Review by mediahound 
UPDATED: 116 days ago
member for 1.7 years, 53 visits, last login: 4 days ago
 Richmond,Contra Costa,CA
 $30 per month (12 month contract)
 "Probably better than AT&T"
 "Customer/tech support can be not very good"
 "They are about equal to other DSL providers"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings well below consensus)
|
Sonic's customer support is horribly lacking. They are not really that helpful and talk down to customers. Every time I call their tech support I get a bad vibe. Case in point, the last time I phoned was because my DSL service was out. I spent 45 minutes on the phone with some inept so-called technician who had me unplug eveything, restart several times, even suggested that I re-install my entire OS. Turns out there was an area wide outage. Why wasn't this tech. informed of this fact right away?
UPDATE - I'm confused by their billing policies. My contract was up in July and at that time I called and spoke to someone who said that Sonic.net is not longer doing contracts, just month to month. I said fine.
Now today, several months later, I called to see about downgrading my service and am being told that there is a $50. charge to downgrade it. If I'm month to month, it seems illegal to charge me a fee to downgrade service since I'm not under a contract.
Sonic.net's horrible billing practices really lead me to start looking elsewhere now.
UPDATE - I have now closed my Sonic account and gone to Comcast. It's waaay faster (30 Mbps!) than what Sonic can provide me. I am very happy with the speed on Comcast for the price.
UPDATE (7/1/09): I canceled a re-connection with Sonic and they charged me for the DSL Modem (which they did not ship out because I canceled the order) as well as $18.95 even though the connection order was canceled before it was even connected. I was told by their Sales department that I would not be charged anything since I canceled the order in time, and that she was able to grab the modem so that it wouldn't ship out to me.
Now several days later, Sonic customer support is saying I need to return the DSL modem in order to receive my money back. Hmm... I can't return something that was not even sent out to me. Look at the UPS tracking, no DSL modem was sent nor delivered to me (tracking# 1Z60Y81A0397524578).
Sonic's customer support remains horribly inept.
UPDATE 7/29/09 - Sonic.net is still charging my credit card for service that I do not even have. Their customer service replies are predictably-completely inept. They have been unable to tell me why they are charging me for service they never even hooked up!
Followup comments:  
DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs: | Good question! This is a real good question. IM or email me your username and I'll review the call notes from that dialog and see what we can do to improve.
-Dane | |
|  | mediahound
join:2008-02-19
Richmond, CA | Re: Good question! I won't be doing that because I know you just want to notate my account that I left a bad review. | |
| | | xan_user
join:2004-11-18
Windsor, CA
| Re: Good question! How can they improve if you won't let them? Its not like they're going to throttle you cause your review was less than perfect.
As a long time Sonic customer I implore you to help all us customers by letting Sonic address your issue, that way we can all benefit from even better customer service.
9 times out of 10 Sonic CS has gone above and beyond for me. The other one time it was just above....  | |
| | | | 
Laurenstuff
@covad.net | I think sonic is pretty intelligent about trouble shooting More intelligent than AT and T, that's for sure. I find them to be extremely helpful, and even give me credit for lost time sometimes. Five stars for them, for sure. | |
|
DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs: | Downgrade fee We buy wholesale loops from AT&T, and they charge us a $50 fee to downgrade - so we must pass that on. The way around it is to disconnect and then reconnect, but that's really inconvenient for you and for us. FYI.
-Dane | |
| 
wa2ibm
Premium
join:2000-10-10
San Jose, CA
| You've come back! So, you see one of the many reasons I continue using Sonic (reliability).
I too have Comcast HSI in addition to my Sonic connection. I have a multi-WAN router that allows me to use both at the same time. Since Sonic allows servers, all my inbound traffic (mail and web) comes in that path, while I use the Comcast connection for my VPN's (to keep that traffic from interfering with my web users). My outbound requests (mostly web) goes out either connection, depending on the phase of the moon. That confuses some web sites (mostly banking), but I've worked around that.
Bottom line: I'm sticking with Sonic, I'm just disappointed that I'll never see their Fusion Broadband product here in San Jose. | |
| |
DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs: | Re: You've come back! Don't write off Fusion - I'd really like to see many more Bay Area COs built.
That said, if you're more than a couple miles from your CO, we don't have an RT solution in the pipeline just yet.
-Dane | |
| | |
wa2ibm
Premium
join:2000-10-10
San Jose, CA
| Re: You've come back! I'll be waiting quite a while. My location is much too far from the Almaden CO. My first non-dialup connection was circa 2001 via IDSL (remember NorthPoint/PSN/Telocity/DirectvDSL?). My Sonic ADSL is via one of the Almaden RT's. There's a new AT&T VRAD just down the street, but that's off limits for you. 
Bill | |
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DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs: | Re: You've come back! Yup - no UVerse wholesale, at least for now. I suspect that FIOS going wholesale might help with that, but who knows.
We are working toward RT deployments, but it'll be a while before we get all the issues solved.
-Dane | |
| | | | |
DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs:
| Re: You've come back! Keep us in mind for the future, we are building ADSL2+ (our Fusion product) into the Richmond CO, so if you are close enough, those products are coming.
Shortly we are introducing Annex M (higher upstream) and pair bonding (doubles speed) on this product set.
Richmond is in process now, about five and a half months ETA. Perhaps we can earn better scores from you someday if/when we can deliver that product for you.
-Dane | |
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DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs: | Re: You've come back! If you'll IM or email me an address, I can send you loop details.
Fusion is CO based - we don't have RTs yet, so that is a limiting factor. However, with products in the pipeline at up to 30Mbps/5Mbps, it's exciting stuff.
-Dane | |
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DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs: | Re: You've come back! You were not charged for the modem, sorry for any confusion.
-Dane | |
| | | | | mediahound
join:2008-02-19
Richmond, CA | Re: You've come back! A month later, you charged my credit card for service again; service that was never connected and that I do not have. You have got the worst billing practices I've seen and your customer service is lacking in every respect! | |
| | | | | | 
Snypes
join:2003-12-29
Santa Rosa, CA
| Re: You've come back! Hello, I feel for you. There is the occasion with DSL customers where things just don't work out. However your statement regarding charges is somewhat concerning. If you could send me your login name I will be happy to look into this with our billing group and see what needs to be done to straighten this out. I assure you this will not in any way reflect poorly on yourself. I have worked for this company for a long time and our practice has never been to drag an ex-customer through the mud but more to help them with their transition so they hold us in a better light in case the future brings them back our way. I am of course sorry things did not work out but I am willing to help untangle the issue so you can move on.
Thanks! | |
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