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Review by smithers9087 
UPDATED: 207 days ago
member for 8.1 years, 6 visits, last login: 207 days ago
 Los Angeles,Los Angeles,CA
 $49 per month (12 month contract)
 about 12 days
 Verizon
 "This review has been deleted."
 "This review has been deleted."
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Connection reliability:
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(ratings well below consensus)
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This review has been deleted.
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Review by triode_fan
Posted: 212 days ago
member for 5.2 years, 11 visits, last login: 212 days ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$70 per month
about 30 days
Covad
"Very Reliable"
"Advertise 8 M but really only got 5.6 M"
"Have not found better alternatives for the last 5 years"
| Pre Sales information:
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Believe it or not, I have been with Earthlink DSL and Home Phone service for 5 years. I had some problems on and off 3 times over the course (mostly the problem with ATT) - Earthlink uses Covad and Covad uses/leases ATT infrastructure. I subscribed to the 8 M service but consistently get 5.6 M which is not too bad. I like the VOIP since I do not need another VOIP box at home. I just plug my phone in as usual like a land line. It continues to work even I have a power outage at home as long as the CO is powered up.
Domestic long distance is free and you can do block calls, call forwarding, voice mail but lack some of the fancy VOIP services like click 2 call, etc. International rates are very competitive.
Have been thinking of switching on and off a few times but have not been able to find something better nor cheaper with the same throughput. Verizon Fios or ATT U-verse are not available and I do not want to get Comcast due to all the horror stories.
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Review by tk421storm
Posted: 218 days ago
member for 291 days, 34 visits, last login: 31 days ago
Roseland,Essex,NJ
$39 per month (12 month contract)
Verizon
"Cheap! Easy to use, reliable service"
"terrible, terrible, terrible customer service"
"If you've got a good connection it's great...."
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I'm not sure who I should give credit/blame too, as my local ISP is verizon and Earthlink is just renting the lines, but we've had on and off connection issues for the two years that we've had DSL.
If it works, then, well, it works! Everyone's happy. But if it goes out, god help you. The phone tech support for earthlink is abysmal, from arrogant and rude employees to the most epic phone run-around you can ever imagine.
I've been lied to directly THREE times about them sending me a new modem; it's never come. You can tell it's their job to give you the run-around for as long as possible - if they can get you to hang up in exasperation it saves them the trouble of having to fix anything.
Woe to you of some technical skill! There is no room for you in earthlink's family, unless you have the patience to teach the tech support people about the basics of their product. You will spend every call, including INTERNAL transfers, explaining that yes, the modem is plugged in, and yes, you have a router, and NO, having a router does not mean they no longer have to support their product!
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Review by jtomorrow
Posted: 223 days ago
member for 225 days, 5 visits, last login: 208 days ago
undisclosed location
Contract price not specified.
"good speed without tons of background pings"
"Slow - some areas do not support high speeds"
"Slow and reliable, bad support"
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Initially I purchased 6MPBS DSL. After 6 days of calling them daily, their investigation into the telephone. They indicated the max possible is 1.5Mpbs. The Indian support was hard to understand. They called me three times for the same issue.
If you want to go faster, they use Comcast Cable instead.
Slow and reliable. poor support.
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Review by marvista
Posted: 231 days ago
member for 3.1 years, 30 visits, last login: 14 days ago
Del Mar,San Diego,CA
$40 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
"Connection to house was painless"
"Cutomer service was just plain unaware"
"Not as fast as cable, but more consistent"
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I was getting fed up with Time Warner - service glitches, price increases, removal of features, useless support, etc.
Earthlink claimed they could get me 6Mbps/800Kbps service, which was a surprise to me since every other DSL provider said I was too far away from the phone switch to get more than 768/384Kbps.
Installation was painless - although I was surprised to see an AT&T truck out front, since AT&T was one of the companies that said they could only provide very slow DSL. Getting connected was also simple - up in no time and able to browse. Then I connected my router and found that incoming ports were not coming through (I run my own private mail server, and that was pretty important). So I called Earthlink technical support. The first level support person didn't understand what incoming ports were; the second level support did and claimed that Earthlink does not block any ports, and it must be my router. To make a long story short, 7 phone calls later I finally got the DSL modem switched from router mode to bridge mode, and everything worked great. Its turns out there is very nice writeup on how to switch the mode on the Earthlink web set, but there is nothing that tells you when you might need to use it, and none of the customer server people knew it was there. I only found it by searching for documentation on the DSL modem, and there was a link from some forum back to the Earthlink web site. Getting through that process took 4 hours rather than the 5 minutes it should have taken. I do have to say though that aside from this gap in their knowledge, the Earthlink support people were more pleasant to deal with than Time Warner. They were trying to be helpful, whereas with Time Warner I always got infuriated by their attitude that everything must be my fault.
Anyway its up. Speed is about 4.5Mbps down 700kbps up, has been pretty consistent and responsive. VOIP works pretty well, although if there is a lot downloading it get cramped. Streaming is fast enough for everything we do.
It turns out that Earthlink uses Covad, and they have their own processing which is why they can provide the so called 6MB speed, while AT&T is only at 768/384Kbps. Earthlink also still has Usenet included. Its capped, but pretty handy for some things. Plus its $40 per month after the initial discounts disappear, versus $52 for Time Warner.
Overall, pretty happy. Maybe at some point I'll regret not having the 8MB that I would get most of the time with Time Warner, but then again I won't have to deal with slow nights and weekends when sharing the cable.
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 Review by wingnut
UPDATED: 236 days ago
member for 8.8 years, 3838 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Sterling Heights,Macomb,MI
$39 per month (12 month contract)
about 12 days
AT&T
| Pre Sales information:
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I would like this deleted as I haven't used earthlink in years.
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Review by tvchuckles
Posted: 246 days ago
member for 246 days, 3 visits, last login: 108 days ago
North Hollywood,Los Angeles,CA
$39 per month
about 2 days
| Pre Sales information:
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Earthlink is fine as long as you don't have to talk to India for service
Followup comments:  captmarcus
join:2001-01-06
Fort Lauderdale, FL
| Earthlink the good the bad and the ugly. I totally agree, Earthlink is only as good as long as like you said you don't need support. It's bad enough to understand there very bad english, but when they can not read the book it just makes it worse. I spoke to 9 reps and could not get a supervisor and had to start from scratch each time and they wanted to know why I didn't have a spare computer to try everything on. I was promised 6 meg and barely get 2.5 to 3 meg if nobody else is online it only gets slower. The price also sinks, but compared to the rest of the companies here in south Florida there not any better or worse. I have had there dsl service now for 9 yrs and have never been given any freebies or even a thank you for being a loyal customer never been late with a payment. Verizon fios is suppose to be in my part of town 2 yrs ago still awaiting there arrival. I brought a couple of books and use cnet to trouble shoot my problems now and with a lot less headaches. good luck | |
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 Review by vomviersen
UPDATED: 252 days ago
member for 9.5 years, 1643 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Chicago,Cook,IL
$39 per month (6 month contract)
about 21 days
Ameritech
"Service has been reliable; very few outages, download and upload speeds at or near advertised"
"Pre-installation coordination was THE ABSOLUTE WORST I've seen for ANY product of any kind I've ever bought."
"Earthlink ultimately lost a TWELVE-YEAR customer thanks to their horrible outsourced tech support people."
| Pre Sales information:
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I am on the northwest side of Chicago (Norwood Park/Newcastle area) and I have had Earthlink DSL, actually originally ordered as Mindspring MAX, since April 2000. The reliable service (only a couple of outages worth mentioning, and speeds at or near the advertised rates) and the fact that as a longtime Mindspring customer I got to keep my existing e-mail addresses are almost worth putting up with the horrendous job that Earthlink/Mindspring, Ameritech and Covad did at coordinating things up through the install.
Ameritech, per their usual shoddy practices, first gave a date that was earlier than requested (and in my case I could NOT take advantage of it) and then failed to show up on the first of the rescheduled dates. To add insult to injury, somewhere in their bumbling, they also managed to leave me without my regular phone service for a day and half. There were also several days when Earthlink/Mindspring was claiming that my line was not yet provisioned, but Ameritech was claiming it was... followed by another day of Ameritech claiming to be ready but Earthlink/Mindspring saying that my line was not ready. It turns out it had probably actually been ready throughout all of the days of discussion.
The installation itself was very quick and smooth. The technician from Covad was competent and courteous and did not assume I was just some "dumb girl". He was done within an hour or so and everything was fine.
The only real aggravations since then have been few. One is the way which some of the tech support phone people handle questions from a non-novice person. They appear to assume that everyone is stupid and that no one tries the "usual solutions" BEFORE calling... even when you TELL them in detail what you have done before calling.
The other annoyance was how the price drop from $49.95/mo to $39.95/mo was handled. It occurred during my original contract term and I would not expect to pay less during the term of my contract. But I did not expect I would have to call to have it changed, nor did I expect to hear about the bad experiences of others who not only had to call to have it changed, but were charged or attempted to be charged another "installation" fee. What a sad way to treat your existing customer base.
UPDATE 7/20/02: It's been quite a while since my original report. In that time there was a price increase back up to $49.95/mo and a period where speeds in the Chicago area were HORRIBLE. I am still mostly satisfied with the service. I don't feel I have enough other good options, cable or DSL, available to me to go through the agonizing process of changing providers. Phone support seems to have improved somewhat... or maybe it was just the luck of the draw that my last two calls were answered by longtime former Mindspringers.
UPDATE 1/26/03: Price still at $49.95/mo, speeds have fluctuated over the past month quite a bit. There are a few more cable and DSL options available to consider now; maybe it is time to investigate them.
UPDATE 1/13/07: As a pre-lineshare installation, I cannot upgrade to the new 3 and 6 meg options without cancelling and re-establishing my service. I did get a price drop back to $34.95/mo due to this. The service itself has been stable; just lacking in comparison to the services available now from Earthlink and competitors. I am just not willing at this time to be inconvenienced without broadband for 2 weeks or more in order to get higher speeds from Earthlink or any other service, nor am I willing to pay for two services concurrently to fill the gap.
UPDATE 3/28/09: There were minor issues with brief outages and dealing with outsourced tech support during the past two years. However, a day-long outage in late February 2009 led to an extremely poor experience with tech support, including a delay in escalating my issue to the next level, and very bad communication in follow-up. The tech support person called my business phone and asked a male co-worker if he was me (my name is identifiably female, and my co-worker has a definitely male voice). When I got on the line, the tech asked me to check my DSL. I pointed out that he had called me at work, and the DSL was at home. He simply repeated his request verbatim. I repeated my clarification, he repeated his request again. I requested a supervisor and my request was not granted. I am now a former Earthlink customer as of 3/3/09. I was an Earthlink customer for TWELVE years and am only too sorry to be confirming their sad deterioration from a preferred source of mine to a freaking joke.
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 Review by ctrip
UPDATED: 255 days ago
member for 7.3 years, 3038 visits, last login: 1 days ago
New Cumberland,Cumberland,PA
$30 per month
Verizon
"Reliable fast connection"
"Tech support not helpful"
"Satisfied"
| Pre Sales information:
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(ratings match consensus)
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Comcast
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Review by seattle8888
UPDATED: 263 days ago
member for 263 days, 1 visits, last login: 262 days ago
Seattle,King,WA
Contract price not specified.
"none"
"outages multiple times daily, rude customer service, painfully slow connection speed"
"If you want to experience what telecommunications services in the third world are like, sign-up for Earthlink."
| Pre Sales information:
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(ratings below consensus)
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After signing-up for Earthlink DSL + Home Phone I experienced, in the first week of service, painfully slow connection speeds barely above 56K (on 8MBPS service). My phone service would frequently go out - in one case three times in a day. When it would go out, phone service would not default to my voicemail, it would simply tell inbound callers "this phone number is no longer in service." When phone service would eventually come back on all of my previously saved voicemails would be "gone" / deleted.
I called to cancel my Earthlink service and, in violation of the contract terms, they canceled it THE SAME DAY! (The contract specifies cancellation occurs at the end of the billing period, which was required for number portability so I could keep my phone number and move it to a new carrier.) I spent 3.25 hours on the phone with overseas customer service, being disconnected on three separate occasions.
End of the drama, I lost the phone number I'd had for 4 years. I had to reprint all my business cards to accommodate the new number I'd been assigned by my new service provider, I likely lost many personal contacts who were left with a disconnected number and no forwarding number.
If you want to experience what telecommunications services in the third world are like, sign-up for Earthlink.
Followup comments: 
Doctor Olds
I Need A Remedy For What's Ailing Me.
Premium,VIP
join:2001-04-19
1970 442 W30
clubs:
| Were you using this for a Business? »www.earthlink.net/about/policies···ne.faces
said by EarthLink :
The Service shall be used in a fixed location in qualifying areas of the United States and is for residential purposes only.
The Service quality can vary depending on location, line quality, inside wiring, Internet traffic, and other factors beyond the control of EarthLink. EarthLink does NOT guarantee call quality or upload or download speeds and your sole remedy is to cancel the service.
Do you have a Alarm System? Did you bypass the inside wiring by testing out at the NID? Were Filters used on every single device plugged into a phone jack except for the ADSL Modem? Did you not request Earthlink to check the signal at the NID?
said by EarthLink :
The Service may not be compatible with home security systems. You are responsible for contacting the alarm monitoring company to test the compatibility of any alarm monitoring or security system with the Service.
Did you not read the Terms before buying the service?
said by EarthLink :
10. NUMBER TRANSFER ON SERVICE TERMINATION.
Upon the termination of your Service, we may, in our sole and absolute discretion, release to your new service provider the telephone number that you ported (transferred or moved over) to us from your previous service provider and used in connection with your Service. EarthLinks number porting policies and procedures will be consistent with the applicable laws and regulations.
If you want to keep your number, do NOT cancel the Service until you have made arrangements with another provider to transfer your number first.
It sounds like you did not understand the product and have bad wiring at your residence and that the service was not made or meant for Business use. Plus you (or a contractor you hire) must repair and maintain wiring in the residence as that is the homeowner's responsibility. However, you are allowed to retain your number by following the published steps on the Terms and Conditions page.
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