Review by Mike Nagy 
Posted: 9.6 years ago
member for 9.6 years, 15 visits, last login: 7.6 years ago
 Manhattan Beach,Los Angeles,CA
 $49 per month (12 month contract)
 "Good tech support, fast speed, easy to set up."
 "Bad initial order stage."
 "A lot better than I thought it'd be."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
|
I live in Manhattan Beach, just south of the Los Angeles airport and north of Long Beach. Anyway, my story begins way back in the late days of November 1999. I ordered GTE's Bronze Plus package for 768 kilobits/sec or something like that for $49.99/month. At that time, they had an offer going for free installation, so when I ordered, I was at the end of a long cue and they told me to expect a phone call in late December/early January 2000. Months passed, and it was February when I called GTE and asked what the hell was going on. The person on the other end asked for my confirmation number.
"You guys didn't give me a confirmation number!"
"I'm sorry sir, but unless you give me your confirmation number I can't do anything."
So I asked about my last name, and that didn't turn up anything either. So I searched for another provider, fed up with GTE's conniving antics. I decided on MM Internet, and after placing my order, I was informed that the order couldn't go through because I had "an existing order with another ISP." So back to GTE I went, demanding to know what was going on. Sure enough, the gentleman I talked to found my account order and said that they were ready to provide service. By this time it was the middle of March, and the guy told me three to four weeks. So I waited, and finally on April 5, my installation kit came. The installation was quite painless; setting up the external modem to my NIC card and hooking up a DC converter and a phone cord to the back. All I had to do to the rest of the phones was plug a microfilter into each phone jack and plug the phone into the microfilter. So the "install date" (when they would set up their end to provide me service, as GTE Internet is my ISP) was set for April 11, and so I waited. But I still had no information on what I was supposed to do. On the 10th a CD came in the mail with the software and a nice instruction booklet that outlined the software installation. That went smoothly. But on the 11th, my modem needed to have the three lights on it illuminated, and I was only getting one. So I called tech support, and they asked me questions about my configuration, both hardware and software, and said that if it wasn't working in 36 hours to call them back. When I got home at 4:00 on the 12th, it still wasn't working, but they still had some time left so I didn't worry. Then at 4:30, I got a call from GTE technicians at my local CO saying that they couldn't fix the problem from their end and they were sending out a tech immediately to see if he could figure out what was going wrong. I was very impressed by their taking the initiative. After reading all the horror stories here on DSL Reports I was expecting much less. Ten minutes later my doorbell rang, and the tech inspected my wiring and found a digital signal filter on the line placed there by my houses' previous owners for God knows what. He cut that off but it still wasn't working. The modem was communicating with GTE but wasn't connecting or something. Only two of the three lights were on. So the guy brings a new modem in from his truck and it worked perfectly. So he took my old modem, packed his stuff and left, after only being at my house 45 minutes. So it was up and running, and I was finally free of the bonds of AOL.
The service has always been on so far in the week that I've had DSL and I am very happy with it. I live about 11,000 feet from my CO, and I was told to expect 50 KB/s because of my distance. But I've gotten much better than that on fast servers like Microsoft and Adobe. Off of Adobe I hit 85 KB/s while downloading Acrobat 4 and off Microsoft I hit 90 downloading Windows updates. I was pleasantly surprised to see those speeds.
The tech support that I got was very friendly after February 2000. They knew what they were doing and were quite helpful, and when a guy didn't know how to deal with my question he switched me over to someone who did. Like I said, after reading others' reviews in the past about how bad the tech support was, I was really impressed. And I never had to wait on hold for more than 5 minutes.
I gave the pre-sales info a 4 because there wasn't huge amounts of information on their website, but if I really wanted to know something, I could call and ask. Especially after February. I don't know, it seemed to me like they actually started caring around then.
Install coordination deserves a 3 because I was in the dark for three months not knowing anything, and they didn't call me or e-mail me or anything.
Reliability gets a 5 because it has worked 100% of the time. I've only had it for a week, but 100% is still 100%.
I don't use GTE's mail/news/etc so I didn't rate it.
Value for money is a 4 because there are a lot of other places out there that charge way more for less service. However, in nearby Redondo Beach, Pacific Bell offers service that is twice as fast, 1.5 Mb for the exact same price. Unfortunately for me, that telecommunications act isn't in effect yet and I couldn't buy their service. Several of my colleagues have it, however, and they are happy as clams. Anyway, GTE is overall not the best, but it's up there. After the initial setup hurdle, it was all downhill. I might not have addressed all of your concerns to your satisfaction, and if you have any questions about my experiences with GTE Internet, I'd be happy to answer them. E-mail me at managy1@yahoo.com.
I wish the rest of you out there good luck with your current/future DSL services.
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