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Review by corak 
member for 8.8 years, 11 visits, last login: 3.8 years ago
lodged 8.8 years ago
 Los Gatos,Santa Cruz,CA
 $119 per month about 5 days Verizon (ex GTE) "Fast Reliable Connection, Good Value" "Support is sometimes hard to reach" "A great value and good alternative to large corporate ISPs"
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After seeing all of the bad reviews on here I thought I should chime in with my own experiences to show that there are very happy subscribers to DSL Designs.
I have 1500/384 service and reliably get 1300+ down and 368 up. Apart from the recent outage (last 3 days) caused by Verizon I have no complaints about their service. Overall they are cheaper than most ISPs and the quality and reliability of the service is much better than any previous ISP I've had (Pacbell, SBC, DSL Extreme, Linkline)
I can't comment much on initial installation since I was switched from Linkline to DSL Designs when linkline dropped all of their N.California customers, but DSL Designs was really helpful during the switch over.
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Review by raviyer
member for 8.8 years, 1 visits, last login: 8.4 years ago
lodged 8.8 years ago
- Morgan Hill,Santa Clara,CA
- $69 per month
- about 15 days
- Verizon
- "slightly cheaper than alternatives"
- "support never answers phone calls , unreliable"
- "They SUCK BIGTIME"
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I have been using them for a year now. 1500/384 service with static address.
The order process was fairly smooth, but once the equipment got in things did not work. They said it was at the telco end and eventually got it going after a week.
Ever since the beginning I would get micro outages, the connection would just die for a minute or two and later bounce back. sometimes occuring every 5 to 10 minutes. very annoying.
after several complaints they locked down my ip to my MAC address to try and debug the problem. this did not fix it but somehow a month or so later the problem went away.
I started to notice the same problem occur a few weeks ago. Support never answers the phone.
Now since the 14th the line is completely out. support has a canned message saying they are experiencing downtime with verizon customers. I am supposed to have a backup dialup service from them. They said they will provide the details only if the system is down. but they dont answer the phones. I wonder how I am going to get the details if the support phones are not answered. They say they will answer the support phones after the problem with verizon is fixed.
Why would I want to call them if everything works?? haha its funny.
I am going to cancel my account with them as soon as someone answers the phones. They are not answering their billing or sales phones too. may be they are out of business?? who knows.
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Review by Ray.Wan
(review was emailed from domain synopsys.com)
lodged 9.1 years ago
- San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
- $52 per month
- (12 month contract)
- SBC
- "Horrific Experience.. Absolute Worst DSL company..."
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DSLDesigns...
Absolute worst company I've ever dealt with.
My DSL was down for almost a month without any support, update or
resolution. You can never get any customer support. No one ever responses to
emails or VMs. It's very frustrating when all you want is someone to talk too and give you an update on the status. I have since cancelled my service and moved to another ISP (covad, which has been great). It's been two months now and I am still being charged for a Service I've already cancelled. How can they charge me when I'm already with another provider? This company has no business model or customer support
function. I advise anyone reading this to avoid a contract with this company. I am now still trying to reach someone in the company to help resolve my issue (two months after I've cancelled my service). I dying over frustration....huuuuhh
If anyone reading this has any suggestion about what I should do, please
respond to this email (rwan@synopsys.com)
Ray
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Review by adamxii
member for 9.1 years, 0 visits, last login: 9.1 years ago
lodged 9.1 years ago
- San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
- $49 per month
- SBC
- "they were a fine little telco tagalong until"
- "notified on 11-22 that they were booting me. servcice gone 12-01"
- "this boat is heading for the rocks"
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just wanted to share this message with anyone who's considering dsldesigns. my service was terminated 8 days later. this could happen to you:
>Dear DSL Designs Customer,
>We are sorry to have to inform you that we will no longer be supporting
>DSL Service in Pacific Bell Territory. Due to the high cost of doing
>business with Pacific Bell it is not financially feasible to continue
>this service at this time.
>We ask that you try to find a new provider for your DSL Service as soon
>as possible as we are not exactly sure on what date your service will be
>terminated with us.
>We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you. We are providing
>a listing of alternative providers who may be capable of providing DSL
>Service for you below:
>AuBeta Networks www.aubeta.com 866-926-7587
>Bay Area Internet Solutions www.bayarea.net 800-495-0092
>Coastside.Net www.coastside.net 650-726-7893
>Cruzio www.cruzio.com 831-459-6301
>DSL Extreme www.dslextreme.com 800-774-3379
>InReach Internet 888-INREACH
>Megapath Networks Inc. 877-634-2728
>Raw Bandwidth 650-964-1785
>Sonic.net www.sonic.net 707-522-1000
>Sincerely,
>DSL Designs, Inc.
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Review by ljcook
member for 10 years, 94 visits, last login: 2 years ago
lodged 9.2 years ago
- Morgan Hill,Santa Clara,CA
- $59 per month
- Verizon (ex GTE)
- "When it works it works well"
- "Downtime and support ridiculous"
- "Wish it were easier to change... uptime is terrible"
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I was forced to DSLDesigns when my previous ISP LinkLine decided to terminate it's Northern California Services. The transition was anything but smooth... 2 weeks to get access again!
Since then there have been numerous service interuptions. Primarily a DNS problem that happens almost everyday... even though I have reported it to support on at least 6 occasions. Lately, additional service interuptions, and my personal webspace which I also use for small item for my clients was down for almost 2 weeks! At least 3 calls and 3 emails -- ALL unanswered. Now, finally that the web site is up... I can not FTP or Telnet into my site! THIS SUCKS!!!
I would switch providers in a minute if I didn't have to disconnect the old service and install the new service (requires that old service be removed from phone line and new service installed -- a one month (no service) prospect).
Looks like I'm stuck between a rock and hard place.
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Review by pocoguy
member for 9.2 years, 0 visits, last login: 9.2 years ago
lodged 9.2 years ago
- Novato,Marin,CA
- $49 per month
- Verizon
- "Internet connection is generally functioning"
- "Impossible to talk with anyone, no communication at all, mail server goes down"
- "If they could only learn how to communicate"
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Ended up with DSL Designs by inheritence. Was with Linkline, based in So Ca., who decided at the beginning of the year it wasn't worth it for them to continue with a no. Ca. customer base, so I was one of the 500 customers who were migrated over to DSL Designs.
Initially DSL Designs was very communicative with me which was most encouraging. However after a couple of months I noticed it was getting more and more difficult to talk with anyone in tech support. At first it was a long wait time, then it degenerated to having to just leave voice messages. A tech would respond, but only after 1 or 2 days! I used to be able to get through to sales and complain about the poor level of service and the connection problem I was experiencing. That used to help in getting a tech to call back sooner. But no more. DSL Designs appears to have solved that problem, by not having anyone in sales answer the phone!
Just in the past week their mail server went down twice, that I'm aware of. Once again, since it was impossible to talk with anyone at the company, I didn't know if they were going out of business or what? It's only because I was able to talk with a tech (who had previously given me his cell nos. out of concern for customer service), who had recently left the company, but was still willing to help me out as much as he could, that he was able to determine that they were in the process of fixing their mail server, and thus were still in business.
Another indication of their prehistoric level of communication is the newsletter on their website, which is dated March 2002. Talk about old news!
There's always light within darkness and on the plus side, I don't have many problems with an internet connection, which is pretty unbelievable. Speed is okay.
Bottom line is, since you can't talk with anyone at this company, you don't know what's happening with this company? They must still be in business since I still have a connection, but I can't help but wonder, for how long?
It's too bad they can't get their communication/customer service act together, because at least in the 94947 area, our choice for service providers are pathetic. We need at least one good ISP for DSL.
By the way Sonic.net cannot service 94947, as they advised me they have no agreement with Verizon.
Anybody know of a really good ISP in 94947?
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Review by SallySlide
member for 9.2 years, 0 visits, last login: 9.2 years ago
lodged 9.2 years ago
- Novato,Marin,CA
- $18 per month
- (month by month)
- about 60 days
- Verizon (ex GTE)
- CLEC party: Verizon (ex GTE)
- "None that I can think of"
- "webmail down, personal webpages down, email down - all too frequently"
- "They never can be reached by phone, never reply to support email"
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Avoid at all costs, now I need to find another provider. :-(
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Review by pdy1
member for 9.6 years, 1 visits, last login: 9.6 years ago
lodged 9.3 years ago
- San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
- $49 per month
- (month by month)
- SBC
- "First month was free"
- "Don't want to bad mouth them, but nobody is perfect."
- "It's fast and priced good."
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I have been very satisfied with my 1500/384 that delivers 1300/110 and
have not had problems other than in the beginning install period and of
course during times of the DSL Designs scheduled system upgrades I
suggest you give them a try.
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Review by scamdog
member for 9.3 years, 11 visits, last login: 9 years ago
lodged 9.3 years ago
- Novato,Marin,CA
- $65 per month
- (month by month)
- Verizon
- "can't think of anything positive to say"
- "low BW, no service, emails are ignored, no way to leave a phone message"
- "not much of an ISP, these guys make aol seem viable"
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Back in December of 1999, Linkline and GTE installed my DSL, and I had nearly faultless service with them until about 6 months ago when I became a customer of dsldesigns. Without any warning or indication as to why, linkline was given the boot and dsldesigns was brought in. I was away at the time of transition and came home to find I had no connection. I was able to get the numbers from a friend across town (also a former linkline customer) and got things working fairly quickly.
Since then, my BW has been up and down unpredictably and unaccountably, I no longer enjoy many of the features I had become accustomed to with linkline, and I get no response from dsldesigns when I try to reach them. I pay for 1500 down and 128 up, but for the last two weeks I have been getting around 100kbps down and up. Linkline provided great service, among which was a Web mail interface that allowed me to check my email from anywhere in the world and a configurable spam filter; dsldesigns has nothing like that. Linkline had a very good usenet server; the usenet server dsldesigns provides is crap. Linkline provided me with Web space at no additional charge; I think dsldesigns does this as well, but I haven't been able to get it set up. Now I pay for a monthly news service, an additional Web host, and I use hotmail when I'm abroad. Needless to say, I am not happy.
What's worse, my attempts to contact dsldesigns have all been frustrated. When I call their "technical support" department I get a useless recorded message that loops and doesn't even give me an opportunity to leave a message of my own. Where linkline's techinical support department answered their phones (I mean actual human beings) within a few minutes during their generous working hours (seems to me they were open from 9:00 in the morning to 9:00 at night), I have spoken with no one at dsldesigns but the gal in billing a couple of times, and I had to interupt my work day to do that.
Finally, even their involvement with dslreports is frustrating me. They appear to have signed on with the "DSLreports complaint escalation program," and that sounds almost promising. I wanted, for no good reason that I can think of, to give them one more chance to act responsibly. But the thing requires my ISP account/customer number and I have no idea what that number is. It doesn't show up on any of the dsldesigns correspondence I have, not on the invoices, not on the bills, and not on the initial sign-up papers.
Dsldesigns gives me next to nothing for my money. The only thing missing from my current package is the screeching warble of the modem handshake.
Sean Camden
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Review by richgray
member for 11.1 years, 17 visits, last login: 2.8 years ago
updated 9.4 years ago
- Los Gatos,Santa Cruz,CA
- $70 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 21 days
- Verizon (ex GTE)
- "Same Day Tech Support (not anymore)"
- "Changed IP and config after initial hookup, lead time in hours by email. Many DNS and router problems. No network status report."
- "Go elsewhere."
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I pay for 384/384, and that's what I got for the first 9 months. Now I'm not sure when I'll get connected. I have experienced numerous DNS and router problems that leave me disconnected. Bottom line is this network is managed by amateurs. No notification of numerous service interuptions. Now after over a year, and recomending to my neighbors, I need to find a new ISP.
The good news is that the GTE (Verizon) part was great. No problems with line installation or modem link. The GTE installation guy was very professional.
08-28-02- I've finally had enough of these Jokers. This is the third time my IP has been changed with no notice, and down time of two days as an unplanned (no notice) upgrade to ATM took me off line and broguht me back with two DHCP addresses 'that won't change" and down again when on reboot no DHCP Server avail. I'm through. I work from home and depend on email. I lost accounts when email sent to me bounced. I should have switched last outage. I'm going to try South Valley Internet www.garlic.com.
Three neighbors have switched, 5 left looking for a way out without having a week of down time.
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