 Review by signmeuptoo 
UPDATED: 323 days ago
member for 6.6 years, 3077 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Ithaca,Tompkins,NY
 $42 per month
 about 30 days
 "Good speeds most of the time (2MbtDn/384KbtUp) Major Company & the benefits of being with one without being like a major cable.."
 "No Tech support except between 9AM-4PM in my area! Union workers with a Union attitude, as well, YUCH!"
 "A breath of fresh air after my ELNK/Verizon/Genuity DSL Horror story. One of the best out there!"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I have been with Earthlink since around, err... 1993(?) Via Dialup. Back in early fall, 200,1 I orderd DSL BBD from them and it was to run through Verizon Ex GTE lines/Genuity Routers. Verizon was, and still is, in my opinion one major piece of work (read that as very bad). The coordination of setting up my lines took over 45 days! Then my hardware never arrived. In fact, it took MORE THAN 70 Weeks for me to get my hardware. I only GOT the hardware after literally 40-50 telephone calls, seven of them with supervisors. It took an "executive relations officer" to fix things, and at that, I had to talk to him 3 times over a period of 16 days before he finally got pissed and forced the order through somehow.
For brevity I am skipping my billing horror story which is worse!
Well, things worked after I was up and running, and then, after only 3 weeks my DSL gateway box died on me! They sent me a replacement, but it took 2 weeks or so, and it wasn't packed in the box, it was just thrown in it with no packing, no instructions, no cables, no adapters, nothing. I got an adapter and tried to get it to work.
After a dozen calls with tech support agents (yes, upper tiers) I gave up and DEMANDED, by SCREAMING, that I wanted things fix once and for all or all sorts of hellfire and all (you know the drill, heh heh)...
They sent out a new one, but it took 3.5 weeks to get to me. It worked, but it was a sucky model, forget which one. Then I discovered, with some help of an agent, that the second one, although it was used and banged up, would be better and all that was needed was a telephone line 1 to line 2 exchanger. GEEZE!!!
Anyway, only days later they cancled my DSL service, can you believe it!? But they offered to put me on Time-Warner Cable/Earthlink Broadband. I turned green. Because I care about my email address a lot I finally agreed and I had DSL service until the cable went on.
Well, they still screwed up where I lived (they had me living in a city over 150 miles away), my email addresses, my billing information.
After about 6 more calls things smoothed out and, other than this last 3 weeks, things have been wall to wall great 97% of the time. 2.8 % of the rest has been minor slow burps and all. Now things have been really flacky at night, but I understand that they are working on my node and the area, so I am cooling my heels.
I highly recommend Earthlink/Time-Warner Cable Broadband. I have been seeing speeds of around 1.97 - 2.2 Mbit Down/340 - 370 Kbit Up, reasonable latencies around 65mSec +/-- to DSLR from here near Cornell.
News Servers are a little bit better, but still leave some to be desired. Customer support pages and the no-nonsense Personal Start Page with added Local Time-Warner buuilt in links is a nice effort.
Email works reliably but the Spam system doesn't do so well so I use a spam killer locally.
The price is fair.
Earthlink Customer Service is there at night but the Time-Warner People go home at 4PM so I had to give a lower rating there.
If you look close enough, ELNK Cable BBND can look just a little bit better than Road Runner, who shares the system and partly runs things.
Good luck to you!
UPDATE:
It is now quite a while since I originally ordered broadband from ELNK as DSL from Verizon. It was so terrible an experience that I still knash my teeth when I recall the treatment that I got. 6 months of little to no service and absolutely abyssmal service.
Well, since getting online through Time-Warner Cable/Earthlink, my online life has improved to where I have sanity again. If I ever loose this service I will be really bummed out. Fact is that this service is one of the best, for the most part. I still wish that I had DSL (if I could have it, and have it at as high a speed, so that I could be more secure).
However I have changed my scoring to reflect current issues:
I have dropped the tech support grade from 3 (average) to 2. I did this because of where I live and how ELNK and Time-Warner treat me at night, when I am usually around to get support. There is no support at night for me and it takes usually anywhere from calling 3 different phone numbers to 6 or more to get to who I need, only to find that they are not available except from 10 AM or much later until about 4 or 5 PM. That is pitiful. Cost cutting is customer and employee cutting, both loose an enterprise business, they just do. I still partially blame the union here in town, for I have heard that it has proven to be the cause of a lot of problems in how customers get service treatment.
I don't care if you union brothers blow your top at me, I used to be in the IBEW and all it did to me is put me out on the street, with the brothers laughing at me. They hated me because I worked as hard as I could and that raised the bar and they hated me for it. Screw the IBEW and all in it, I hate them with a passion.
Now, I did raise the servies score to 5, best, from 4, though I do think that they, and all ISPs should be doing much much more. I did the score change because Earthlink is trying to earn my money and trying to be good to me now, I didn't see that before. I wanted the total score to stay the same, so there are my changes. They are at least making some attempt at innovating...
MY ADVICE?
Get Earthlink Broadband cable and at least try it. There is usually no risk, you can dump them if you are not happy, but beware that if you dump them, then you have to pay for the next install. We are getting 3 Mb down (mega-bit, not to be confused with MB, mega Byte based upon 8 bits per) and 384 Kb up. I am hoping that the up speed is improved within 6 months or so, and that within 2 years our download goes to at least 5/6 Mb down. In Europe and Asia they are so way ahead of us that it is shameful.
One other note is that the anti-spam efforts have worked with mixed results, not so good as I would want.
As far as uptime, there are indeed times when the system is down, but that has mostly been a local issue, and the local reps are honest and open about what is going on, which impresses me, it makes me feel that they are treating me like a intelliget adult who deserves the information.
Thank you Earthlink for moving me to BBD cable from stinking Verizon DSL, and thank you even more, Time-Warner/RoadRunner for working hard to earn respect.
I am happy, like after I've had a decent steak, not a steak from Ruth's or what have you, but still...
UPDATE:
Time changes so many things, and adds to a soul's perspective. I am glad I am no longer with Earthlink, it is as simple as that. The company is divesting in America, treating their people like dirt, and the exectuves are gutting what was once a good company. This is so typical of corporate idiots. Sadly, they run our country, these corporate idiots.
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