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Review by coxal 
member for 11.8 years, 133 visits, last login: 6.8 years ago
updated 10.1 years ago
 Austin,Travis,TX
 $49 per month Southwestern Bell "fast download speed" "slow upload 86 to 109"
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Have never reached upload speed advertised
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Review by protox
member for 11 years, 257 visits, last login: 2 years ago
lodged 10.2 years ago
- Maryland Heights,Saint Louis,MO
- $44 per month
- (12 month contract)
 about 23 days- Southwestern Bell
- CLEC party: Southwestern Bell
- "FAST, Good Tech Support at the SBC Fourm."
- "Customers who don't know about DSLReports.com may not have as good of an experience as I did."
 "If you want DSL direct from your teleco, SBC is a good choice."
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Quick Summary:
Ordered at 3:00 PM on Monday January 6th, 2003
Received Equipment on Friday, January 17th, 2003
Working at 160/109kbps on Sunday January 19th, 2003
Full Speed (1200/256kbps) on January 29th, 2003
I originally had Directv DSL and had to switch to another provider before they shut off their service. I chose SBC Southwestern Bell because they are my local telephone company and I like the convience of having my DSL billed right on my telephone bill.
When I started on my search for a new DSL service, I considered several alternatives to Southwestern Bell. Long hold times, rude customer service and high prices turned me away from these alternatives. Southwestern Bell seemed like a winner.
I called them up on January 6, 2003 at 3:00 pm and placed the order for the Deluxe Speed package on a 1 year contract. The customer service rep said that I may not be able to get this package due to my distance from the telco. However, he placed the order anyway.
Several days later, I called to check on the status of my order. I was told that the Deluxe speeds would not be available to me even though I had speeds close to them with Directv DSL. I argued with the customer service rep for awhile to no avail. I decided I was going to have to stick with the Basic Package that would offer me download speeds of only 384kpbs.
On January 17, I received the equipment package, but didn't have time to install it until Sunday night. My DSL activated right away but I was stuck with download speeds of only 160kbps.
I knew this wasn't going to work for me and decided I had to fix this. I surfed the internet for answers and remembered the helpful site DSLReports.com. I went to the Southwestern Bell forum and posted a message describing my problems. Within several hours, I received a phone call from a technical support rep from someone who works right here on the forums for Southwestern Bell! He said that he would help me out and lo and behold he solved the speed issue! He told me that on January 29 my speed would be set at the Deluxe Package and that I would be billed for this package.
On January 29, my speeds were fixed! I now had about 1200kbps down and around 256kpbs upload.
Thanks to the wonderful people to work for Southwestern Bell on the support forum here, my issues were solved and they kept a loyal customer. My thanks go out to the wonderful technical support specialists who helped me out. Thank You!
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Review by ijuggle7
member for 10.3 years, 10 visits, last login: 7 years ago
lodged 10.3 years ago
- Saint Louis,Saint Louis,MO
- $50 per month
- (12 month contract)
- Southwestern Bell
- CLEC party: Southwestern Bell
- "No cancellation fee if you move outside of service area"
- "Terrible information at signing up"
- "Find someone else"
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Called over a week ago to make the transition from DirecTV to SBC mainly because Speakeasy charges $300 to cancel service if you move outside of their service area and I will be relocatting in just a couple of months. SBC does not charge the cancellation fee if they can no longer service you. I called back SBC today to check the status of my order becuase their online check said their is no order at my location. It was just now that I was informed I would be down for 10-14 days as soon as the disconnect is done.
During the original order, I had to tell the customer service rep that I didn't need to cancel my DirecTV order, that they would be handling that becuase of an agreement with them. I should have known that he didn't know what he was talking about then. However, he put me on old and consulted with someone else. He came back and let me know that it would be about 7-10 days to have the service ready. Evidently he forgot to mention tha was after they turned my current service off.
Now I'm beginning to wonder what will happen when I call to cancel my 1 year contract in another month when I move. Makes me believe that they will try to collect their cancellation fee. Anyway, for having prearranged the service switch, you think things would be a lot more smooth.
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 Review by mindypin
member for 10.3 years, 74 visits, last login: 1.6 years ago
lodged 10.3 years ago
- San Antonio,Bexar,TX
- $49 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 30 days
- Southwestern Bell
- CLEC party: Southwestern Bell
- "Fast when working"
- "Customer service is lousy. PPoE software is awful."
- "The merger with Yahoo has made things horrible. Changing to cable modem."
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It can take over a month to even get connected, and God help you if you have to move and transfer your service. That happened to me, and I was without service for yet another month. A total nightmare! SBC/Yahoo provides connection software and a cheesy looking browser that is bug ridden. On top of that, if you have a Yahoo account they try to get you to merge it with the sbcglobal account, but if you later cancel your DSL, you lose the Yahoo account as well. I have had virtually no help from their support when I needed it. Sometimes I have sat on hold for up to an hour, and then the teleservice rep (these are NOT real techs unless you call during normal business hours and get lucky) knows far less about computers than I do, and can only read off the same procedures from some card. Basically: "Turn off the modem for a few minutes. Reboot the computer. Empty your history and files in your browser." When that doesn't work, many of them are stumped and put me back on hold. Sometimes they'll walk me through the Internet settings in Control Panel (Win 98). Of course, that's never the problem. Finally, I figured out that the problem is their PPoE software. I'm not a tech, and I don't know how to get around it. The "clerks" at support (I mean no offense to the few techs who have actually been kind enough to agree that the software is crap) are clueless. I have written letters, answered numerous surveys they send each time I've had to call tech support, and not once has anyone ever contacted me.
I'm switching to cable modem.
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Review by hostricity1
member for 10.3 years, 1 visits, last login: 10.3 years ago
lodged 10.3 years ago
- Dallas,Dallas,TX
- $49 per month
- about 21 days
- Southwestern Bell
- CLEC party: Southwestern Bell
- "Finally got it working"
- "Crappy software and incorrect tech support info results in 3.5 hour / 4day install"
- "Don't use any ISP that requires you to install their software on your computer - Especially SBC/Yahoo"
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Ordered PPPOE, standard service (I suppose 128K up), Enternet Software.
Dec. 30 - Service due. Go to customer location, call SBC and find that service is not yet on. So, installed line filters. 30 minutes + travel time.
Dec. 31 - Call SBC. Line still not setup. 15 minutes + 0 travel time.
January 2 - Call SBC. Line is setup. Install modem and software. Doesn't work. Call SBC. They tell me to remove all adapters and protocols from Network properties and install again. I tell them I think something else is wrong, but, do as told. Still doesn't work. Call SBC. They walk me through changing settings and suggest I reinstall again. Again I express doubts. Reinstall. Still doesn't work. Call SBC. Waste more time checking stuff. Finally, tech says "hold on while I check something." Tech comes back 5 minutes later and tells me, "The problem is that our server for Dallas area has been down for at least a day." 2 hours 30 minutes + travel time
January 3 - Go to customer location. Try connection. I now works - on the registration id. Call SBC, takes considerable time trying numerious things to connect to the registration server. Finally connect and register. Have to download IE 6 and install it to get rid of Yahoo forced homepage (the home page selection is disabled in their browser) and to get rid of pop ups and pop unders. Email server names not provided, so, call SBC again. Get server names and setup. Email doesn't work. I ask specific questions about security and other settings. I am then told that "the email account must not be setup yet" and that I should wait awhile. 1 hour 30 minutes.
January 3 - Return to customer site. Try email. Still isn't working. Call SBC. Discover that pop and smtp servers should be yahoo.sbcglobal.com not sbcglobal.net and that security settings are incorrect. (Remember that I specifically asked about these earlier in the day when I was given the incorrect information.) Finally works! 45 minutes + travel time.
Summary: Don't use SBC Yahoo. Their software is garbage, their provisioning is unreliable, and their tech support is incompetent.
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Review by njcastillo
member for 10.4 years, 114 visits, last login: 7.4 years ago
lodged 10.4 years ago
- Houston,Harris,TX
- $39 per month
- (12 month contract)
- Southwestern Bell
- CLEC party: Southwestern Bell
- "Worked fine for 16 months until now .... unreliable service DSL !"
- "Customer support provides great Lip service...but limited resolution !"
- "I am looking for another DSL ISP"
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I signed up back in Feb 2001 for a year and speed was good 1100/128 until the neighbor hood got crowded or smething changed because the service became unreliable with the ever decreasing throughput. When my first year was up they uped my rate from $39 to $49 without notifying me until I called and they would only credit me the lower rate unless I signed back up for naother 12 months. In November I started having frequent outages (loss of modem sync - orange LED and slow speeds (300/22 up) since then I have called ISP seven times and have been through the question/answers numerous times about the possibility of the problems with my hardware ??? What's amazing is that the problems clear up shortly after my calls ! Unfortunately the fix does not last more than several days ! I have been given and told of the various trouble tickets opened due to my calls but on several ocassions when I inquire about the tickect status I am told that there is no such ticket or problems was fixed ? Today I received a call back from the service tech for ticket 24571476 reporting that he fixed the problem "caused by overdriving copper line for maximum speed" GUESS WHAT my speed dropped to 386/67 ! His fix rather than find the line problems limitations was to reduce my bandwith !!!
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Review by dnaatutd
member for 10.4 years, 0 visits, last login: 10.4 years ago
lodged 10.4 years ago
- Richardson,Dallas,TX
- $53 per month
- about 21 days
- Southwestern Bell
- "Decent download speed, good reliability 'til recently"
- "Phone line necessary, only 128k upload"
- "Okay, if you need a phone line"
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I have had SBC DSL for about two years now at this location (UTdallas campus - phase 7), but I've recently become annoyed with the extra $20/mo. that I have to pay for a phone line. Total bill (basic phone + basic DSL) comes to about $73/mo.
I'm only getting 128kbit upstream and about 100kByte downstream on average. One of my friends nearby gets 256kbit upstream with his cable.
I've run the modem off a linux router (Roaring Penguin PPPoE) for the past two years with no problems, but lately, the connection drops off . . . sometimes for a considerable length of time (hours). This bugs the hell outta me.
I've also run servers (www,ftp,gnutella) without any complaints from SBC.
Install was simple, the guys were nice. Equipment was some special leased DSL modem from Pliant Technologies (not sure if they're even in business anymore). It gives a dynamic IP using PPPoE which kinda sucks, too.
I'm switching to cable to cut my stupid home phone bill outta the picture. And I might be able to get 256kbit up, which would be really nice. Plus, no annoying PPPoE stuff to mess with. Oh yeah, ATTBI said that ComCast would be doing my cable, or something like that. Hope that works out alright.
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Review by djoseph74
member for 10.4 years, 2 visits, last login: 8.2 years ago
lodged 10.4 years ago
- Northville,Wayne,MI
- $40 per month
- (12 month contract)
- CLEC party: Southwestern Bell
- "none"
- "they're morons"
- "don't know what they're doing."
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I ordered DSL, and it doesn't work. they have a trouble ticket in that will take 2 days to get looked at, and then can't guarranty that will fix the problem. Thanks for nothing SBC.
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Review by gcarter1
member for 10.4 years, 14 visits, last login: 7.2 years ago
lodged 10.4 years ago
- Richardson,Dallas,TX
- $49 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 356 days
- Southwestern Bell
- CLEC party: Southwestern Bell
- "faster than dial-up"
- "FTTC - not working after a year"
- "need tech support for the few of us w/ fttc"
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PPPoe ? FTTC or Fttn has a 650 down and 95 up. way to slow
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Review by rakstr
member for 10.4 years, 294 visits, last login: 2.5 years ago
lodged 10.4 years ago
- Dallas,Collin,TX
- $40 per month
- (12 month contract)
- Southwestern Bell
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SBC just switched it's DSL customers' ISP from Prodigy to Yahoo and
Yahoo is an appropriate name. Besides it's AOL look and feel (internet
for dummies), it has removed features and functionality from basic
broadband expectations. No longer can one build a personal webpage and
FTP it to an internet server. With SBC Yahoo you only get the "free"
Geocities interface (file by file via THEIR software) which forces all the
Yahoo/Geocities advertising/pop-ups all over the place.
I am currently in a 1 year contract and SBC REFUSES to allow me to
terminate early even though THEY changed my service.
DO NOT USE SBC YAHOO!
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