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Review by jeffmc 
Posted: 8.9 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 4 visits, last login: 8.3 years ago
 Lakewood,Cuyahoga,OH
 $50 per month (24 month contract)
 about 160 days
 Ameritech
CLEC party: NorthPoint
 "Service was down for a few hours once in 6 months"
 "lousy to non-exisiatant customer service, lousy billing, they missed lots of months then applied them all at once."
 "Avoid this ISP unless no others are in your area"
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Basically a lousy service
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Review by scotto1
Posted: 8.9 years ago
member for 9.8 years, 26 visits, last login: 8.7 years ago
Longmont,Boulder,CO
$49 per month (6 month contract)
about 45 days
Qwest
CLEC party: Covad
"Only one in my area when I started looking (not anymore thank gawd!)"
"ALL! slow speed, no tech support, no cust support, frequent billing errors"
"STAY AWAY, avoid at all costs unless they are sole provider in your area"
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I went with Flashcom because they were the only ones that would wire my neighborhood (Longmont, CO, 80503) back in Jan. 1999. I ordered 144/144 @ $50/month plus $5/month for second IP (both static), one email address and no web space. Hookup was the usual lengthy hassle. Once I was wired, I couldn't figure out why I had no connectivity. 40 minutes later on-hold, they realized they hadn't issued network settings for me. Start of a pathetic relationship. Thankfully, I cancelled this morning and signed up with Earthlink DSl ($40/month for 3 dynamic IP addresses, 6 email addresses, and web space - plus a free dial up account until my DSL is live again) =)
Billing: Frightening -- they forgot to bill me for 5 months, then slammed it all onto one month's bill. Periodically, they don't bill me for a month, then double-bill me the next month. I let these monkeys have my credit card number?!?!
Cust Service: Pathetic. It takes about a week to get a reply to email, even when I email the president@flashcom.com. Hold time on their customer support phone line is lengthy.
Tech Support: Lame - everytime I complain about dropped service or slow speed, they email a standart non-specific response which basically tells me to come to dslreports.com and read about tweaking my system. They never, ever address the issue.
Bottom Line: I am not looking forward to being without DSL for ~3 weeks until Earthlink gets me live, but I have never been so happy to dump a customer service company for pathetic (non-existent?) customer service.
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Review by bbesley
Posted: 8.9 years ago
member for 9 years, 277 visits, last login: 143 days ago
Rockville,Montgomery,MD
$44 per month (12 month contract)
about 20 days
Verizon
CLEC party: NorthPoint
"Static IP Address, Flexiable Moving Policy;Good Connection Speed"
"Customer & Technical Support (non 24/7 service)"
"Good purchase if you dont rely on customer & techical support"
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I was surprised when my install went smoothly. My install was the day before Thanksgiving. After I setup both my MAC & PC, I realized that my second IP address had not been built. This is where the trouble started. I called technical support after the holiday weekend(they were closed - no 24/7 technical support as they advertise) and they could not do anything for me - it had to go to a supervisor. Next day I called technical support to report I had no service at all. They told me in order to build the second IP address they had to take down my first. Three days later with no servcice and many phone calls to Technical support, I finally spoke to a nice young man named Joe - who built my second IP address while I was on the phone. After he built my second IP, my service was restore. I am going to send him a E-Xmas card if Flashcom is still around at Xmas.
Bottom line is why wasn't the second IP built when the first one was; and why couldn't someone in technical support help before Joe helped?
Flashcom would have a good product to sell to the public if it could get its customer and techincal support acts together.
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Review by cprince
UPDATED: 8.9 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 82 visits, last login: 8.5 years ago
Danvers,Essex,MA
$69 per month (12 month contract)
about 60 days
Verizon
CLEC party: Covad
"Service for the most part reliable, cheap"
"Customer support sucks with the exception of a few decent, never followup, LONG Hold times, don't seem to really care"
"STAY AWAY! They overall really suck with customer service and billing."
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They never bill correctly, usually 3 to 4 months at a time, hold times are terrible, I was down for 40 days due to a bad modem, this issues would have been solved in the first call but they would not replace the modem, finally they made a covad tech come out and he replaced the modem, I had made a total of 25 calls to tech support to get this resolved. Hold times were around 15 to 60 minutes, Most of the time I had to fight with them to help me with my line. I was offline for 40!!!!!! DAYS!!!! completely unexceptable! STAY AWAY.
As for speed I have 768/364 and it kicks ass. But they will not upgrade me to 1.5 even though I am 5000 ft from CO. Give me some line of BS about not being allowed by COVAD. Have 2 Static IP's that is nice, but I would leave in a heart beat if I could find a realiable provider.
Update: My line is finally back up and stable. It only took 3 months. And now flashcom cut back their promised 24 hours tech support. Very unhappy with their customer service and I want to switch but they are not allowing anyone to leave. Need written consent for covad to switch you so looks like I am going down with the ship. I suppose that when they finally do go bankrupt I will get disconnected. Flashcom SUCKS.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 8.9 years ago
(review was emailed from domain home.com)
Laguna Niguel,Orange,CA
 Business customer
$299 per month (6 month contract)
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DSL REPORTS:
Flashcom is going down the tubes. There is a small piece of the Flashcom
turtle head that is attempting to spin off and pull itself out of the
mess it got into when Flashcom bought them in June of this year. The
group is Axcelerant. They were using Flashcom to deliver VPN's over the
internet for large companies like Oracle, Agilent, BroadCom and Sun for
their remote use populations. One wonders how these large/ smart
companies get into bed with deals like this. Word is the Axcelerant
customer base is starting to defect due to the mess that has been
created by Flashcom not paying its bills. They owe Covad over $10
million and have no way to pay it. Flashcom as well as Axcelerant is run
by amateurs. I would strongly warn companies that are considering doing
business with either of them.
Ever notice that when you spell check Flashcom the replacement is
"FIASCO" Ha, Ha
Later:
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Review by Lindaka
Posted: 8.9 years ago
member for 9.2 years, 91 visits, last login: 7.8 years ago
Garden Grove,Orange,CA
$49 per month (2 month contract)
about 2 days
Verizon (ex GTE)
CLEC party: NorthPoint
"none"
"Horrible tech support, line outage for weeks...., now the phones don't connect"
"cancel"
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I don't have the time to say much other than they are not worth a phone call. The technical support has been horrendous, I have had line outages for weeks at a time. The month of October it worked for 1 week total and I have been down for 5 weeks. I use my modem again...and am looking to find a more stable company to deal with. What a nightmere!
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Review by mac315
Posted: 8.9 years ago
member for 8.9 years, 9 visits, last login: 8.9 years ago
Lawrenceville,Gwinnett,GA
Contract price not specified.
about 90 days
BellSouth
CLEC party: Covad
"Abosolutely NONE!"
"Everything sucked with them"
"They SUCK!"
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I called and got approved for ADSL at my home on August 15, 2000. They said 60 days for installation. On Sept 15th BellSouth came to my house and hooked their end up. I called and followed up. Flashcom said Covad had not completed the order. On Sept 22, 2000 Covad completed their portion. Flashcom then lost the order all together and had Covad send a BellSouth tech to install the line a second time on October 9, 2000. On October 16th (Day 60) I called Flashcom and they said my DSL install packet (kit) was on the way to me (should have it in one week). On October 20th I called Flashcom again and they said Covad had not completed their portion of the install. One week earlier I was told everything was fine and that I was getting my installation packet. On October 27th, November 3rd and November 10th I called Flashcom and was told the order was still being held by Covad and they did not know when it would be completed. On November 17th I canceled my order with Flashcom.
Guess what, I called BellSouth FastAccess on November 24th to order ADSL from them. On December 6th I was online with ADSL, a mere 8 working days. If BellSouth can do it in 8 days, what the hell is wrong with Flashcom that they can not do it in 90 plus? The only answer I can think of is they suck.
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Review by Brod0
Posted: 8.9 years ago
member for 8.9 years, 5 visits, last login: 8.9 years ago
Baltimore,Baltimore City,MD
$49 per month (12 month contract)
about 60 days
Verizon
CLEC party: Covad
"Now?...None!!"
"Everything"
"Flashcom is Going out of business....DO NOT ORDER...WILL BE A NIGHTMARE"
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Well...Let me start by saying it hasnt always been bad. First 4 months were great..My speed is 384/128...I was getting 400 both ways. Things have changed. Flashcom has layed off 30% of thier workforce and are up for sale. I have had sporatic service for 2 months and the last week I have had essentially none. I have sent various E-mails to all depts. over the last 2 months with not a single reply. Also tech support is non-existant. Customer Support dumps you to a dialtone everytime. All I want now is out. Flashcom reps. If you read this just give me an ISP release form, and I will leave you alone forever. Also I expect Flashcom to try to bill me for the last 2 awful months. If so I may have to go to small claims..I will not relent!!I have filed reports to BBB and Consumeraffairs.com. Again Flashcom. Let me go, or I will be as much of a nuicence as I possibly can. Whatever you do, do not Sign up with this ragtag joke of a company. If anyone has any advice as how to rid myself of this Nightmare and to get a refund for services not provided please let me know. As far as alternatives Im thinking of Telocity, Earthlink, or Speakeasy.net. Any advice on this is also welcome. Thanks for Reading, and if this is a Flashcom Rep please do one good thing with this job before you too are inevitiably laid off as well and hung out to dry with the rest of us.
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Review by arthung
UPDATED: 8.9 years ago
member for 9 years, 26 visits, last login: 8.4 years ago
Dayton,Montgomery,OH
$50 per month (12 month contract)
about 90 days
Ameritech
CLEC party: Covad
"none"
"many and varied"
"avoid at all costs"
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I have taken 5 days off work to stay at home for appointments. I have endured no-shows and non-communication from Flashcom on the status of my order.
It took 3 months to get someone out to my house; the Covad guy who came out and set up my inside line screwed up my phone line and caused a short by nicking a wire. My phone service was out for 2.5 days due to this. Ameritech had to come out to my house to fix it. Since DSL has been installed, it's worked for a total of 2 hours. Now their 24/7 tech support number was not working over the weekend and their normal customer support line is jammed up (as usual). Cutting 24x7 support and going to 8x5 is just unacceptable.
I've wasted countless hours escalating through Flashcom's Tier 1 & 2 techs. I have written an email to the CEO only to be assigned to a useless specialist on the "Escalation Team". She never calls me back or follows up with me when she says she will. My connectivity has been extremely spotty at best. I've wasted 15-20 minutes at a shot talking with a tier 1 person only to be put into and eventually dropped from a holding queue for Tier 2. This has happened multiple times.
In the off chance that someone from Flashcom reads this and actually has the power to fix it, please contact me via e-mail at arthung@dotplanet.com. If we are not able to get this fixed very soon, I am ready to escalate to the State Attorney General of Ohio and also the BBB. I read this morning that Flashcom is transitioning some of it's accounts to Northpoint and Rhythms. I unfortunately, am not one of those being transferred.
To anyone reading this, based on my experiences to this point, I must strongly advise you to avoid Flashcom at all costs.
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Review by jbrown01
Posted: 8.9 years ago
member for 8.9 years, 5 visits, last login: 8.7 years ago
Arlington,Arlington,VA
$49 per month (36 month contract)
about 60 days
Verizon
CLEC party: Covad
"Worked well for first several months"
"Lately unreliable. Billing and customer service/tech support is a nightmare"
"Find another ISP, Flashcom may not be around for long"
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In short, my Flashcom service was painstakingly difficult to set up. Several times they incorrectly recorded my address and phone number, this kept pushing back my install date because Bell/COVAD would reject the order. I would call and give the the corrections and they would get it wrong again. I had to scream and yell on the phone until they finally got it right. I finally got an install date and managed to get a day off from work... they didn't show. Finally they made it on the next attempt. The actual installation at my home went fairly smooth.
Once things were set up, they ran well for about 5 months. For the last several weeks my service has been sporadic. It goes up and down about every 5 to 10 minutes. I wanted to call tech support this weekend, but they've switched from 7x24 to 5x8, so I guess I'll wait till Monday. I can't wait to see what a nightmare that will be.
Billing is another issue. I've only been billed once. They tell me that they have incorrect billing info (CC number) for me. Twice I've given them a correction and they still haven't billed me. A friend of mine is having the same problem. $50/month isn't too bad, but I'm not looking forward to getting billed for eight plus months at once.
We'll see how it goes...
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Flashcom
