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Review by (hidden by request)

  • Location: San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Cost: $40 per month
They claim fast speeds.
Connection drops every five minutes, and they can't fix it in two months.
Avoid it. You get what you pay for.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

What a disaster. Sonic.net has been unable to provide us with
reliable internet service for two months, and they have completely
failed to put any effort into fixing the problem.

In September of 2011, we signed up for their new Fusion service. It
promised 20Mb/s downloads for $40/month, which was faster *and* cheaper
than the AT&T service we had at the time. Searching the internet
brought us some good reviews, so we made the switch.

For three months, all was well. But in December, it went bad -- really
bad. Our internet connection started dropping every once in a while.
It would go away for 30 seconds, then it would recover. Some time
later, it would drop again.

By the end of December, it was dropping every five minutes. We finally
called Sonic.net, and they told us our line looked fine. They
couldn't see any problems. They tried to blame our wireless router, our
home phone, our wires, our DSL filters, and our computers.

With the service dropping every five minutes, the internet is
impossible. Videos freeze. Video chats hang up. Websites lose data
we've submitted. It's so, SO frustrating!!!

The first person I talked to blamed our wireless router. He asked me to
connect a computer directly to the DSL modem. It still had problems.
He said he was going to try modifying a setting. Over the next week,
the problem continued, and I tried the following:

- New cable from the modem to the router.
- Different wireless router
- Direct connection of my computer to the modem.
- A different cable to connect my computer to the modem.

None of these fixed the problem. At this point, I was convinced it was
their DSL modem or their wiring. I called them and told the technician
so. This technician said that he *could* see problems on our line.
This was surprising, as every previous technician had sworn up and down
that our line had no problems. He performed a test called a "metallic
loop line test" that he said showed the problem. From this, he surmised
that our landline phone was at fault. Either the phone was faulty or
the DSL filter was. I unplugged the phone, and he re-ran the metallic
loop test. He said there were no more errors, and that he would send me
a new ADSL2 filter.

Were our problems finally solved? No. Later that evening, I unplugged
the phone to make a video call. The internet dropped out just as much
with the phone unplugged as with it plugged in. The phone was not the
problem at all.

Now it is the beginning of February. The new ADSL2 filter arrived, and
I installed it. Nothing got better. I called them back, and I read
them the riot act. They suggested it could be their modem and offered
to send me another one to test. Get this! They wanted to charge *us*
shipping to test *their* problem. I pointed out how silly this was, and
the supervisor waived the shipping.

I asked them why they couldn't just send a tech to my house and work
with me until it is fixed? The techs have repeatedly told me that they
never do that. First I have to prove the modem isn't broken, and then
they will send a tech to check the wiring. Are you kidding me?

Here we are on 2/9, I don't have the modem, and our internet has been
unusable for two months. Even if I get the test modem tomorrow, if it
doesn't fix the problem, it will be days and days before they get out to
my house, and days more if they have to fix the lines.

This should have been fixed in under a week. Never use
Sonic.net. It's cheap, and you get what you pay for. We had
AT&T for over 10 years without a hiccup.

I can't wait to get reliable internet service again. It's time to find
a working provider.

(review was emailed from domain evilplan.org)
lodged 12.1 years ago

mythgard
Sonic.net
join:2006-01-18
Santa Rosa, CA

mythgard

Member

Further assistance

I am sorry to hear that this has been such a struggle for you. I do see that we have contacted you and left a voicemail to get you a technician out to your location to see if we can get this resolved. Please do give us a call at 707-547-3400 or 1-888-766-4233, Monday - Friday from 6am - 11pm and Saturday and Sunday 8am - 10pm and we can get this setup.

We look forward to helping you get this resolved as soon as possible.

Tobester
join:2000-11-14
San Francisco, CA

Tobester

Member

Re: Further assistance

LOL.

Me thinks such a negative installation posting from a hidden user on a non-existent domain is probably an AT&T technician with too much time on his hands!