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Review by phantom1973 
Fair warning: reviewer joined this week
lodged 1 days ago
 Jefferson,Jackson,GA
 Contract price not specified.  "Not Much" "6mbps line - runs below dial up speed during evening hours 40kbps :(" "Lucky they are the only game in town or I would be long gone"
| Connection reliability:
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Line speed has deteriorated over last few months. During peak hours runs less than 300kbps (6Mbps line) sometimes a low as 40kbps. Not even as good as dial-up. Terrible customer service. Supposed have 'area latency outage' which I guess is Winspeak for totally over-subscribed. Been this way since 1/24 - no explanation no remediation date. Every commercial test shows technical metrics in the tank - poor speed, latency, jitter, QOS below 10% will not support streaming at any speed at night. Basically useless.
Poor customer service. Telephone line just as bad goes out 2-3 times a month.
If there was competitor iI would be long gone. filing complaints with FCC, FTC and Georgia PSC - as you can see I am a 'little disappointed.' LOL Looking for alternative but looks like no choice unless go wireless or wimax moves out this way and then I am out of here.
Comments:
 | | We MUST work together Windstream customers all over the nation are having similar problems: extremely slow download speed; slow or no service during certain hours; oversubscribed service; latency; and vague promises from Windstream about "fixing" these problems, WE MUST WORK TOGETHER to get our Windstream problems solved. PLEASE: 1) Send an email detailing your complaint to the FCC at: FCCInfo@fcc.gov 2) Contact both your US Senators (preferably by email) and tell them about your problems with Windstream. BE SURE TO SEND a COPY of your emails to your senators to US SENATOR TOM UDALL, who is currently investigating Windstream problems here in New Mexico. Send a copy to: sarah_cobb@tomudall.senate.gov 3) Contact as many people as you know in your area and ask them to do the same. The ONLY way we can get the service promised all of us by Windstream is to have many, many people complain from all over the country. Windstream is a rural telephone service & ISP provider. They received $6 Billion in revenue this year; surely they can spend some of that to do what they are supposed to do: provide service to rural areas. THANKS FOR HELPING!!! | |
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Review by Ledgem
member for 134 days, 7 visits, last login: 2 days ago
updated 2 days ago
- New Alexandria,Westmoreland,PA
- $45 per month
 about 21 days- "Reliable connection, modem-router supports bridge mode"
- "Hidden fees"
- "Quite decent"
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I'll preface this by saying that I live in a rural area, right next to the building that houses all of the telco equipment. Even though a number of my neighbors have Windstream, I'm not sure that we would qualify as a "high demand" area. My only other alternative was Comcast, and as if I wasn't already turned off enough to them over their antics, their customer service representative gave me such a display of arrogance ("good luck finding someone else, we're the only game in town") that I decided I'd rather go without a connection than them if that's what it came down to.
I opted for the $39.99 per month plan for 3 Mbps down and 768 kbps up (the pricing for that plan seems to have gone up since then). This is with the "Green Streak" service, meaning that I do not have a land telephone plan. After all sorts of fees and taxes, I'm paying $4.98 more per month than what was advertised. I was a bit miffed about that. I was also displeased with their outsourced customer service representative, who was rude to me upon discovering that I was still pricing out options in my area. Her attitude changed dramatically when I made the choice to go with Windstream. (To top it off, I ended up having to redo the order with Windstream directly, because somehow the order got lost between this third party company, "Offer Vine," and Windstream...)
Activation was a pain, but the delays were due more to my landlord than to Windstream. The Windstream technicians who came out to do the activation really went above and beyond in their efforts, and I greatly appreciated that. I've seen the Windstream van around every now and then. I feel that I can count on them to resolve a problem correctly and quickly should one arise. I deducted one star from the install coordination ranking only because there was apparently a miscommunication issue with one of the four or five tech visits, so I wasted a morning waiting around for a tech who was actually never called to my location. The rest were fine.
I had to contact them about a billing issue, as they weren't honoring their sign-up promotion. The lady that I spoke to was cheerful, understood the issue right away, and resolved it quickly. I expected that the issue would still be around on the next bill, but nope - the representative had really gotten it right on the first try. That was a pleasant surprise to me.
As far as the connection goes, I've never had a problem. I've hit the connection hard at all hours and never experienced an issue: both download and upload speeds are as advertised. I've video conferenced at various hours for hours straight, and didn't experience any drops or lag. As far as I'm concerned, I'm getting the connection that I paid for.
Equipment-wise, I received their free wireless modem-router (a Sagem F@st 1704). While fine for light to moderate usage, heavy connection activity and long video conferences would require me to reboot it here and there. I was delighted to find that it has a bridge mode, which allowed me to put my high-end stand-alone wireless router in full control of the connection. I haven't had to reboot anything since then.
Comments:
| | We MUST work together Because Windstream customers all over the nation are having similar problems: extremely slow download speed; slow or no service during certain hours; oversubscribed service; latency; and vague promises from Windstream about "fixing" these problems, WE MUST WORK TOGETHER to get our Windstream problems solved. PLEASE: 1) Send an email detailing your complaint to the FCC at: FCCInfo@fcc.gov 2) Contact both your US Senators (preferably by email) and tell them about your problems with Windstream. BE SURE TO SEND a COPY of your emails to your senators to US SENATOR TOM UDALL, who is currently investigating Windstream problems here in New Mexico. Send a copy to: sarah_cobb@tomudall.senate.gov 3) Contact as many people as you know in your area and ask them to do the same. The ONLY way we can get the service promised all of us by Windstream is to have many, many people complain from all over the country. Windstream is a rural telephone service & ISP provider. They received $6 Billion in revenue this year; surely they can spend some of that to do what they are supposed to do: provide good service to rural areas. THANKS FOR HELPING!!! | |
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Review by Maar
member for 2.8 years, 607 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 3 days ago
- Story,Montgomery,AR
 Business customer- $39 per month
- "Got DSL in 2006 worked fine for 4 years till it was oversubscribed in 2010"
- "Remote has been oversubscribed for a year now with no plans to fix until"
- "I would not recommend Windstream to anyone."
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I have had Windstream DSL since October of 2006. Had pretty much trouble free service for 4 years until they oversold the remote in 2010. Was told in December 2010 that they were planning to construct new fiber feeds to the remote to alleviate the congestion. They told me it would take until Sept. 9th of 2011 to complete. So I waited all summer and followed up with them on a couple of occasions and was assured each time that the repair was on schedule.
My last update from them was on August 3rd when I spoke to the woman in their complaint department that had contacted me in regards to my FCC complaint. She told me that she had followed up with engineering the end of July and everything was going as planned. Then on August 29th I am told that absolutely NOTHING had been done all summer and it will be sometime next year before any repairs are scheduled.
Windstream flat out lied for 10 months regarding fixing this remote. They still have no plans to fix the remote, yet are continuing to sell more DSL accounts off of it. Seems fraudulent to continue to sell new DSL accounts on a remote that Windstream has acknowledged to be oversubscribed for over 10 months. I would not recommend anyone to this company after my experience during the last year.
See this link for full history of how bad Windstream is. »DSL Speed Issues
Comments:
Maar
join:2009-04-09
Story, AR | Update: Windstream is now giving me a $10.00 a month discount for the next 12 months. Still no plans to fix the over subscription issue. | |
| | Maar
join:2009-04-09
Story, AR | Re: Update: Over 400 days of broken DSL with no fix even scheduled. | |
| | | | | Re: Update: This isn't that surprising. We signed up with Windstream a few months ago, and they repeatedly lied to my wife on various things. | |
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Review by luckydog0_18
Fair warning: reviewer joined this month
lodged 4 days ago
- Clarksville,Greene,PA
- Contract price not specified.
- "N/A"
- "Tech support has no clue whats going on."
- "Dont use them, if you can help it."
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net speed is an average of .50 when it should be 3.0 . they in my opinion got greedy and took on to many customers.
Comments:
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Review by tale
member for 10.8 years, 1443 visits, last login: a few hours ago
lodged 8 days ago
- Bolivar,Polk,MO
- $65 per month
- "Local people are great."
- "They are the only game in town and they act like it."
- "It must be oversold."
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As usual the bandwidth is oversold and they can rarely supply what they sell.
The people in sales will sell you promising a lower price. The lower price only lasts a month until billing catches up with some technicality that 'required' them to add another charge. This happened at least 3 times. However my last change ended up working out okay.
The people on the service line will almost always conclude that your computer is screwed up. Especially if it is a brand new Mac ... 'we don't support mac, it's your problem'. I even had one phone person say there were notes in their computer to watch out for me and 'someone must not like you'. Probably when I challenged their illogical conclusions.
The local guys are the best! They do the best they can with what they have to work with. If you can get the 'phone excuse' people to write a work ticket you can count on the local guys to do all they can to help you out.
Comments:
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Review by AckAck
member for 254 days, 9 visits, last login: 10 days ago
updated 10 days ago
- Auburn,Nemaha,NE
- Contract price not specified.
- "Not much of anything"
- "Promises 12Mbps, but you get mainly <2Mbps"
- "Run away...run away..."
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The Good: They really know how to apologize. They obviously have experience.
The Bad:
I have had DSL with Windstream since 2007, and at first I was quite happy with the service. About a year ago, we got a call from Windstream stating that they were willing to upgrade us from our 6Mbps plan to 12Mbps for only $5 a month more, and ever since it seems that the service has been up and down like a yo-yo. Most days I'm lucky to get a consistent 3Mbps, and sometimes it's 1Mbps with latency issues. I can't establish a reliable VPN connection to work with this, and streaming any video longer than about 20 seconds is near maddening. I wish that speedtest.net would log all of the times that the test won't even start due to latency errors.
If you decide to call support, a Windstream rep will be more than happy to placate you with apologies. I logged a ticket for slow connection speed, and about a month later I finally got a call back stating that they had located the problem and I should call if it persists. Well, nothing changed and I called them back.
11/18/11 - Speeds have improved but are still not consistent especially in the afternoon/evening time frame. I still stand by my original review until I can get proven reliable service.
12/11/11 - I'm back to getting service at less than 1Mbps on a 12mbps connection!
12/12/11 - Speeds are back to what I had from 11/18/11.
1/29/2012 - Speedtest shows 12Mbps, fairly regularly now, however I continue to be plagued with dropped connections. I tried to VPN into work tonight and after the 4th time that my VPN connection crashed in 20 minutes, I went to another location (which has a 5Mbps Time Warner connection, and I spent the next hour and a half on the VPN connection, with no loss of connection...Imagine that. I just need to convince my spouse that we can lose the bundle and stay with Dishnetwork (no problems there) and ditch the DSL and phone, and go with Roadrunner. 5Mbps RR account is soooooo much better than the herky jerkey "12 Mbps" DSL. No wonder cable is eating DSL's shorts. I jumped on the one price for life gig, but I'm not really looking forward to paying for crap for the rest of my life.
2/1/12 - Speedtest.net = 0.88Mbps.
Windstream strikes out again.
Comments:
TechsMex
join:2011-09-21
West Palm Beach, FL | Downgrade to 6mbps You would be better off downgrading to 6mbps until the overutilization issue can be resolved at the 12mbps level. | |
| | | | Re: Downgrade to 6mbps I have had the exact same issue and finally today got them to drop me down to 6MB. Unfortunately it won't be done till Monday and I will be out of town all week next week so I won't know if it is better until Friday. | |
| | | Reviews:
 ·Windstream
| Re: Downgrade to 6mbps Just make sure to check you bill next month. We asked for a change in service on the phone end due to some quality issues and found a somewhat cryptic additional charge on the bill. Only after calling customer service to contest the added charge did we find out that they charged the additional amount because we asked for a change in service (which we were told was to be gratis). | |
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 sgt
@windstream.net | isp failure I would like to know what is wrong with Windstream Nation Wide. Why have the lines all become so congested so that no one has any consistent speeds, and are always dropping. My service only works early in the morning. I was told that Windstream oversold in my area, causing bottle necks and serious slows. I have also been told for months that it is being looked into, but I dont think it is since it is still not fixed. What is the deal behind all of this. Over selling, not repairing, all accross the US. | |
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 Review by coldmoon
member for 10 years, 1563 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 10 days ago
- Broadway,Lee,NC
- $90 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 10 days
- "Tech support personnel are honest and do the best they can"
- "Over priced, oversubscribed, poor connection quality, frequent outages with consistent packet loss..."
- "Bottom line? If you can get another service provider, do so and don't look back!"
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Completely overpriced for the service they deliver. Network is over-subscribed to such a degree that watching simple YouTube videos comes with extreme buffering, making the service useless for anything other than checking e-mail and working on on-line forums that have no video content.
If this is broadband, I would hate to see the opposite...
Bottom line? If you can get another service provider, do so and don't look back!
Comments:
 IconTime KeeperPremium,VIP,MVM
join:2004-01-07
Little Rock, AR
kudos:3 | International LD isn't free I take it you didn't realize that "Unlimited Long Distance" means domestic long distance only? Otherwise, $60/month for 3/768 DSL, Long Distance, and all calling features is a good deal. Are you having problems with your internet also, or is the rant just about the International long distance? | |
| | coldmoonPremium
join:2002-02-04
Broadway, NC Reviews:
·Windstream
| Re: International LD isn't free quote:
I take it you didn't realize that "Unlimited Long Distance" means domestic long distance only?...
Hi Icon,
It is not that this was a mystery as I also have an international calling plan which is expected to have charges. The issue was that marketing presented a different "description" of what the bundle was supposed to cost.
Before the change to the Internet/phone bundle I had separate DSL and local land line service from Windstream with long distance provided by Sprint. This was costing (minus the Sprint LD service) ~$94/month without any long distance phone charges.
When cold called by marketing, I was pitched a bundle of internet and phone (local & Long distance services) for ~$60/month with unlimited LD in the US. This is a great deal I said to myself as I had the potential of seeing a large discount on what I have been paying for several years now.
Note: I fully expected that international calls would be an additional charge as well as the taxes for those calls plus the usual international cell phone connection fees (when appropriate).
When I got my bill this month, I was surprised to see that my actual bill had increased marginally rather than seeing the substantial savings I was anticipating due to the inclusion of fees and service charges that the marketeer had intimated were included in the $59.95 bundle price.
quote:
...Are you having problems with your internet also...?
The internet service has been solid without too many interruptions and I have always been satisfied with the physical service itself; where I have had issues overall is with the excessive cost of that service as compared to other areas in the Windstream network.
quote:
...or is the rant just about the International long distance?
There is no rant to what I wrote other than the fact that the service has always been overpriced for the speed available. The problem this review cycle is that I feel I was mislead by the marketing department. Whether this was due to lack of proper training for the marketeers or on purpose by omission is irrelevant as it still leads to a dissatisfied, long-term customer.
Kind regards
Mike
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Returnil - 21st Century body armor for your PC | |
| | | IconTime KeeperPremium,VIP,MVM
join:2004-01-07
Little Rock, AR
kudos:3 | Re: International LD isn't free Hi Mike, thanks for the clarification. I have sent you a PM. | |
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 WindstreamPremium,VIP
join:2009-03-31
Twinsburg, OH
kudos:28
2 edits | We are here to help! coldmoon - I apologize if you felt the savings from our calling plans were not what you were advised they would be. When you mention four times the amount for international calls I compared the rates for Windstream against TimeWarner cable (for the NC area) and found them to be very competitive. You can make this same analysis with the rate plans listed below, both of which can be found from the respective companies websites.
We do not require that you use Windstream for International calls. If there is anything we can do to assist you please let us know.
International Rates
Windstream International Rates - »www.windstream.com/residential/i···bers.pdf
TimeWarner Cable International Rates - »www.timewarnercable.com/Carolina···stChar=0
BP
--
We're here to help! wci.broadbandhelp@windstream.com | |
| | coldmoonPremium
join:2002-02-04
Broadway, NC Reviews:
·Windstream
| Re: We are here to help! Hi BP,
thanks for the reply.
quote:
...When you mention four times the amount for international calls I compared the rates for Windstream against TimeWarner cable (for the NC area) and found them to be very competitive.
TW is not available here. The service I had for LD was Sprint which charges only 8 cents/minute (landline - landline) to the country I call frequently. Windstream charges 17 cents/minute for the same service; calls to cell phones are 26 cents/minute where Sprint charges only 17.
As I call both LL and Cell phones in that country, the charges (on average) are almost 4 times what I was paying with Sprint. As I telecommute, this is excessive and will lead to my not using Winstream for international calling as I can call using my Sprint Cell account for less when needed...
This is not very competitive...
Kind regards
Mike
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Returnil - 21st Century body armor for your PC | |
| | | WindstreamPremium,VIP
join:2009-03-31
Twinsburg, OH
kudos:28
1 edit | Re: We are here to help! Have you tried checking out Vonage rates for International calls?
BP
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We're here to help! wci.broadbandhelp@windstream.com | |
| | | | coldmoonPremium
join:2002-02-04
Broadway, NC | Re: We are here to help! No I haven't but will check into it. Skype is also an alternative but the call quality is usually a crap shoot...
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Returnil - 21st Century body armor for your PC | |
| | | | | WindstreamPremium,VIP
join:2009-03-31
Twinsburg, OH
kudos:28 | Re: We are here to help! I have used Vonage personally and never really experienced any issues with the call quality. It might be a good solution for you. I have not used Skype myself so I cannot comment on it.
BP
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We're here to help! wci.broadbandhelp@windstream.com | |
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Review by Bodybagger
member for 1.8 years, 436 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 11 days ago
- Saint Matthews,Calhoun,SC
- $45 per month
- "None"
- "Everything"
- "St. Matthews, SC Service Horrid!"
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Update 1-31-12
Service still goes out at random times. We have had better service over the past few months than we have had in a long time, but regardless where we live the issues are still present. There is no fix unless everything in this area is brought up to date as far as equipment and lines. We also have a shredded phone box that serves our road that has been this way since summer of last year. Cost keeps going up for the service and the quality/speeds stay down the drain. I still wouldn't recommend Windstream to anyone... ever. Maybe one day we will get some competition out here and put this company out of business. Or atleast make them fix their horrible service.
I would greatly recommend another DSL provider over this company. We've had so many problems from outages, random drops, latency issues, packet loss, and overall slow speeds. We live just in range to only be able to receive the 1.5Mbps package and alot of the time it isn't even that. So many phone calls to Windstream about speed issues and they want to sell us the 3Mbps package because it is "available" in our area and we "can" run it stable. Once they hook us up to the 3Mbps, drops are seen about every minute. Simply put, LIES!
Anyway, someone lives here that works from home and they have lost wages and time due to the internet service. Windstream cannot do anything about that... but they USE to until it was costing them too much money due to the amount of complaints they were receiving.
If Windstream doesn't have the monopoly in your area like they do here, I would greatly recommend choosing a different service. Windstream is applying for a good amount of money to "upgrade and improve" their equipment, but alot of rural areas will probably never see it. We have some of the worst and oldest equipment in our area and that is the reason we are having so many issues... and Windstream isn't going to spend the money to update old "junk" this far out from town. Words straight from a Windstream tech...
-An issue has been going on with this terrible company for at least 4 months. Since early December our internet service has been slower than dial-up usually at or around peak times (7est-11:30est). We've been lied to over and over on when the issue will be resolved. Nothing has been done to correct our problems no matter how many times we call and complain. We've contacted the BBB on them and still haven't received the service we pay for every month. We pay $45 a month for 1.5Mb speed because we cannot get anything faster. We have no other providers in our area. I've seen where other places pay $45 a month for 20Mb down 2Mb up. If we had another choice this company would never get another penny from us. I would recommend to anyone that has other options other than Windstream to really consider who they want to provide their internet services. And yes Windstream may be $5 cheaper in areas that have cable or AT&T, etc. but you are much, much better off than ever dealing with this terrible ISP. It would save you alot of hassle in the long run.-
Comments:
WindstreamPremium,VIP
join:2009-03-31
Twinsburg, OH
kudos:28 | Service Issues Bodybagger - If you can reply and send us your phone number by email or PM we can look into the issues you have been experiencing, and work to get your connection stabilized.
-BP
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We're here to help! wci.broadbandhelp@windstream.com | |
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Review by Wraith512
member for 30 days, 23 visits, last login: 2 days ago
lodged 12 days ago
- Snyder,Kiowa,OK
- Contract price not specified.
- "They had a OK tech."
- "Everything"
- "Don't get unless you rarely use it!!"
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Well I guess I will start off by saying that do not get them. I have had problems since day 1. I ordered the 12MBS package just internet. The price I felt was not that bad if I could at least use it. I ordered it on like a Monday and a tech came out the next day and made sure everything was set up OK. That Thursday I had installed it myself ( Not very hard if you know what you are doing) I got it turned on 1/12/2012
My first problem came when I had hooked my Xbox 360 up to the modem/Router, I would get into a game (Call of Duty, ETC) and then I would be plagued by horrible lag and noticed my connection in game was terrible.
I have tried to resolve this by calling multiple times, but they would either say "O well you are just on during peak times" or " Sorry for the trouble we will send a tech out ASAP' I cannot in anyway at all play on Xbox Live (I know its not on Microsoft's end at all) The issue still has not been resolved .
Now, (1/30/2012) here lately I have been in college and i was taking a couple of quizzes and failed them because the internet connection completely timed out and messed up. So I am quite mad about that because its not exactly something that can be easily fixed.
To me I do not think they care because we are just another $$$ or ### to them. Its quite obvious because of other people I have talked to, (whether it be customers, tech(s), my experience etc) that they are SERIOUSLY over sold on bandwidth. I have had a tech come out several times and check everything to make sure its OK, but I am still plagued with horrible load times on pages and no Xbox Live still.
I have to give the tech some credit though because he was quite personable about the matter and tried helping but its still hasn't helped me.
I WILL update this review if service does get better.
So take what you will from this review.
Comments:
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Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain windstream.net)
lodged 15 days ago
- Shepherdsville,Bullitt,KY
- Contract price not specified.
 AllTel- "Poor response to phone calls regarding internet problems."
| Pre Sales information:
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Windstream operator told me I would get a call back from technical service in regards to my problem; that was two days ago.
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