several times a day, different times). Called again, second tech came out and looked everything over, couldn't find a problem, advised could be weather related, wiring issue or some technical problem insight was suffering at the time. person who answered my call and scheduled the appointment said i was getting higher latency, weak signal and lower speed. advised tech of this (don't they have record of this when they are dispatched?), he did a bunch of talking like he was trying to get out of doing any real work (it was a late appointment, arrived about 5:15pm so maybe he just wanted to get home). asked if he would be able to move the modem or replace the line since he suggested it may be a wiring problem. don't know what happened next (conversation got a little wierd) but he ended up saying that it wouldn't make much difference since he couldn't replace all of the wiring (i'm in a townhome, the cable comes in one one side of the building and has to go through four other homes before it reaches mine) and then left. after that i took a three for piece of cable, my modem, router and some ethernet cables from upstairs where they were previously down to the basement and connected everything, effectively bypassing about 25 feet of cable. haven't had the latency issue since, although i'm still getting less speed than i think i should be getting. i average about 3800/400, which is about 20% less speed than advertised, my friends and relatives on roadrunner are getting on average 90-95% of their advertised speed. i think this is definitely a wiring issue but i've been unsuccessful in trying to get insight to work with the management company to get the wiring inside the building replaced. so other than that, it's been about the same. i'm not changing anything as far as my ratings (speed increased but price is still the same, not holding the wiring issue against them). i'm going to be moving into a newer place (still insight) soon so we'll see how it goes.
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Update #3:
Still on Insight (Roadrunner), speeds have increased to 5000/512, price remains the same. Haven't had any problems since I rearranged my network, and things are running about as well as I expect at this address. My move got delayed so I'm still with Insight.
Overall it's not too bad on the internet side, but the cable side is a mixed bag. On the one hand, Insight has the Big Ten Network, so I can watch the Buckeye games on Saturday afternoons. On the other, I got one of the first generation DVR's (a single tuner model). I can swap it for a dual tuner unit (so I can watch TV while I record a different channel) for the same price but then I lose the deal I'm getting. Seems Insight signed me up for a one year deal at $70/month, but if I swap the DVR for a better one I lost the deal and my bill goes up approximately $10/month. Interestingly, the increase has nothing to do with the price of the DVR, which remains $12.95, but the price of the programming changes. I believe the layman's phrase for this is "that sucks". They remain steadfast in their denial of promo pricing (of which I am notified by a flyer hanging from my door almost monthly) if you are not a "new customer". This policy makes me want to become a "former customer", but alas, there is no suitable competition for us lowly apartment dwellers. DSL is the only other option, but speeds barely reach the advertised 3/512 via AT&T's remote terminal, according to my neighbors. The 6/768 option isn't possible where we live, you never reach those speeds.
And so I pass the days dogged by jealous thoughts of those wacky Frenchmen, who, according to BBR's front page, seem to have surrendered themselves into broadband utopia. Great. Save the world from tyranny's grasp and all you get is mediocre, overpriced internet...
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