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Review by eolover 
Posted: 15 days ago
member for 15 days, 0 visits, last login: 15 days ago
 Seattle,King,WA
 $70 per month (13 month contract)
 about 30 days
 "Installation technicians"
 "Speed. Service."
 "Worst ISP I've ever had."
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I moved to a new house in 98144 and have had Broadstripe Cable Internet for a month. The download speed is frequently less than 1 Mbps and it times out when the web site has a lot of pictures. It's almost impossible to watch a video. My iPhone 3G connection is much faster. I signed a 13 months contract and will have to pay the penalty of $250 to get out, but I will have no choice but to switch to another ISP. I'm considering Qwest DSL.
I asked them to send over a technician. They refused to do so saying that they are working to fix the slow speed issue across Seattle and they can't send technicians until this job gets done.
I had Earthlink DSL in Capitol Hill (98122) and Qwest DSL (98121) in the last 8 years and had no problem with the speed.
The only good thing about Broadstripe was that installation technicians were very helpful and they got the job done in a timely manner. Other experiences were terrible.
If you live in 98144, don't even think about getting Broadstripe cable internet.
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Review by esac
UPDATED: 79 days ago
member for 6.4 years, 34 visits, last login: 40 days ago
Sammamish,King,WA
$96 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"When it works you can get some good speeds."
"Down often, congested, slow speeds, expensive."
"Not worth the hassle."
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I have had Broadstripe/Millenium for over 2 years now. I have called or emailed about 20-25 times about service issues with no resolution. They seem to be unwilling to diagnose intermittent service issues. Most problems seem to happen outside of business hours so that by the time I get a chance to give them a call, there isn't anything to diagnose.
Right now I am getting packet loss to both yahoo and google, ping times in the 100ms-200ms range. I am supposed to have 15mbps/2mbps but I can only get 3mbit/.5mbit transfer rates. Watching a video on youtube is almost impossible.
The problem is that I know in a couple of hours it will be fine. Even if I call them, setup a technician to come out, there will be nothing to diagnose. They need to do their own monitoring and analysis and fix these issues, this shouldn't be my job.
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Review by lboyd360
UPDATED: 145 days ago
member for 9 years, 125 visits, last login: 140 days ago
Chimacum,Jefferson,WA
$54 per month
about 7 days
"Good speed for such a rural area."
"There not using baseline privacy to protect there customers."
"If your worried about privacy don't use this service."
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I've repeatedly called about them not using baseline privacy. I've only recieved a call back once and was told that if they enabled it speeds would drop and customers would call to complain.
I'm just waiting to see them get hit with a lawsuit from an identity theft case...
Followup comments:  esac
join:2003-06-29
Redmond, WA | baseline privacy? Just wondering wtf you are talking about with Baseline Privacy? I hate broadstripe as much as the next guy, but to my knowledge none of my information is available to anybody else? | |
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RobbS
@broadstripe.net
| Re: baseline privacy? When he is saying "baseline privacy" it has nothing to do with your billing information. He is saying that their data security, for anything that you do online, is not as strong as their contemporaries, which is something that should be a major concern for anyone. | |
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Review by Sakic
Posted: 240 days ago
member for 2.4 years, 4 visits, last login: 219 days ago
Seattle,King,WA
$65 per month
"My service works....sometimes"
"Too many to list"
"They suck and should be avoided"
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Hard to put into words the aggravation this company can cause not to mention the number of hours one spends dealing with them. Constant outages, never ending problems, slow spends for too much money, Brownstripe offers very little. I have been trying to get them to fix my problem for 3 1/2 months. My internet has gone down 3 times today. They acknowledge I have a weak signal but still try to blame my VoIP router. I removed it and have no home phone but still have constant outages. I bought a new cable modem so they would stop blaming it on my modem but still have constant outages.
If you are a Brownstripe user, write the city regulators who protect them from competition. I am about ready to get the WA State Attorney General's office involved. Having problems with Broadstripe, let the Consumer Affairs office at AG's office know, Brownstripe cannot ignore them.
Write a complaint here:
»www.seattle.gov/html/citizen/cable.htm
AG office: search, it's easy to find and they are awesome and carry a big stick.
I tried to leave for Qwest but Qwest would never fulfill my order or provided speeds promised.
STAY AWAY FROM BROADSTRIPE!
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Review by LSBduvall
UPDATED: 242 days ago
member for 254 days, 5 visits, last login: 231 days ago
Duvall,King,WA
$59 per month
"Added new sector equipment last year."
"Poor connection remains a constant issue."
"Alternative services like Verizon DSL is an option."
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I've had MDM/BroadStripe internet service for 8 years. My major problem with the service on a daily basis is lost packets and slow connection speeds. When using VoIP, conversations usually are choppy or drop for seconds at a time. Websites are slow to load and server timeouts are common. Customer service is up there with the worse. I've had techs checkout lines multiple times, but there has never been problems with the cable on my property. The problem is the design of the Sector. Since a cable system is shared with all other users on the sector, performance with degrade at predictable times. Example, when high school students and blue collar workers get home at 3:30pm and white collar works at 6pm. Their bandwidth limiter doesn't seem to do much to slowdown the gamers and video streamers because the whole sector slows down. When there are few users on the sector, I can get 5.8mbps down and 384kbs up. But in the afternoon, it can degrade down to 1mbps down 150kbps up and large packet losses and latency near 100ms. The sector tends to recover by late evening. Outages usually last for many hours and it is not uncommon to have several outages each month. I think the main problem BroadStripe is having now is their chapter 11 bankruptcy they are working through since early Feb and the nearly $400 million in debt they have (about $4,000 per subscriber). They have been using contract cable field service techs, so they must be overloaded just trying to keep the system up. I just signed up for Verizon DSL Dry Loop and will seen how it goes for a few weeks. If it looks good, I will drop my BroadStripe service.
***UPDATE***
I just activated Verizon dry loop a few day ago, I'm going to cancel BroadStripe because of lost packets, slow speeds and multiple outages every month. VoIP (RingCentral) on the dry loop is great so far. RingCentral VoIP on BroadStripe would have dead air for 10 seconds from lost packets about every 3 to 5 minutes on a call. A friend of mine is also on BroadStripe with Vonage and he continues to have packets lost resulting in dead air also.
Followup comments: rebelspy
join:2008-01-02 | right on the ball im not sure if you live in michigan but your right on the ball with me bro i have the same issues this isp is the worst isp i have ever seen by far i mean 40 percent of the time it works decent what more can i say your exactly spot on. | |
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Review by rebelspy
UPDATED: 252 days ago
member for 1.9 years, 35 visits, last login: 243 days ago
Grand Ledge,Eaton,MI
$90 per month
"nothing"
"everything bad speed horrible. Updated ...."
"dont use unless your stuck with them"
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im stuck with broadstripe or id go elsewhere. first off im an computer tech and have a high understanding of computers.
first off when you call there customer support they tell you its your fault but they send a tech out. if the tech is out in a week your lucky. the tech came out to my home told me that broadstripe sucks thats right thats what the tech said. they spent an hour on the phone getting my connection sorted only to have them blame me. about 2 hours later i called and got ahold of an engineer he told me it was there side and they had to reset the arp cache.
the next day the service went down again i called and the tech laughed and said i had put in alot of trouble tickets over 3 years. still not working correct between the hours of 5 pm and 12pm good luck loading a webpage or doing anything.
bottom line broadstripe could care less about helping its customers instead that tell you its your fault send out a tech that says there service sucks. need i say more.
only reason i have this totaly crap service is no other service is avail here and i live a few miles from the capital of michigan for those of you that think i may be far out or somthing.
over three years i have put in appx 40 trouble tickets the service is at most 40 percent not even close to what they advertise. there price is also a down point with the highest price for internet i have ever seen at 90 dollars for a 6mb connection.
sorry if i sound unfair broadstripe but you suck and i have the tests to prove it right here on dsl reports. guess you cant fake this one ... your horrible
update. i was finaly put in contact with the correct people i hope. they are working on my line now and i will have more info as soon as i can thank you.
Followup comments: wbaker
join:2008-08-09
Woodinville, WA
| One of their techs told us... That he, and many of the others, are not Broadstripe employees. Apparently many of them actually work for Comcast and are freelancing. He also said that if he does not replace something, he doesn't get paid. Which explains why most visits result in the replacement of the splitter that splits TV from Internet. | |
| | Heckufaguy
join:2009-06-18
Mulliken, MI
| Re: One of their techs told us... I had this same late afternoon problem about 4 years ago with what was then millenium. Turns out an amp about 2 blocks away had a heat issue, which was worse when the afternoon sun hit it.
I'd been through a few tickets myself, all saying they needed access to my house when I wasn't available. Finally, they sent a tech out who was willing to listen to common troubleshooting advice, and he found the problem in less than an hour. AND gave me the address the amp was in front of for future reference (ie: directing the next tech to it if needed). Since then, great throughput and service. Sometimes you just need someone to own the problem, and not give it lip service until the next tech shows up. | |
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Review by pcullin
UPDATED: 266 days ago
member for 2.9 years, 4 visits, last login: 175 days ago
Duvall,King,WA
Contract price not specified.
"Improved service offerings and quality since buyout of Millennium"
"Very poor HD signal quality, unreliable high-speed internet, no OnDemand, limited service hours"
"Better than it used to be, but still frustrating and not worth the money"
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Have had Millennium/Broadstripe since moving to Duvall three years ago. When operated by Millennium, the service was absolutely shockingly terrible. Broadstripe has improved the service across the board by adding more channels to the cable tv service, and improving the speed and reliability of the broadband internet. They have also restructured their pricing to offer "bundles" of service that are reasonably priced - very similar to Comcast in nearby markets. HOWEVER, the HD signal quality is still way below average, the internet connectivity is still flaky, customer service still has limited hours compared to 24x7 support of other providers like Verizon and Comcast, their channel lineup is still limited compared to other providers for the same price and there is still no OnDemand tv service. I have stuck with Broadstipe through some very VERY bad times, simply because there really isn't a very good alternative here in Duvall. But now that the economy is so bad and other providers (Verizon, DirecTV, etc) are starting to offer some amazing deals I am seriously considering making the switch. Bottom line - if you are considering moving to an area served by Broadstripe, do your research to consider all alternatives. Broadstripe is not worth the money or the frustration, despite their good faith efforts to improve service....
Followup comments:
nmbs
@graybeal.com
| Millenium to Broadstripe Note that there was no "buyout." It's the same company; they just changed their name. It was an example of their poor customer service that I didn't even know the name had changed until I saw a commercial. They didn't bother to announce the change to their own customers! | |
| Sakic
join:2007-06-09
Seattle, WA
 ·BroadStripe
| I read that Broadstripe actually spend a lot of money on Duvall trying to protect their cable monopoly cause the city of Duvall was actully going to open up to other carriers do to the horrible service they provide. You should contact your local government, tell them to get Broadstripe some competition, see if they can survive. They are already in Chapter 11, let's help finish them off. | |
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Review by eriznik
UPDATED: 289 days ago
member for 289 days, 0 visits, last login: 289 days ago
Seattle,King,WA
$59 per month
"None!"
"Frequent connection drops, horrible latency and download rates. They cut wires they weren't supposed to."
"Can't even stream video from ANY web site."
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I have had Broadstripe for about 2 years (in Seattle - 98144). Service has been unreliable, slow, and downright horrible since day one. I can't even stream video from any website. A 50MB download (e.g. a graphics adapter driver from nVidia) takes about 20 minutes. Pings to yahoo.com and google.com routinely have a latency over 75ms on the good end, though it's usually in the hundreds. I was having such problems with keeping a connection that I asked them to send someone out to my house to take a look.
I was not home when they came, but my wife was though she knows very little about computer technology. BIG mistake on my part....letting them in my house without being there myself. I have a wall box in our bedroom which routes wires from the outside connection to all the cable outlets in the house. Well, apparently the technician surmised this was the cause of the problem. So his brilliant solution was to CUT all but one of the wires (not disconnect them, but actually CUT them with wire cutters. They are ruined). I was told later they thought the other connections were causing interference. I find this line of logic a bit mystifying as none of the other connections were ever used. Anyway, I told them they needed to replace the lines they cut. I was practically laughed at. They said since the lines were inside the house and not installed by Broadstripe, they were my responsibility. Bottom line, I still have cut wires (this happened about a year ago btw). I am still trying to determine what my legal options are. Oh, and the best part...they didn't fix anything. The connection is still has crappy as before. They have since acknowledged I still have frequent connection drops and latency problems, yet they do nothing.
This company sucks. I'm at wits and and will be switching to Qwest DSL. I figure it can't be worse than what I have.
Broadstripe is to be avoided like the plague.
Oh yeah, one other thing....long term service outages (> 1 hour) tend to happen in the evenings when they customer service is closed. You get to leave a message and they call you back the next day. Ridiculous.
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Review by Barnacules
UPDATED: 320 days ago
member for 321 days, 7 visits, last login: 57 days ago
Duvall,King,WA
$54 per month
"15Mbit down/2MBit up"
"Massive Packet Loss"
"If you play games or stream video stay away"
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UPDATE: Tom as told me that the root problem is actually one of there DOCSIS ports and it should only effect 20% of Duvall, WA customers. So if you are having problems chances are your circumstances are different from mine so please contact BroadStripe directly and let them know what is happening so they can help you. Also note that they have claimed
UPDATE: I just received mail back from Tom at BroadStripe and he has assured me that they are aware of the problem in Duvall, WA right now and that there servers are overloaded and they are in the process of moving people off to other hardware. He said this can take a few weeks to complete and they just figured this out Yesterday (Probably prompted by my original mail). So hang tight and hopefully this packet loss will clear itself up and I can update my review with a better one. I have also attached a picture to illustrate the packet loss problem.
I have been with MDM and now BroadStripe for over 5 years, there service used to be good but has really started going in to the drink after BroadStripe took over. I have a 15MBit connection and it really does download at that speed most of the time (speedtest.net) but the dropped packet rate is almost 10% on average. This means that for every minute or two of video you stream atleast 10 seconds are going with no data transfer. And if you play games this means your friends see your character freak out or freeze up for a few seconds every minute or two. Because of this I cannot really use my internet connection for anything other then downloading stuff before I play it.
I sent mail to BroadStripe requesting assistance and also supplied them with all of the technical data that supports the packet loss problem. I have yet to get a reply back from 3 mails I have sent. I finally included Tom (a broadstripe employee down lower that replied to a comment) and I hope that he gets back to me. At this point I am considering finding another solution like DSL, I would rather have slower download speed and more stable packet transfer since packet loss leads to problems like these (comment if you experience any of these right now).
+ MSN messenger disconnects and reconnects all the time
+ You play Counter Strike and WoW and notice characters freezing for a few seconds every minute or making odd movements and pulling back to place.
+ Streaming video pauses for a few seconds each minute.
+ VPN and Terminal Server connections freeze, lockup and timeout/reconnect continuously
+ Some web pages will not load and you have to press refresh then they load.
These are all symptoms of the same problem with this service. The way to confirm this behavior is to ping your gateway and see how many packets "Time Out". Below is a tutorial on how to do this. You can also use the tools on this site to do a line test and it will also show you the lost/dropped packets.
Ping Test:
1) Obtain your gateway, go to your router and find the DHCP settings and find the Default Gateway
-or-
1) If you don't have a router and you plug right in to the modem type "IPCONFIG /ALL" from the command line and find your default gateway
2) From a command prompt type "PING -T"
3) Watch the ping packets and times and look for "Request timed out"
Each time you see a "Request timed out" that means your packet didn't transfer and you are also suffering from this problem. Please comment if you see this problem so that we can get BroadStripe to take this seriously.
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Review by MDMisnowBS
Posted: 360 days ago
member for 2 years, 3 visits, last login: 360 days ago
Redmond,King,WA
$60 per month
about 1 days
"Maintenance Techs that used to work at MDM were the best."
"Name Change only, no changes in company"
"Hire people that can manage the system better, upgrade your gear"
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Duvall, Carnation, Issaquah are ran out of there headend, located in the highlands in issaquah and only have a 100FX to 100TX converter. So looking at the CMTS, it constantly peeks, with 100's of users and only 100Mbits... Echo Lake, and Roseiger are ran off of T1 Lines from Verizon.
Just some information shared to me. If they upgraded their fiber connection, and offered more than 100Mbit, they would be at least a descent ISP, instead of only getting 100-300Kb during peak times.
Anything on the East side, ames lake, issaquah, duvall, carnation, sahalee, are all capped with the limitations of their gear.
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