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At first, I thought it would be the best ISP I ever had. Boy, was I ever fooled. This experience was the worst ISP experience I ever had! I originally subscribed in September of 2001. The speeds were good, the service was installed in a reasonable amount of time. Those were the good points. Now the bad. The billing department must have been on crack. They screwed up my billing on all but three bills, began billing me before the service even worked then decided not to send me a bill for four months, then decided to charge me a fee for receiving my bill in the mail!\ Then, the real fun began. The service went completely down in April of 2002 and remain almost completely unusable until almost August of 2002. They continued to send bills charging me for the entire time (finally dropped). The service, when restored, was lucky to reach 100.0 (even though I was promised a minimum of 120.0) and most of the time was lucky to hit 75.0. Then at the end of September 2002 it began to lose sync and drop connections alot - finally going almost inoperable again by the first week of October. I receive one phone call (have an answering machine and caller ID) being told "We've been trying to get hold of you for some time". Yeah, right fool! They deal with the problem, never verify if the problem was fixed - and their solution? Slow me down to 30.0 and charge me the same freaking rate. Now, they have changed their TOS to warn people if their bill is 10 days late they'll disconnect you immediately and charge you a bunch of reconnection fees. This, after not being able to restore my service for ALMOST A YEAR? THIS ISP IS IN SERIOUS TROUBLE. THEIR TECH SUPPORT IS THREE STATES AWAY AND CAN BARELY SPEAK PROPER ENGLISH. THEIR TECH SUPPORT DOES NOT FOLLOW UP AND IS INEPT IN FIXING EVEN THE MOST MINOR PROBLEM. DEAL WITH ANYONE BUT ACCESS US OR YOU'LL BE DEARLY SORRY. Update: Last I heard they wen't under. Shouldn't have shocked me if they did. member for 22.7 years, 611 visits, last login: 348 days ago updated 13.2 years ago
I was a DSL customer from early 2000 until November 2009. I was very happy with the technology and the overall service in the nearly 10 years I was a user of the technology. I am a cable internet user now and I do not like it. My life changed radically and this made me have to change. (10/19/2004) - Update. Experienced intermittent noise on the line, and also intermittent loss of internet access. Made the mistake of calling SBC Yahoo tech support, when I should have dealt with it purely on the "phone" side. They "capped" me at 2.5Mbps, saying... "To stabilize you, we are changing your profile to a lower throughput..." Urgh. (9/27/2004) - After that last update, I stuck with AccessUS a little while longer, but in the end, I left them. I went with SBC Yahoo, got the Expert Plus plan based on my distance of under 9,000 feet, I get 6Mbps down. Very happy with the stability. Nice pings on game servers. Overall, happy with the service so far. (02/09/2004) - Update. Well, my experience with DSL has changed. From my original connection (which did not use filters since it was a separate copper wire drop from the phone pole) to my current connection which uses filters on my original phone line, my connection has been less than great. It's been... "o.k" I've had a few sync issues, and my connection download throughput dropped to 1.1Mbps and the upload throughput dropped to around 110Kbps. On 2/6/2004 a major (as far as I'm concerned) interruption occured where sync was not occuring. I called DSL tech support at 6pm all the way up until 8pm (posted hours of operation for technical support are 8am to 8pm CST Monday - Friday) and did not even get a chance to leave a message. At this point, since I did not have internet, I couldn't very well E-mail technical support, could I? I left a message with the account manager and did not receive a call back. Service did return that night, but not having any information about what was happening was disconcerting. I am seriously considering going to another provider. If I could get the SBC Expert Plus (Download 1.5-3.0Mbps, Upload maximum 384Kbps) I would go to it no question. It's only $44.99 or so and that would be acceptable to me. I think 8 years from one company (Primary/MPower/AccessUS) might be long enough. (09/26/2001) This review is primarily a notice to AccessUS. I do not require additional support at this time (9/26/2001) from AccessUS. I was a Primary Network/MPower customer from around March 2000. As you may see in my review of Primary, they had some initial issues as well, but of a different sort. (But the connection was nice....) I contacted AccessUS in August to ask them to add an additional email to my account as I was told that DSL customers would have 5 email accounts available. From that request (give me another email account) someone decided to enter my account as "Customer unhappy with DSL account and wishes to cancel..." (*This issue has been corrected.) Then there was the bill after the "cancel" episode and guess what, they wanted to charge me around $150 for my connection. (That's not the price I paid with Primary/MPower, and the paperwork I had seen to that point all stated "Pay the same amount you paid with Primary/MPower for the same performance or better...") (*This issue has been corrected.) Then in September, I received a piece of mail at home from AccessUS stating something to the effect of... Please return your hardware since you are cancelling your DSL account, *per the terms of the lease*. Well, if they had checked their records, I passed out of the "lease terms" after a year, so the hardware is mine now. (*This issue has been corrected.) I have a really nice connection of 1.5Mbps/384Kbps (Give or take) and I'm deliriously happy when it comes to my online gaming pings... I can on most days pull down in excess of 150KB on downloads, and that is just nice... They have for the most part kept their word as far as honoring my account being transferred from Primary/MPower to them. Just some annoying "What are they doing?" times as most issues have been taken care of reasonably... Oh, and I almost forgot, when they first sent me the "Conversion Packet" which contained the introduction to AccessUS, their list of contacts for the account, a referral slip, and some other information, they sent installation instructions for a dynamic IP connection rather than the static IP connection I was told I would be getting. This installation routine did not work. (*This issue has been corrected.) Jim Note, at this time, my connection seems to be o.k. Although, as I write this on (09/26/2001), the "Nimda" worm has been making trouble on all sorts of servers out there and this may be impacting my performance a little bit. member for 23.8 years, 104 visits, last login: 12.9 years ago updated 14 years ago
My main criteria was reliable high-speed DSL with a reasonable price, and that is what I got. The few problems I had were quickly resolved (but with long waits on the tech support line,) The speed package I purchased was 348k to 1.5mbps down and up to 128 up speeds for $13.50 plus telco user fees and tax. It comes to19.97 a month. The DSL modem came with the package as did 3 email accounts, and 30 Mb email storage. The modem was the standard SpeedStream 4100 DSL modem. Except for the long waits for customer service, I have no qualms about recommending this service. (Note - my local provider is Brick.net. They were bought by AccessUS a few months ago. The customer service is still through the Brick office.) After almost 2 years with Brick/Access US, I have to say it is great. No service outages, major upgrades to their hardware, and email filtering at the server makes them an even better choice. Also, the price has stayed the same. The call center must have added some new staff, because the wait times are much lower (about 5-7 minutes at peak hours) member for 16.5 years, 89 visits, last login: 10.5 years ago updated 15.6 years ago
You can read my escapade with our previous ISP here: »Review of Valuenet.net by tdclauss Bottom line, I was with a ISP that hosted spammers. I needed out, with a good clean ISP that could provide me with the service I required. Problem was, I couldn't just apply for an ISP switch, I had to have the service totally cut off and and then re-installed. Thing is, I found this out because I called Access US. Before ever spending a dime, or even comitting to spending a dime, they started doing the research on what it would take to get me off my old ISP and with a new one. They told me things that SBC couldn't tell me. Mostly because they kept pressing and talking to techs at SBC when I couldn't get further than a sales person. We ended up needed to drop a second line so we could keep service continuous through the cut over. As a result, it took some time to get the service going. They also discovered that there is a new RT that is less than 10k feet from our house. Access US didn't have the agreements in place yet to use it. Did that slow things down? Not a bit, they had the papers signed in a couple of days. Of course, it took SBC a couple of weeks to execute them, but Access US was happy to keep after them on my behalf. They had offered the superfast service that SBC had on special 6M/1.5M prior to having the wiring in place. Once they had the hookup, they found that it was not technically possible to provide that. Instead of messing around with me, they apologized and gave me a discounted 1.5/128 service. They even allowed me to set up e-mail accounts with them a couple of weeks before the service started, just so I could get away from the SPAM box at our old ISP. Oh, and the e-mail is sweet. It has a good web-interface, and can be access either via POP or IMAP. I really like having the IMAP capabilities. So nice if you use multiple computers as I do. Now that we're running, the speeds have been exactly as advertised, if not a little faster. Nice, since we supposedly had the same 1.5/128 from the old provider and the best we ever did was 340/100, but we were 16,500 ft from the CO, so that was a distance issue. We've had one 4 hour outage when their bandwidth provider's DNS machines suffered a meltdown. And when I called them about it, they had a Network Status message that had been updated in the previous 15 minutes. All I needed to know was that something was going on, and they made it very easy to find out. Since then, we've been hauling right along. The prices are easily the equivalent of our old ISP, but I don't have to worry about our e-mail disappearing into SPAM filters. So far, I've got nothing but big thumbs up for Access US. member for 20.2 years, 51 visits, last login: 10.1 years ago lodged 19.9 years ago
Access US must be in a new phase- I've read some of the other reviews for this company and cant imagine what they are talking about. I recently moved to the area- and decided to get connected. With having had bad experiences in the past with DSL companies that folded- I thought it would be a good idea to start small- see how they are... then move up in speed from there. After getting connected, I dialed in, and lo and behold- NO busy signals.. NO booting off... wow- I'm connected! I had a minor question about my email- sent a quick note to CustomerCare@accessus.net, and was responded to quickly! Now that was a suprise to me- no holding on waiting for DAYS for a reply... I think whatever issues this company was having in the past- hopefully its just that- the past... and wont come back to haunt me! member for 20.8 years, 3 visits, last login: 20.8 years ago lodged 20.8 years ago
OK, Access US switched from static IP to dynamic IP now via PPPoE (was static without PPPoE b4). Hmm. (Since IP Com bit the dust they went with Covad). And my speeds dropped from 900k or 1000 to a usual 500 or so. So, I am paying the same amount for about 50% of what I was recieving before? Access US answer? "Well I guess you need a professional install". THIS after THEY did the original install. (I guess it wasn't "professional" back then?) The cost? $175. And average hold time for tech support? THREE hours. AND that is only Monday through Friday (9 to 5)!!! (With breaks apparently at 10 and 3 and an hour lunch..wish I had a job where you work 6.5 hours and get paid for 8! AND no weekends or holidays to work!) So, I called SBC. Let's see. For $5 less a month I can get a bit better connection. I tried calling thier tech support all kinds of hours of the day for a week and usually got to talk with someone in about 5 minutes (including weekends). OK, I don't know if they were knowlegable or not, but I DID get in to tech support for DSL! (A LOT better that Access US...or should I say NONAccess US!) Ignore the old dated responses sice they were b4 the switch to Covad. This was submitted 3-12-03. Well, looks like SBC for me! Will let you know how it goes. Still PPPoE, but can get static if I want to shell out for it ($65 a month). So, I placed an order on Friday March 7th. Supposed to be live 5 biz days after order. AND, with the order I get "free" equipment" a new Speedstream "modem" (I will use it as a back-up,,already have one) and an external NIC (Will use it when I build a new puter as my laptop has a NIC already). Oh the cost I should mention: Access US $39.99 for (0) to 1500 connection (never got above 500 or so after switch to Covad). And I should point out that they still advertise static IP, but they don't actually have it. Just look at accessus.net, its still there on thier site. (Oh, and if you weren't a convert from MPower it's $79.95 a month for "basic" DSL) Verses SBC, 385 to 1500 for $35.95. WITH Tech support where you can actually GET a real person on the phone in about 5 minutes, verses SEVERAL hours of hold time as with Access US. ******3-14-03. I moved on to SBC, and I LOVE them. Actual...real... 24/7 tech support that actully knows how to help!!! (and getting about 1200 down and 130 or so up!) member for 23.4 years, 182 visits, last login: 4.6 years ago updated 21 years ago
AccessUS's apparent incopetence knows no bounds. The company has the feel like they've outsourced EVERY bit of service and customer interaction they have. One hand doesn't know who's ass the other one's thumb is up. Doesn't matter one bit if your service works and you don't ever need support from them, unfortunatly for me, I did. I started service with AccessUS after my Phoenix Networks SDSL line finally died with Northpoint. This would have been around May of 2001. 1.5 by 384 for $49.99 a month, $39.99 introductory rate for a couple of months, and about $250 for nessesary equipment, installation and whatnot. My father about 1/2 a mile away had the same deal, and to date his still works flawlessly with the exception that (despite contract) they have since capped his up to 128K. My circuit was a whole other ball of wax, one sprinkled with dispair and pain. The tech didn't arrive when he was supposed to, things had to be resheduled. Line was finally installed and worked great for about a day. Speeds were slow as the Speedstream box continued to negotiate lower and lower connection speeds due to line noise. No problem I thought, I'll just call a ticket. Despite all their efforts over the months, and all my calls, I never received a stable circuit. It would often go down for hours at a time and was available maybe 1/3rd of the time in any given day. They had been out to my house several times, and despite always "finding the problem" apparently they hadn't, because it was always a matter of a few days before things would start back up again. Now being that I'm a pretty understanding guy, and that by trade I too work in information technology, I was quite content to fiddle with it, call in tickets, and work the system as intended. It seemed I could always get it to work when I needed while I was home. However, in September of 2002 my circuit went down for the final time. I called a ticket in, and after 7 days received neither a response nor a working circuit. I called to cancel service. With old service canceled I ordered new with Speakeasy. Today I continue to be billed by AccessUS. Numerous contacts with AccessUS billing staff have failed to remedy the situation. Faxes to Mr. McAnally as requested have also failed. Today is January 3rd, 2003 and I've just received a bill for $310.59 for service from September 2002 that I have not received and requested cancled. Funny how a $49.00 a month service costs nearly twice that when you don't even receive the service. I've filed a complaint against AccessUS with the Better Business Bureau today. member for 21.2 years, 3 visits, last login: 21 years ago lodged 21.2 years ago
Alright... here's the deal.. I'm readin' all these horrid reviews about AccessUS, and up until a few days ago, I was a little cheesed at them too... but now I feel like stickin' up for em... Let's just get this straight... EVERY SINGLE ONE of the bad reviews (that I noted) was from a former MPower customer who had conversion issues... so.. if you are a former MPower customer who needs converting.. (which there are no more left of) then sure... I'd stay away... (or else cancel out Mpower totally and start fresh with AccessUS, but hey... hindsight is 20/20) anywhoo..if you are NEW to DSL and want the best bang for the buck,... then go with AccessUS. And here's my story just so you don't all come back with, "well.. I hope you never have to use TECH SUPPOT!!" I signed up with AccessUS and they said it would take about 7 working days to get it set up... that was great... after they had already set up the appointment, I had an issue that made me think I might be moving to a new apartment, so I called them and had to cancel my install... well... a day later I found out I didn't have to move, so I called back and they were very prompt to reschedule. On top of that, I don't use SWBell for phone service (cause they're evil ) and so they had to install a second line in my house just for DSL... all of this was handled just fine, and the total cost of the install was 50 bucks (cause of the second line thing,.. it would have been free otherwise). Now... I also was planning to serve (both web serve and game serve) so AccessUS's connection was the most attractive to me. I consistently get 1000/1400 down connections (once I clocked it at 1.59Mps.. whoo hoo) and 325/350 up... which is perfect. There is no other provider that offers 1500/384 for 50 bucks a month, except for Earth Link, but they charge you 15 bucks a month MORE for a static IP, which Access includes for free. So... thus far we have the best bang for the buck,... and great speeds... my online gaming is insane... with dial up I had 300 avg ping (on a good day).. now I go on some servers with 40 ping... 40 PING!?!?!?! that's just crazy... anywhey...on to the problems. I've had my line go down for a few hours a couple times... once for almost a day. But fairly sporadic. Most of the problems happened within the first month and since then have been fairly smooth. Now.. each and every time I had a problem I called tech support and got through RIGHT AWAY to a live person... I don't know what friggin' line you people are calling, but I have NEVER once had to leave a message because if I get that "please leave a message" thing, I just hang up and try again. Now... One time I had an connection problem and they, in attempting to fix it, thought that maybe my Router was bad.. so in the span of ONE HOUR I had THREE PEOPLE call me... one from AccessUS tech.. another from AccessUS customer service who wanted to send me a new router.. and another from IP communications explaining why I had the problem. All this was corrected within the day and I didn't need the new router. A little over a week ago I had my line go down on a Saturday... unfortunately, AccessUS relies on IP Communications for their hardware tech support... so if something happens on a weekend (when IPC is closed) then you might, under certain circumstances, not be able to restore service until Monday... which is what happened.. My service was out all day Saturday and Sunday... and I called during that time to report it... (and talked to a few people and opened a trouble ticket) well.. when I woke up Monday it was on... apparently IPC went out a FOUR IN THE MORNING and fixed the thing... BUT... they had to reconfigure some things, so my upstream bandwidth was stuck at 128 temporarily.. (still had great downloads)... then later that week they changed my upstream back to 384,... BUT... then the download speed was screwed up (really slow and choppy).. it ends up there was a Card fried at the CO... and so IPC went out and fixed that... I am now back to my blazing fast speeds that you can't get anywhere else for 50 bucks a month.. and just so you all know.. the WHOLE TIME that little scenario was going on... I called repeatedly as each problem came up and was ALWAYS able to get through to someone... and my problems were always taken care of... 2 days downtime is the longest I ever had, and that was cause it was on a weekend. Other than that, I'm very happy with the service... You MPower whiners need to cancel your DSL service altogether and just start over with AccessUS under a new name... it looks like you'll get your service just fine then... WATYF member for 22.4 years, 21 visits, last login: 18.5 years ago lodged 22.4 years ago
I ordered iDSL from AccessUS i was told for $169 month (what i sined the contract for) i would recive 2 ip's.. well time wen on (6 weeks) i reffered other friends witch got on in a week they got there ip's and all and are happy... Well i had my own equipment so they still sent me equipment when i didn't need it.. so i humored them and hooked there's up the DSL did not wrk the blamed it on IPC when the router was sync'd to IPC i called them and asked if the router was bad/misconfigured they said not possible.. so IPC get;s out here a week later and the ROUTER IS BAD! like i thought.. they gave me my authenication stuff and setup my router i had something i asked Access to do a week before IPC ever came out. Well i get it up and running i call them for y ip's and they tell me i cant have my ip's i have to NAT behind my router!!!! I'm like Screw you i want my damn ip's.. Cause Net Phones and stuff dont work nat'd. and i'm in contract to get my ip's. So i'm not paying the bill till i get them that's what i sined the contrat for.. So basicaly there liers, and they make you seem special till it's in and it screw you.. there not even a ISP there a reseller in AT&T's building downtown... There routing is screwed.. Luckily www.brick.net can offer iDSL Cheaper with a 4 block of ip's and stuff so screw them.. they can rebuild my IPC line to them.. so AccessUS can lick my a** as far as I care! I go outa my way to send them bussiness and i get the shaft... the other people i set up are OK for now.. Just as i said.. use this ISP as a Last resort... i would say for DSL there still better than SWB.. cause a friend has them and there PPPoE software only works when it feels like it. member for 22.7 years, 250 visits, last login: 16.5 years ago lodged 22.5 years ago
I started with Primary.net, then MPower took their DSL service over and finally Access US agrees to trade DSL modems and do another "install" in a couple of weeks. Instead, they shut the DSL service down without warning and had no intention of telling me anything. Seven or eight emails and six phone calls later, I get this lame excuse for their incompentence. I would like Mr. Waller to buy a clue. Does he even know what HTC is? I don't. Is there anything called customer service at this company? Companies like this in concert with TELCO's outright distaste for allowing access to their CSOs will doom xDSL for sure. From: James Waller To: "'mastergeek@juno.com'" Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 12:10:26 -0500 Subject: DSL Message-ID: Mr. Stein, Despite months of working with MPower/Primary, Ameritech, and HTC, it does not look like we are going to be able to provide you with DSL service. If you have any questions about your billing, please call 800-638-6373 ext. 225. Sorry that it turned out this way. Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you. James H. Waller Access US www.accessus.net (800) 638-6373 ext. 212 Fax: (314) 655-7701 member for 22.8 years, 9 visits, last login: 19.2 years ago lodged 22.5 years ago
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