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Review by stevan_white 
member for 11.4 years, 24 visits, last login: 28 days ago
updated 28 days ago
 Abilene,Taylor,TX
 $50 per month- (month by month)
 "if you get a connection, it is reliable" "wireles LAN has never worked, insanely bad customer service" "maybe you'll get lucky, otherwise..."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
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I ordered a home wireless LAN service from Alice. The wireless LAN has
never worked. Alice customer service has pushed uselessness to new lows.
Some equipment arrived a month late, and didn't include wireless equipment.
Alice equipment comes with no printed information about how to configure it, or connect to their network. It has a CD, and printed information explaining how to insert the CD into a computer (along with safety warnings!).
But...the CD software simply crashed on my system. (I found out later it wasn't "Windows Vista ready".)
By reading on-line documents (at non-Alice) sites using a friend's Internet, I found that the Alice software was unnecessary for configuring the Ethernet-DSL box. So I managed to get a connection via Ethernet cable.
But...where was the wireless?
CALLING ALICE
=============
Calling Alice can be an adventure.
Their dial-up customer support asks you to type in your phone number.
(Which seems rather odd, in these days of caller identification, and given
that they are now my phone company.)
Just to dial them requires correctly keying a total of 22 digits. If all representatives are busy, it just politely hangs up, and you have to call again. It took me 4 calls over two days to get a representative. 88 digits and counting.
When you get a representative, they don't have the number you have typed in. You have to read it to them again!
And then, you must produce a Kundennummer and a Kennwort. These are written just once each in different documents from Alice. You are put on the spot to find these, because they won't talk to you without them.
BEGGING FOR MY ORDER
======================
When I enquired, they informed me I had not ordered wireless. I assured them that I had, most certainly, ordered wireless from their representative; that we had specifically discussed it. I never managed to enlighten them as to the distinction between what my order and what their representative may have written.
Since there was some confusion, and my German is weak, I asked them for an English speaking representative. They told me one would call me back shortly. I waited all day, and was in all the next day. None ever called.
I was undeterred, and eventually, I got them to "change" my order (to something resembling what I had been told it was originally) and a week or so later the wireless equipment arrived.
THE WIRELESS SAGA
===================
Their WLAN equipment arrived with no other information. Ever hopeful, I thought: "Oh, that must be because it's so easy to set up". Well, there was only one way to plug the cables in to the existing equipment.
But then I spent a couple of hours fiddling with Windows. It could see the wireless, but I couldn't get DNS, no way. I must be missing something.
Well OK, now what? I looked for on-line documentation. Nothing useful. I thought, maybe they had updated their silly installation software. And bingo! There was a new release of the Alice software, that purportedly works on Vista. I download it, run it, and...it got a little farther than the previous version... then it died.
I was later told that Alice's software will not run on an English language system. (Forgive me, but as a computer programmer, I must say, I'm impressed by this. That software must be very deep doo doo!)
Well, no luck calling Alice. However, their web site does have a page that permits supplications. I described all the details of the problem, and asked, in all capitals, for this one thing:
A SIMPLE TEXTUAL DESCRIPTION OF HOW TO CONFIGURE WINDOWS VISTA
TO CONNECT TO THE ALICE WLAN.
I wrote these lines in each of a number of exchanges, each funnier than the last.
Each time, it took them over a week to get back to me.
High points of issue [#284915] included:
* since you already have connected to Alice, you don't need wireless.
* Our software is broken, so you should be happy that you got your Ethernet
working at all, and forget about the wireless we sold you
* we really don't understand your problem. Since you were able to get the Ethernet
going without software or documentation, you ought to be able to get the WLAN
going without software or documentation.
* We cannot send you a simple textual explanation of how to use your WLAN, because
we have no approved user documentation.
But I never got anything that resembled help or instructions.
It would seem, that although Alice employees are forbidden to help customers in unauthorized ways, they are free to annoy and abuse customers any way they please.
Postscript: I sent a link to this report to the Alice engineer who had last failed to send the instructions I requested. He actually left a phone message for me at home, saying I had "never given him any error messages". This is crazy, of course. The problem is still that he has never given me the instructions I have repeatedly requested (in all capitals).
So I'm in the market for an Internet provider that can provide service. Any ideas?
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Review by container_1
member for 10 years, 37 visits, last login: 237 days ago
lodged 5.1 years ago
- Germany
- $50 per month
- (month by month)
 about 20 days- "Most attractive offer in Berlin"
- "none"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
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Product: Alice Fun Max flat / ISDN, 16000/800
Supplied Equipment: SIEMENS POTS/ISDN: Splitter for CPE side P/N: ATF079SHR
SIEMENS ADSL C2-010-I (RoHS) S1621-Z132A Code: 49DR804
Sphairon NTBA-P 2917 286017.8 G01 A00
I have not yet use Tech Support, due to no problems.
Phone "flat rate" for Balkan states possible.
NO minimum lifetime of the agreement.
Prompt Service!
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