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Review by vacax 
Posted: 6.2 years ago
member for 6.2 years, 7 visits, last login: 5.7 years ago
 Davis,Yolo,CA
 $40 per month (12 month contract)
 about 4 days
 "Better than 56k"
 "Slow access, terrible service plans, incompetent tech support"
 "Only get it if you have no other choice."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
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The reason I have Cal.net Internet Services is because they have a monopoly in my apartment complex. It is the only viable broadband service. I have what they call MDL (multi-tenant data link) which uses HomePNA technology. It's similar to DSL in that it uses the phone lines and you can still use voice access.
When you first sign up from Cal.net you will notice is it considerably slower than DSL. All DSL services I've had have been 3-4 times faster. The worst part about Cal.net MDL is that they charge for bandwidth. Use more than your alotted bandwidth and they will charge you $5 per gigabyte. The only way they can get away with this is they provide this service to apartment complexes where DSL is unavailable. Through a contract with the apartment complex they have a broadband monopoly, and accordingly you have no other choice but to pay their outrageous fees.
Aside from being slow and having poor plans, Cal.net has terrible tech support. If you call them you always have to leave a message (no talking to real people) except on a very rare occasion. This means they can ignore your calls. When they installed my service on a Monday they were half an hour late. That's not the problem though.
The first problem is that they managed to lose the dial tone so we had no phone service. I called them later in the day when they said it would be fixed first thing Tuesday morning. Tuesday I call them again to remind them and I also called billing to complain about how it hadn't been fixed (I think they ignored me altogether as nothing happened that day or the next). They ignored me Tuesday and I called tech support again Wednesday. They ignored me Wednesday and on Thursday they finally called to say they would come over in a four hour window. They came over and fixed the phone, or so they thought. Only one of the outlets was fixed. Friday we call again, and amazingly they came out and fixed it. The tech support warned me that they would charge me $75/hour this day "if they determined it wasn't their fault" the phone line didn't work. That was insulting and ridiculous, as they obviously had failed on TWO attempts to do this properly and were threatening to charge me to fix the phone lines they messed up. It took the entire week to get my phone lines up and running again.
The second problem is that I had my own modem to use for the service, which is allowed. When the technicians came to install the service they tried my modem and discovered "it was broken" so they gave me a new one at the cost of $45. They were kind enough to knock $10 off the price since I had my own cables and power supply. Yet today I tested the equipment I had and found it to be working perfectly. They charged me for a modem I did NOT need.
I have been annoyed by Cal.net all week, but I'm afraid it's not over. On Monday I have to attempt to return the extra modem they foisted on me for a refund.
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Cal.net
