 Review by Selenia 
member for 6.6 years, 1900 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 2 years ago
 Lanesboro,Berkshire,MA
 $30 per month- (12 month contract)
 about 23 days "Stability has become good on its own, as long as you don't count speed consistency during the day" "Poor tech support, poor infrastructure that is apparently oversubscribed" "The only choice, which has me considering a wireless backhaul from where I am. If there is any alternative, consider it."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
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Update: Stability has improved to where I can game and stream reliably, but daytime speeds can be pitiful.
Update: The only thing good about this service(reliability) had gone to hell and even makes Hughesnet look appealing. I so want to stick it to Verizon, as they have stuck it to this town. Looking at expanding services to here of the WISP I help run, just to stop this abuse. Runarounds by Indians and useless service.
Update: I moved to Lanesborough, MA. Up here, Verizon is the only land-based broadband service. While I am
happy that I haven't been using AT&T EDGE as my main connection up here, that is about all I'm happy about.
The latency is much improved from when I tried them before in Pittsfield. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for Verizon even giving me my lousy 3 mbps. After massive tweaks, I got up to 2.5 on the best test servers. Most my neighbors, who don't tweak things, get under 1 mbit on their lucky days. I know some who don't even see 400 kbit.
Installation was atrocious, though not on my end. Kept ordering, not seeing live on promised date, called in to find they have no order on file(even though the modem arrived in 3 days after first order), rinse, repeat. After 3 cycles of this, we finally had a connection! I guess thank goodness for AT&T EDGE for keeping me online at home for that period of time. While I post frequently on wifi and at a friend's(who has TWC), I like having my workstations at home.
Tech support, while they didn't know jack and sometimes did even less, were very pleasant and English-speaking for all of the calls this time around. Same goes for the order center, as I was bounced back and forth so they could figure out why I wasn't live. As bad as this may sound, it gets them a slight bump up inl tech support score-I could understand them and they weren't rude, unlike times before when I used them as a backup connection in Pittsfield.
I am going to start doing this for all reviews-commenting on each score
Presales Information: Obvious fail here. I was supposed to be live at least a full 2 weeks before I was. Install date was way off. Claimed speed of even the 3/768 package is not met.
Install coordination: Just forgetting about an order being put in 3 times and sending a modem? Fail.
Connection Reliability: 100% uptime thus far, even during heavy storms we get up here. No complaints there.
Tech Support: They get some points for trying this time around, but with the expertise(or lack thereof) I've come to expect.
Services: Average score for offering basically what you'd expect from a typical ISP(rudimentary webmail, etc). Some may be useful for some people, but I don't see the need for any of it.
Value for money: I am paying almost as much for a connection that doesn't reach 3 mbit as I was for a 10 mbit pipe that exceeded that 10 with Powerboost. Even the price I was paying for 10 would be considered expensive by some. What can I say? Part of rural living.
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I have had them at my 2nd house for over 5 years, so thought it time to give my review. Connection is very stable. I have only ever had 3 issues with it in 5 years. 1 time(back when tech support was ok), it was simply a defective modem, for which they advance shipped me a new one with a prepaid package to ship the old one back.
My 2 more recent issues were handled terribly by Verizon of India. I could not get one who actually understood English or was willing to forward me to someone who does. I actually ended up getting them solved by e-mailing Verizon via my RR connection. Not the optimal solution if the VZ connection were to be your only internet link. The process went at an ok speed considering it was e-mail correspondence, but I would prefer some real phone techs. I am still having issues with latency, however, that noone seems to be able to see but me, yet I do still get my full bandwidth. It's not so bad that I can't play an MMORPG, but it does hurt a bit on FPS. I have my fingers crossed they do solve it eventually.
The presales people were pleasant and informative about options for different packages, but lose many points by not being able to tell me whether many of them are even available to me. They left the install open-ended and said it would be 2 weeks if I can get it in my area(I'm pretty close to the CO, but they didn't seem to know that). The rest went smooth. They let me choose what I wanted so that they could "test". It was live really early, taking only 5 days, instead of 2 weeks.
It's really too bad all but reliability has gone downhill for VZ, with tech support being the biggest joke. It probably isn't suited for serious gamers, either. The latency is just too high, even though they tell me everything looks fine. Ironically, the latency used to be really good, much better than TWC(an area for which TWC has actually improved). If you need a stable connection for net browsing or maybe a very small server or p2p app, then it might be worth considering. VZ only filters the typical ports many ISPs filter for network security. Home users likely won't miss them and more advanced users can easily work around it. They also do not throttle any protocol by my testing and have never been reported to do so.
My package: 3/768
Comments:
 | | I belong to Frontier says Verizon; Frontier says, "not yet". In the meantime, I know I have email, but I wonder where it is being sent. Verizon doesn't have it. Frontier sends me back to Verizon, because they are not ready for me yet. Where is my email being sent. This has been going on over a week now.
Was Verizon so eager to get rid of me. I wish I could send you the letter from Frontier. They say I can access my email at https.//webmail.frontier.com/. They also say they will send me back to Verizon Webmail if I try to log on to Frontier. | |
| | | Curious, and insight desired I noticed your comment about 'tweaking' your connection to improve your speed.
I've had a part time job working with Verizon's Indian customer service, and their local staff (who I must stay are at least more competent) for going on 6 months for issues. New modem, 4 house visits, 10 calls to India, messages to the tech forum here, second level support locally, etc etc etc.
I contacted to a 1.5-3 Mbps package. Everything worked great for 2+ years, then I started getting speed issues in the evening (dropping to 400Kbps or so on the download side) last last year. I called Verizon numerous times and have worked with second level support and they claim it is network congestion (and apparently have no plans to correct the problem, based on their latest ploy of changing the package speeds to 1-3 Mbps and putting the 'network congestion' disclaimer in the TOS).
So i'm interested to know what tips you might have to tweak the connection to at least improve the speed enough to get to the minimum speed of my package... Thanks. | |
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