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Review by anniswhen 
member for 5.3 years, 27 visits, last login: 265 days ago
lodged 4.8 years ago
 Seattle,King,WA
 Business customer $99 per month- (36 month contract)
 Qwest "Polite. Can always get someone on the phone, and they are US based tech." "Did not exactly lie to me, but did not tell the truth, either" "VERY slow speed, about which they have been untruthful to me."
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I had been with Qwest for phone and Speakeasy for DSL, and was seeking a phone alternative. Eschelon has been an excellent choice for phones: half the price, absolutely no downtime, good if not great monthly reports.
So, when I made the switch to Eschelon for phones, they pitched the DSL and I bought it. I purchased 1500/1000, with hosting of a small site, for $99/month, 3 year contract with penalties for ending early. The install was not easy, but a dream in comparison to Qwest/Covad for the Speakeasy service.
At that time I was not aware of the ability to check my own linespeed, so I cannot comment on Speakeasy speeds. However, I immediately recognized the slow linespeed on Eschelon and started talking to their techs about it. I discovered DSL Reports and started doing speed tests. I typically receive around 400/200, about one-fifth of what I should expect. I might get as high as 600/350, and once or twice recorded 1068/700.
Just as background, a Qwest user in my building who pays for 1500/1000 speed typically has speeds over 1300 on the download.
As others note in other reviews, Eschelon techs refused to accept my linespeed results. After many attempts at their urging to do an FTP download directly from the modem to an isolated computer (results they were prepared to accept), it turns out they had had me download the wrong FTP program, one that did not work with my Macintosh computers. I finally paid for their tech to come out and he was followed by a Qwest tech. Both stated the speed problem is not with my end. They were able to achieve speeds of over 1000/700.
Finally, after many many more conversations, each increasingly heated, I discovered that my CO (central office) is 17,000 feet from my business. I KNOW this was never mentioned to me, because I knew at that time that that 10,000 was the technical limit for good speeds. Once I told them what I thought of their failure to tell me this, and the lack of ethics it indicates for selling me the service to begin with, they bounced me up to headquarters, to the escalation group.
The headquarters person told me she never would have guaranteed any speeds above 128/144.
So, we are still in the ethics and morals discussion.
What strikes me is that
1) each of the people I spoke with probably knew I was beyond a technical limit for good service, but they did not tell me.
2) The service should have never been sold to me, and they should have fessed up a long time ago, instead of putting me through the interminable phone calls.
3) Qwest and Eschelon repeatedly disavow what the other side tells me. Eschelon gives me some hoorah about how Qwest is at fault because they don't boost the signal for resale customers, then Qwest tells me they NEVER boost the signal, etc etc.
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Review by srp1
member for 12.5 years, 21 visits, last login: 4.5 years ago
lodged 5 years ago
- 98407
- $32 per month
- Qwest
- "consistent physical service"
- "poor billing, dispute resolution"
- "be warned, 30 days notice required on service termination"
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Watch out if you are switching ISPs, or terminating service with Eschelon. I was a residential customer.
Eschelon customer service for billing has been nothing but trouble. When I was first converted to Eschelon from Advanced Telecom, it took at least three billing cycles before they had my charges correct. I've now recently switched to a different ISP: it has taken me three phone calls to Eschelon just to terminate my service (incorrectly charging for a router/modem that they never gave me, etc). On my last call I was told that thirty (30) day's notice is required on service termination. Eschelon is going to charge me for thirty days that I have *NOT* used their service. I find this outrageous and unnecessary.
Even though the physical service had been great (very little down time since the switch over, and always a good quality connection), their billing and customer service is way below par.
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Review by mintman
member for 7.3 years, 3 visits, last login: 5.8 years ago
lodged 7.3 years ago
- 98032
- Business customer
- $92 per month
- (24 month contract)
 about 42 days- Qwest
- CLEC party: Eschelon
- "Should be an overall savings"
- "Unreliable service uptime; speed not as expected."
- "if the service is unreliable, the cost doesn't matter!!!"
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The sales person used dslreports speed test to help sell us on their service. We were happy with Integra but were paying for 768kb service. The Eschelon sales rep showed us on dslreports that we were really only getting about 540 instead. Sales rep told us that if we switched from Integra to Eschelon and payed for 640 service, we would save money and get improved service.
The install went wrong. Quest switched a pair of wires for some reason and kept us down for a day. After 2 different techs from Eschelon came out, we were finally up and running with the dsl line but we were locked out of our network by our internal firewall. Eschelon tech support pretty much said that that part was our problem. It took another 4 days to get an IT person out to fix the problem which in addition to costing me $200 and now nearly a week's worth of my time. We finally got our system up and running but then when I came into work the next day, we were down again. I called Eschelon and they acknowleged that there was an outage in our area and that they were working on it and it should be up in an hour. At the end of the day, we were still down and they told me that they hoped to have everything running again by the next morning.
The next morning we were indeed up and running so I went to this website to do a speedtest and the results were mediocre at best. I ran tests through 3 different services, Megapath, Speakeasy and one other, and the results varied from 122 up to 213 up. I called the Eschelon tech support people and explained all of this to them and they told me that sites like dslreports are not reliable indicators of true speed because they are not on the same network as they are. All I know is that my connection is now sluggish compared to Integra. I would NOT recommend Eschelon to anyone!
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Review by cpfreiberg
member for 10.5 years, 4 visits, last login: 10 years ago
lodged 10.5 years ago
- Hopkins,Hennepin,MN
- Business customer
- $89 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 15 days
- Eschelon
- CLEC party: Eschelon
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Review by kelly.gryting
(review was emailed from domain eds.com)
lodged 11.5 years ago
- Prior Lake,Scott,MN
- $50 per month
- CLEC party: Integra Telecom
- "Easy setup and mostly reliable service."
- "$600 a year is a bad habit to support."
- "I will never go back to dial up!"
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I currently have DSL service, I guess provided through an ISP called Eschelon (formerly fishnet.com). I have never spoken with anyone at Eschelon or had anything provided to me directly from them. Everything about my DSL service appears to be provided and billed through Integra Telecom (which is also my long distance provider and is closely affiliated with my local phone company).
My installation in February, 2000, went well initially. Integra teamed up with another local company "Index Computing" to provide modem and filters
and train new users. I stopped by Index Computing and picked up a box with my name on it, spent about 15 minutes getting a personal overview of the configuration, and took home 3-5 pages of instructions and IP addresses.
Once home, I installed an ISA Ethernet card I had borrowed from a friend and installed it in my PC. I then followed the Integra/Index Computing instructions for connecting to the external Paradyne digital modem, inserting the phone filters, installing a driver and configuring my internet connection. It worked the first time I tried it!! I had instant access to the internet and a static IP address all my own.
My problems came in when I decided to swap out the ISA Ethernet card for a PCI one. I wanted to retain my internal modem and dial up access in case of DSL failure (since I work from home quite a bit). My internal modem needed the ISA slot, so I ordered a PC Magazine "best buy" NETGEAR PCI Ethernet card and tried to swap. With the new Ethernet card I was dead in the water. Thank goodness I had seen the DSL service work before with the ISA card or I wouldn't have known WHERE the problem lay. I have a Gateway PC running Windows 98, pretty high end model from late 1998 with several devices (CD burner, SCSI 8mm tape drive, etc.). I talked with NETGEAR help desk for a couple HOURS one night, trying to resolve what turned out to be an IRQ conflict that didn't seem resolvable. I am getting a little over my head here when I describe this, but apparently the NETGEAR card "liked" some IRQs better than others and the ones it "liked" were needed by other devices. We tried several configurations and finally gave up. When I called Gateway as a last resort, they would not assist since it was not their equipment (although I had purchased the card FROM Gateway). In the end I decided to return the card. The next day upon booting up (before I removed the card), everything worked like magic!
According to an MCSE friend, each reboot with a new plug and play device will try to assign an IRQ to that device. If it doesn't work with the first reboot, delete the device and try try again! NOW you tell me.
Back to Integra (sorry for the side track) - since 2/2000 my DSL service has been down only once. It probably wouldn't have taken long to remedy, but there was some local confusion over who handles what problems (between my phone company Scott-Rice and Integra). Each help desk that I reported it to seemed like they would handle the issue, but upon my follow-up it had been turned over to someone else and the "someone else" didn't know about it. So after 2 days of playing connect the dots between help desks, I finally got someone VERY concerned and apologetic and the problem was fixed by that evening. (Meanwhile thank goodness I kept the internal modem installed!!)
I think the $50 monthly fee (for connection at 192k) is somewhat overpriced in my market, but the deal I got at signup included free installation and free digital modem "rental". So I figure I am ahead of the game for a little while yet and I am hoping the rates will eventually come down. Faster connections are available for significantly more money, but the 192k seems to do OK for my purposes.
Bottom line is that I LOVE my DSL service and will never go back to dial up.
-Kelly
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