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Review by jcouillard 
Posted: 6.4 years ago
member for 6.4 years, 1 visits, last login: 6.4 years ago
 Novi,Oakland,MI
 $2000 per month (12 month contract)
 about 150 days
 Covad
CLEC party: Covad
 "I get billed once a month for my service for all of my sites"
 "They are not all on the same bill"
 "Moses could part the Red Sea, but DSL.NET can't send me just one bill."
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Latest Fiasco
I currently have 7 locations with DSL.NET connected together using their Shasta VPN solution. Its set up to resemble a traditional Frame Relay network, where every site has to go through corporate to get anywhere. All remote sites are at 384Kbs except for two that can only get ISDL, and the head end was a 768Kbs Frac-T1.
At the end of January I found out by asking that I could save about $50 per month on my Frac-T1 if I upgraded the line to a full T1. Big no-brainer, so I faxed back the contract, and emailed my account rep (the fourth one that I've had since Exario, formerly Ultracom, sold my accounts to DSL.NET) that I had just faxed it to him. I even got a reply from him that he'd received them and was going to take care of them now.
Switch to last week (first week of June), while running some newly acquired snmp bandwidth utilites, I found that I really hadn't been upgraded, and that I'm still running at 768Kbs. So, a little confused, I email my account rep, and ask what the status is. Long story short, they misplaced the order, and I had to resubmit a new contract. Ok, nobody's perfect and I should have been checking all along, but I have been paying $50.00 more a month for at least the last 4 months than what I should have been.
So after geting the contact faxed (and emailed this time) back, I was told that they would make this move a priority. When I heard that, I should have been more concerned than what I was. That night (Monday) at 9:30pm I get an emergency page. It seems that a senior VP and another manager suddenly couldn't get to their file servers from across the DSL.NET VPN. Thinking it was a headspace and timing issue, I jumped into the network and started looking around. In minutes I found that I couldn't see any of my DSL VPN sites. So, I called their support line at about 20 minutes to 10pm, had to leave a message since they didn't seem to have any after hours people. I didn't receive a call back until 20 after 11pm and that was just a message telling me that when I got into the office in the morning, reboot the router and call back. When I finally did get someone after 8am the next morning (they said to call back after 6:30am, and I had been trying since 6:50am) we found out that at 9:00pm the night before they upgraded my line from 768Kbs to the full T1. The problem (among many) was that they didn't reconfigure my router (which they do have the ability to do) to use 24 channels, it was still configured to only use 12. Once I made this change and rebooted the router the line came right back up and I was able to see all of my sites.
Morale of the story, 1.) They screwed up the initial upgrade request.
2.) In an effort to rectify that, they planned a significant change to my network at my request, but didn't communicate with me when it would take place.
3.) After they made the change, as far as I know, they didn't test through to make sure that the upgrade was successful.
3a.) If they did test through, they didn't contact me to let me know that the upgrade failed (no connectivity to upgraded site).
Recommendations, go with someone else if you don't want additional stress. Resolutions, when my contracts are up, I will move my service to someone else.
Jeff Couillard
Sr. Network Engineer
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Review by vugluskr
Posted: 6.5 years ago
member for 6.5 years, 1 visits, last login: 6.5 years ago
San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
$50 per month
SBC
CLEC party: Covad
"average DSL service"
"terrible customer service, fraudulent billing practices"
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DSL.NET arbitrarily discloses its 30-day termination policy to block customers from leaving. -
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In 2002 DSL.NET, which is a business-oriented ISP, acquired
my personal DSL account form APLUS.NET. In the process they
claimed that my contract with APLUS will remain in place.
In 2003 I decided to sign with another ISP. I called
DSL.NET on April 20th, they said ''OK, we'll close it''. I
saw the charge on my credit card statement and called on
May 15th, they said ''Sorry, we have a 30-day written
termination notice policy, your line will be on for another
month and you will get billed'' (APLUS.NET did not have a 30-
day termination policy). I sent a fax to them with date and
signature, dated May 15th. May 21 I called again to check -
they ignored the fax and there were no traces of my calls
or faxes in the system.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 6.6 years ago
(review was emailed from domain attbi.com)
Norwood,Norfolk,MA
 Business customer
$220 per month
"Decent music when put on hold"
"Your on hold long enough to realize this"
"Incompetent support, staff largely not knowledgable"
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We've had it with them. They've been unable to get support for Servlets up and running, and they've had four weeks to do it. Servlets are a part of one of their base packages too. And this isn't anything complicated. They can't even run a simple "hello world" app.
Pretty scary.
Since we really can't wait any longer I had to convert a desktop machine
laying around the office into a web server running tomcat. I then
loaded in the code we wanted and got it running in less than 2 hrs. The
web hosting / tech support department at DSL.net is grossly incompetent
and based on the fact that the average hold time when calling them for
support is 30 minutes before you talk to a person (who lies to you and
tells you everything is working when it is easy to demostrate that it is
not), I feel it deserves the lowest of ratings.
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Review by randyrat
UPDATED: 6.8 years ago
member for 6.9 years, 32 visits, last login: 4 years ago
Kansas City,Jackson,MO
$300 per month (12 month contract)
Southwestern Bell
CLEC party: Covad
"None that I can see."
"They have no clue what they are doing"
"Look elsewhere. We are."
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We have had DSL.net for a few years now. However, we are now shopping around for a new isp because of the shoddy work they did during our recent move.
We called over a month before our move and set up a date that everything was to be switched over at the new location. We were assured by the account rep that everything would be. The day of the move we arrive and find out nothing has been installed. I call our account rep to find out what is going on and he refused to ever return any phone calls. So, I escallated it by calling their corporate offices.
I was told it would be over a week before our lines would be in. Apparently there was some trouble finding a pair to enter the building. I can handle that there may be problems like this. What I can't handle is being told "we sent you an email telling you of this problem". Checking my mail server logs, there was NEVER a single email sent to anyone in our office from DSL.net. They told us that people were sent out here but they could not do anything because nobody was in the office. Again, this is pure bunk - nobody needs to be in our suite of offices to get to the publicly accessable from the stairwell phone closet for this building. I talked to a number of SWB guys who were here doing other wiring and they all agreed that nothing at all had been done by Covad and they could not understand why.
After threatening multiple times and multiple people with changing ISPs, DSL.net finally had us online two days later. All was still not good though.
They decided to do what we were told would not happen - change our IP addresses. The Covad tech was not informed of this, nor were we. After calling and talking to them a while, our IP addresses were switched back to what they had been. But....
A week after, I came into the office to find the net connection down. Why? They decided to change our IP addresses on us and did not inform us of this. Only after i called them did I learn this had taken place.
DSL.net never tells you what the hell is going on until you call in. Phone calls are never returned when promised. Their technical decisions are apparently made by either flipping a coin or looking at a magic 8 ball.
Stay far away from DSL.net, and if you do have them, run.
UPDATED 1/4/03:
Last night around 4:00 PM, DSL.net decided to have Covad shut down our new line and hook it up at our OLD location. As of 10:00 AM Saturday our connection is STILL not up. What is up with these people? DSL.net is the most incompetant ISP it has ever been my misfortune to encounter.
Update 1/10/03:
At 10:30 AM, DSL.net once again disconnected our service.
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Review by astrassb
UPDATED: 7.8 years ago
member for 8.1 years, 93 visits, last login: 7.5 years ago
Soquel,Santa Cruz,CA
$179 per month (12 month contract)
about 20 days
DSL.Net
CLEC party: SBC
"got out of the contract"
"nobody home - no support, no billing dep't"
"avoid this ISP like the plague"
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DSL.Net is doomed. I signed up for 384K SDSL business class service @ $179/mo. They were reasonably quick to deploy despite a very unclear install schedule. The rest was downhill. Tried to reach technical support - tried over 8 hours (1 hr x 8 tries) and even used the "network DOWN" selection. Nobody home. Emailed support 10 times - no response at all. Tried to reach billing department - can only email (no phone) and no response at all to emailing every several days. Tried all the above for 3 weeks. Though my speed was 384K/384K I never saw anything above 300K in repeated tests.
I was fortunate enough to cancel my contract in 30 days on their "Quality of Service" clause. Whew!
If you are in Soquel or Capitola CA there will be new PacBell "terminal" available 12/31/2001 and you will be able to get fast ADSL from a good ISP like sonic.net . I am in Soquel at 21,000 feet and will soon be only 100 feet.
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update 4 Feb 2002
DSL.net is really a mess. After canceling my contract on 25 Oct 2001 I had to call them on 24 Jan 2002 (3 month later!) to get the paperwork processed. They did this but somehow (anybodys' guess) issued a new connect for Prodigy. This meant I couldn't move to another ISP and despite many phone calls (at least DSL.net answers the phone now) they claimed the line was free and clear. Fortunately with the help on sonic.net (damn these guys are good) I was able to get a manager from SBC on the phone, and undo the hold on the line.
DSL.net is completely without any redeeming value at all. Sonic.net is to be highly praised for going the extra mile to help resolve my problem. Thank you SBC too for helping sort this mess out.
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Review by gregarious
Posted: 7.9 years ago
member for 7.9 years, 2 visits, last login: 7.9 years ago
Conshohocken,Montgomery,PA
Contract price not specified.
CLEC party: DSL.Net
"I got rid of them!"
"Poor customer service, Extremely long "on hold" times, shoddy service"
"Don't even think about it"
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I was solicited by DSL.net because my then ISP at the time Zyan Communications filed for bankruptcy and DSL.net was aquiring the assets. They offered a transition for customers over to them if you didn't want disruption of service. They made it easy for you -directing you to their web site and put in your personal info along with credit card. Well first bad sign, there was three days of disruption followed by several contacts with tech support to get me re-connected. I also had learned the hard way that I had to repeatedly disconnect the modem for a minute or so and reconnect because my service kept dropping off. (never had that issue with Zyan).
My service was affected by the Sept. 11th attacks as probably most were, but though the incident was clearly beyond their control, I waited like everyone else to come back online. Businesses were of course the priority. However, it took me two weeks to finally get through to them (after extremely long hold times - some were -no joke - up to 3 hours). When I finally got a live pulse, I was asked why a I didn't report this sooner with them? They did finally issue me a credit for the downtime, but service continued to be hit or miss.
One wek later, I called them to request a cancellation of service. I was told to simply fax over a written request of my intent. I did. A week goes by and I call to follow up with them (even though they have all of your contact info to begin with) and find out no record was found. I had to re-fax again. Another week goes by and I call back again to follow up. My request was finally executed and I asked for a final bill to pay out the balance. I was told that their billing system was automated and they could not manually generate a total. I should just pay the next bill in full and would be credited later. We'll I paid my balance off!
Two months pass and I get two more billing invoices. I called them and was told their billing system was down and to call back later...I call back later and was informed of a one year contract by a rude customer rep. The invoices were "cancellation" fees. I tried to dispute the charges (even come to some negotiation) but again was rudely told "tough" and to "Have a nice day".
We'll as customer I don't appreciate the "service" provided and was not told of any binding contract when we were transitioned over. With all the contacts I have made with DSL.net they coulds have AT LEAST notified the customer of such penalizations. You think they could have just said, "You know Mr. X, you may terminate your service with us but you will be charged a cancellation fee". Not one customer service rep! And when trying to dispute the charges I was told "sorry" by their RUDE customer service.
(Guess my attorney will have to tell them to "Have a Nice Day").
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 8 years ago
(review was emailed from domain advantagenetworking.com)
Lansdale,Montgomery,PA
Business customer
Contract price not specified. (12 month contract)
Verizon (ex GTE)
CLEC party: Covad
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DSL.net
Review: Near horror story.
Did not meet quoted installation date.
We ordered 1.5m SDSL line - received 1.0m. No explanation. We had to submit
a change order for the 1.5m provisioned speed.
Sales representative never returns phone calls / faxes or emails when
requested. Always different excuse.
Tech misconfigured our router and relayed the incorrect information for our
network config.
Be prepared to be on hold with tech support for a minimum of an hour any
time you call!
We would NOT recommend DSL.net!
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Review by rench
Posted: 8.2 years ago
member for 8.7 years, 16 visits, last login: 7.8 years ago
Hartford,Hartford,CT
Business customer
$500 per month (12 month contract)
Southern New England Telephone
"NONE"
"THEY ARE INEPT"
"BEWARE OF FALSE GOOD REPORTS"
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DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THESE LAME PEOPLE.
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Review by lprevost
Posted: 8.2 years ago
member for 8.6 years, 19 visits, last login: 7.6 years ago
Raleigh,Wake,NC
$50 per month (12 month contract)
about 70 days
BellSouth
CLEC party: Chazy and Westport Telephone CO.
"Consciencious tech support people that hate that their customers are getting treated badly"
"Bait and switch, poor connection, poor coordination, unethical, incompetent"
"Do not use this provider if reliability is a concern"
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Its hard to determine where to begin with this crowd:
1) Initial sales rep (Ed) "forgot" to turn in our order paperwork where we ordered the service 90 days before our office move. We called to ask why they haven't given us install dates 15 days before our move and foundout that Ed "forgot" to turn in our paperwork. The tech services people pulled off installation in less than 20 days which still caused our office move to occur a week late.
2) Service reliability was good first 4 months but tech service resulted in 1/2 hour to hour wait times in phone queue. They were good if you could ever get them on the phone.
3) Beginning in late July, we had several 1/2 day disruptions of service.
4) In mid July, we got a letter saying they were migrating our DSL line to the facilities of their "partner" Covad Communications and that our service would be disrupted to change the router and IP configuration. They promised they would call us and let us know when the changeover date was scheduled in order to minimize disruption. Today, we find that they disconnected our DSL line without calling us to schedule the changeover (as they promised). We spend 1/2 day and several hours on hold to get new router installed and configured on Covad's line (supported by DSL tech support). Once the router pings, I ask for help on our DHCP and NT configurations and they say "they aren't allowed" even though it was their migration that caused me to need help. I have to hire a network specialist to reconfigure our DHCP server.
. . . We're now looking for another service for our business and will probably look at frac t1 for reliability reasons. Here is a copy of the letter we are sending DSL today:
Our letter to DSL.net which we are sending today:
Per your letter to me of 7/25/01 regarding migrating me to Covad's local POP, you told me this: "You will be notified, via phone, by a DSL.net representative of the date the Telephone company will be making this change. You will receive this notification within 48-72 hours of the actual date we expect the change to occur."
This morning around 9am, our service went down and we had no prior warning from you or anyone else that this changeover would occur today. Our business, which is an Internet business with 8 employees that depend on the reliability of this connection, was disrupted all morning.
I called your tech support to get help, waited on hold for 29 minutes, and worked for several hours with Alex who found out at the same time that I did that you guys cut us over without notifiying us. He got the router up and running and left me and my business hanging completely without service as he was not allowed to help me with the needed changed on my DHCP server at our location (everything worked fine before you imposed this migration on me). I had to track down a local network specialist to help me through the disruption you have imposed on me.
If I had been notified prior to this, I could have arranged to have a network specialist on location to help me through this disruption you have caused to our business.
To add insult to injury, this is the 4th time we've been down for over 1 hour this month (reportedly because of client based code red worm problems but later admitted by Todd in your tech support group that the problems were DSL core router problems) and we had this occur several times last month as well (1/2 day on 7/19 or 7/20).
Also, when we were considering your service, we told your sales representative (Ed) that we were very upset with Covad's service and Ed made a big point about how DSL's network and service was superior to Covad's and this greatly influenced our buying decision. Now, you've baited us (with a better service claim) and now have switched us (to Covad).
We have lost total faith in your company and your ability to plan, communicate, and provide service. As such, we will beging the process of evaluating our other options. This email will become part of the record. I also expect an email back from you letting me know how you plan to handle this with respect to billing/SLA agreements.
With disgust,
Lee Prevost
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Review by philcase
Posted: 8.3 years ago
member for 8.3 years, 14 visits, last login: 8.2 years ago
Springfield,Greene,MO
$275 per month (12 month contract)
about 30 days
Southwestern Bell
CLEC party: DSL.Net
"800 number for phone calls I guess"
"Contract not being honored"
"Up to you"
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7/29/2001
Mr. Gerald Sorensen
National Account Executive
DSL.NET Inc.
Mr. Sorensen:
We received a letter from DSL.NET stating that DSL.NET is pulling out of the
CO's in Springfield, MO. This letter states that service will terminate on
August 1st. Which leaves us 25 business days to arrange new service. The
problem is that the contract that DSL.NET signed does not give your firm
this option. Your contract only provides for DSL.NET to terminate the
contract as a response to a breach of contract condition on the part of the
customer. Clearly not the case presented here.
As such I have advised our legal council to research appropriate remedies
should this account be terminated without either fulfilling the terms of
the contract or appropriately compensating CIDC for the financial
damages that the business relationship with DSL.NET has/will cause.
Due to the insufficient time provided for this notification it is my
estimate that these losses are likely to be significantly more that the
total value of this contract.
I have a recorded telephone conversation with you as the representative of
DSL.NET wherein you state that in the event that DSL.NET was to leave this
market that CIDC would have "AT LEAST 90 DAYS" notice before service would
be terminated.
I would appreciate a response from your supervisor as to how this situation
will be handled. Further please advise as to who the appropriate
representative is, in your legal department, that I can direct our council
too for further contact.
Please be advised that I have CC'd this email to various individuals within
DSL.NET that I've had a variety of contact with over the past 4 months.
I've also sent copies of this email to the public DSL.NET Yahoo Forum and
the DSLREPORTS.COM in the consideration that other customers in a similarly
compromised position should be aware of these issues in their contracts.
[For other DSL.NET customers: If you too find yourself in this unfortunate
position and feel that there might be value in working together as a group
to protect our common interests, I'd advise that you contact me via email.
In time I expect our attorneys to advise as to what remedies may or may not
exist in this situation. I will start an email newsgroup for the purpose of
sharing information about this situation. My email addresses are
phil@cidc.com and philcase@yahoo.com].
Sincerely,
Phil Case
CIDC
pcase@cidc.com
philcase@yahoo.com
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DSLnet Inc
