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Review by Custom Color 
member for 11 years, 2 visits, last login: 11 years ago
lodged 11 years ago
 Glenside,Montgomery,PA
 $179 per month- (month by month)
 about 50 days Verizon- CLEC party: Verizon
 "Good sales department" "finally running" "don't no yet"
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Not up to 1.5 yet. They do blame Verison for everything.
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Review by squitchy
member for 11.2 years, 1 visits, last login: 11.2 years ago
lodged 11.2 years ago
- Morristown,Morris,NJ
- $50 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 44 days
- Verizon
- CLEC party: Covad
- "Extremely Reliable"
- "Install Tech used the wrong cable"
- "Would recommend to anyone"
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I've had the service from Voicenet for over a year now (which is why I pay $50/month). Have had ZERO problems with the line, run at about 90% capacity at all times. Line has never been down. Ordered 384/384. Only had to call tech support when line was initially installed. The Covad tech used the wrong cable from the router to the pc, which meant the pc didn't recognize the line. First person I spoke to blamed AOL, said there was a known conflict. Second person was able to determine that it was the cable. Went to Radio Shack, got the correct cable and I was up and running. As I mentioned, it's been over a year and I've had no problems. When I was checking out the service initially, I called my local baby bell phone company and even though my house is 400 feet from the CO, they couldn't provide the service. Needless to say, I get at least one call a week from them now offering the service. I work in a small office and we are on the internet all day long (access to our home office). Currently have ISDN but will be switching to Voicenet DSL as soon as we decide if we're moving the office or not. Can't say enough good things about them.
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Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain menkes-od.com)
lodged 11.5 years ago
- Pasadena,Los Angeles,CA
- Contract price not specified.
- SBC
- CLEC party: Covad
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Hi- tried to use voicenet. My salesman told me he could install
line-sharing on my line. When the installer from Covad came, the order had
not been placed for linesharing. We called tech support at Voicenet
together- turns out Voicenet doesn't offer line sharing- techie told me to
call my salesman. I did, left a message, but got no return call.
Did get a bill for the full amount from Voicenet on my next credit card
bill. Situation is still in dispute, but I'm refusing to pay anything.
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Review by andrewvc
member for 11.5 years, 16 visits, last login: 4.6 years ago
lodged 11.5 years ago
- New York,New York,NY
- $300 per month
- (12 month contract)
- CLEC party: Covad
- "Installation coordination better than expected"
- "Sales rep were lacking in experience; only two techs for DSL but helpful, two hour callback?"
- "Worth the effort to find another sales person on their force, tech helpful and knew their stuff"
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My setup is as follows:
ISP: Voicenet CLEC: Covad
Speed: SDSL 1.1Mbps(both ways) TeleSpeed
Costs: $300/month, $225 to purchase Flowpoint 2200-12, (rebated)
Free installation
Specs: 6 fixed IP addressees & email accounts,
Flowpoint DSL router with built-in 4-port 10BT hub
DSL Reports ..
10/30/00: Your download speed : 922 kbps.
Your upload speed : 705 kbps.
11/02/00: Your download speed : 638 kbps.
Your upload speed : 669 kbps.
We got a cold call from their sales dept. and being that we were set to
move offices, it seemed like a good thing to find out about their services.
We compared them with Verizon, UUNet, CAIS and a couple of others.
Voicenet at the time had the best price, beating the competition by about
10-15%.
However, in trying to find out more information, the salesperson seemed
awfully unknowledgeable and stuck to a script rather than say he didn't
know or would find out. This left me with having to search elsewhere.
Still, the price couldn't be beat by any other source.
After a few weeks of information gathering, I decided to give Voicenet one
more try and got hold of a new sales rep. He was much more helpful and was
everything you wanted a sales person to be. Still, when we went to sign on
the dotted line, his typos on the agreement forced us to delay the order a
few days. (We corrected the typo and he came back the next day to tell us
that it was invalid because we wrote on the agreement -- and it was only to
fix the wrong spelling of my boss' name!)
By now, we were under the gun to get the DSL installed at our new offices
and I was worried that we would not be operational at the time of the move.
Much to my surprise and my coworkers delight, Covad was able to get to our
new site in 17 days and install the line (our new offices were still under
construction but the tech was able to bring in the line without us being
there - thankful but rather scary knowing that when the customer is not on
site, anything can go wrong) and also schedule the next appointment.
We had to reschedule the second appt. to work around construction schedules
and we were readily accommodated. The installation project manager, if you
will, was very helpful and knew what to suggest to work with our particular
situation. On the second appt., the tech showed up about two hours into
the 8:30 - 12:00 appt. time. Installation took under an hour and we were
up and running immediately. The only dispappointment was that we were
getting only 6 ip addresses when I thought we were unlimited.
After moving in, we called tech support to have NAT in place. We had to
fax our intent (they would not accept an email) before they could go ahead
with it. This was a bit exasperating since our fax line was not up when we
moved in! Also, it seems that though they have 24x7 tech support, only two
are for DSL so we were told that someone would get back to us within two
hours. That really isn't 24x7 support in my book.
Still, they really tried to work with us and had us on hold for only a few
minutes and we were able to resolve issues within half an hour. By this
measure, I give them an extra star (to 4 for support).
My overall feeling was that even though I started with a lousy sales
person, things got better (not perfect, mind you) but their support group
seemed very eager to help and really worked with us in our time of need. I
was very surprised that they were able to have it all installed from the
time of order (9/26/00) to before our move (fully operational by 10/24).
Prices did change from the original quote in July to the time we
subscribed. About $75 more than expected but we did up our rate and
hardware is rebated.
Ultimately, very satisfied. I will report back when things go awry.
-A
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Review by pvanbaren
member for 11.6 years, 62 visits, last login: 9.6 years ago
lodged 11.6 years ago
- Jenison,Ottawa,MI
 Business customer- $129 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 38 days
- CLEC party: Covad
- "Price was good"
- "20 to 30% dropped packets between 10am and 8pm"
- "Don't use them if you are in the midwest"
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I got 384k/384k SDSL service for $129/month. Static IP with a SpeedStream 5250 modem and no authentication protocols required. Sales was generally quite helpful, and answered all of my questions knowledgably.
After installation I called tech support after normal business hours and the tech was extremely UNhelpful and gave me nothing but wrong information. This made me very upset for the evening, because he told me I couldn't do what the salesperson explicitly said I could do (run a server) and that if I didn't like it, it was too bad because I had signed a 1-year contract. The next day I called back during regular business hours and talked to a tech who gave me correct information (yes, I could run a server), and was generally quite helpful.
However, Voicenet and/or Covad have an ongoing capacity problem somewhere between Chicago and Philadelphia (where Voicenet is based). I am located in Hudsonville, MI, and beginning at 10am every weekday, and continuing until 8pm, we would lose between 20% and 30% of packets between us and Voicenet's gateway in Philadelphia. This basically made the service unusable, as FTP transfer rates during the day would typically go down below 1kB/sec. Packet loss would disappear a little after midnight, and things would work wonderfully until 10am the next day.
I have spent a month now going back and forth with the techs, trying to find out why we are losing so many packets during the day. They have generally been helpful when I get them on the phone, and have opened several trouble tickets with Covad to verify that our loop is operating properly. Everything seems to point to a capacity problem in Covad's network between Chicago and Philadelphia (I'm told there is plenty capacity between Grand Rapids and Chicago) but nobody will give me a straight answer on what and where exactly the problem is, or when it will be fixed.
My last conversion concluded with me asking when it would be solved, weeks, months, years...? The tech's answer: not years. So I am bailing out and going somewhere else for service.
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Review by kcohen
member for 11.7 years, 34 visits, last login: 11.5 years ago
lodged 11.6 years ago
- Brookline,Norfolk,MA
- $99 per month
- (12 month contract)
- Verizon
- CLEC party: Covad
- "like a good wine"
- "excellent brew"
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Good ISP with great tech support! I have had my ADSL service since May &
have been down only 3 days during the Verzion strike. I have the top ADSL
service of 1500/384. Although, my
average speeds are considerably short of that number (870-900/300) I live a
good distance
from the Telco CO & on the 19th floor of a high rise building.
Secondly, I have 4 IP addresses & the service is decent for all
machines:both Macs & a lone
Dell PC. All this for $99 per month! I think it is a good deal.......Kenny
Cohen
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Review by ACMEshorty
member for 11.8 years, 6 visits, last login: 11.7 years ago
lodged 11.8 years ago
- Merrimack,Hillsborough,NH
- $50 per month
- (24 month contract)
- "NONE"
- "extremely slow, poor tech support, bad installation,"
- "basically, they suck ass. DONT JOIN THEM!"
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I hate this company. they claim to be the best DSL. "HIGH SPEED INTERNET CONNECTION!" lies... all of it... lies... my latency (in milliseconds) to JUST my ISP is 300. i play internet games... i feel happy when my ping drops to 250... thats shameful... i got my ass ripped off with this company DONT SIGN UP! DONT SIGN UP! DONT SIGN UP! i ordered 60k download speed... (thinking this is all i would need) i get speeds of 8kb/sec!!! thats pitiful! i felt lucky yesterday when i dl'ed at 25kb/sec! tech support are all snobs... they think they are gods or something... they play this gay jazz music and lame car salesman adds... basically, what im saying is... SAVE YOURSELF!!! DONT SIGN UP! DONT SIGN UP! DONT SIGN UP!!
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Review by rpaul
member for 11.8 years, 244 visits, last login: 1 days ago
lodged 11.8 years ago
- Narberth,Montgomery,PA
- Business customer
- $200 per month
- (24 month contract)
- "Fast Service, Smooth Installation, Prompt Technical"
- "None!"
- "Best I've heard of!!!"
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Voicenets service has always been great, I have been a customer for five + years. I have both a home DSL and Business DSL. Business is 384/384 and preforms flawlessly. We have 7 IP address's (was $169 per month) and are upgrading to an unlimited IP account with special service, really not EVER needed, for an extra 40 bucks. They have a sneaky $99 "Upgrade to a more expensive account and pay a for it" fee. Overall flawlwess service. Goes down one a month for only a few minutes.
Ryan
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Review by MLorenz
member for 11.8 years, 3 visits, last login: 11.8 years ago
lodged 11.8 years ago
- Media,Delaware,PA
- $79 per month
- (12 month contract)
- "Excellent install and service"
- "None significant"
- "Terriffic value, good pings, good throughput, good value"
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Ordered ADSL (1.5 down /384 up for $79.95/month - static IP) back in March 2000. They got back to me very quickly with the dates that Bell and Covad would come to do their thing. Covad was actually ready a few days early, so that was great. The guy came in and had me up & running in no time. He even stuck around to explain how to add a second PC once I'd get another IP address from Voicenet. The particulars: I ordered on 3/13 and was connected on 3/31 - that's about 2.5 weeks... not bad in my book.
I've had the service for 3+ months now, and it's been very fast and reliable. DSL goes down maybe once every two weeks, and then for only a couple of minutes. Sometimes less than a minute. It's most often during storms, so my PC is usually turned off by then anyway. The speed, when it's up, is also wonderful. I still feel like it's all a dream and I'm going to wake up some day and have to go back to my modem - AAAHHHHHH! 
My router turned out to be faulty, and Voicenet handled it beautifully. They had me run some tests, then they did some, and then they called Covad, who sent a guy the next day and had me right back up. Later that day I got a FedEx package with a new router just in case the Covad guy didn't come. Then they called me to make sure everything was okay. NOW THAT'S GREAT SERVICE!!!
I use my DSL service just about all day every day for lots of different things, from large up+downloads to online gaming. In a word, it's fantastic. Voicenet has a very good price for the bandwidth I'm getting, and they've provided a reliable connection with top-notch support.
I used to be a Voicenet customer from 1995-1998 as a modem user, and frankly I was less than thrilled with their service. I don't know if the entire company has improved, or whether it's just their DSL group, but whatever they're doing, they're doing it RIGHT.
But no company is perfect, right? So what are the bad points? Well, as I said in the "sound-bites", there are no *significant* bad points that I can think of. One nit I have is whenever I call for tech support, I'm usually on hold for at least 10 minutes. That's not so bad, but while on hold they play this crappy smooth-jazz local radio station and it drives me crazy. Especially when I have to listen to 10 minutes of truly insipid commercials for local car dealers and monster truck shows. UGH!!!! I resent having to listen to that crap, and I can't turn it down obviously or I won't hear when someone answers - so I'm trapped. Hey Voicenet, if you're reading this - PLEASE STOP THAT!
Another minor complaint would be the runaround I got when asking for a second IP address for my wife's PC. Sales said I had to get it from Tech. Tech said I had to get it from Sales. It took literally 8 phone calls to straighten it out. But they said they had just switched to a new computer system internally, so I'm willing to forgive that minor incident. And all my requests after that were handled promptly.
So to close, I give Voicenet a very enthusiastic thumbs-up. I've never had another DSL provider to compare it to, but I really can't imagine it gets significantly better than this.
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Review by srk9
member for 11.9 years, 20 visits, last login: 11.8 years ago
lodged 11.8 years ago
- Milwaukee,Milwaukee,WI
- $89 per month
- (12 month contract)
- "Smooth sales process (Go figure),quick install, so far caring tech support"
- "TERRIBLE latency and thruput. DSLAM seems to be conjested. SPEND SOME MONEY for upgrades!"
- "If the network performance was up to par this would be a good choice, so far it's not though."
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From faxing my contract in to the date COVAD did their install it was
exactly 15 days! SUPER smooth install process, everyone involved knew
what was going on and what to do. Ameritech and COVAD were both
in and out in about an hour, very nice..
Once I was actually online though that's where the problems started 
Right off the bat network performance was subpar, pings to my gateway
run between 220 and 550ms! Thruput is also a big let down, I'm not
able to pull more than 29 K/s from even Voicenet's FTP server.
So needless to say I've got a ticket open with Voicenet (Support
folks have been nice/helpful so far) so lets hope they come back
with something useful shortly..
I'm giving Voicenet a week or so to do something about their
poor network performance, if it doesn't improve I'll be
switching providers.. Lets hope they play nice and don't
try to stick it to me cuz I heard the BBB likes things
like this..
SRK
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