how-to block ads
|
next review in page
 Review by Ant 
member for 71 days, 45 visits, last login: 6 days ago
updated 9 days ago
 united state
 Contract price not specified.  AT&T "Constantly above subscribed speed" "Overal cost is high when including modem, installation, and monthly bill." "Good provider, better than incumbant phone provider."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
|
Before the merger, Megapath offered resell on their DSL Service. After the merger, it is hard to get that same agreement in writing. This was the main reason we chose to do business with them. Otherwise, pricing is higher than the incumbent CLEC but Megapaths connection is stable and reliable. Tech support available 24 hours a day and very helpful last time called but it's been over a year since last call due to no issues. I supplied my own DSL router and setup with tech support was a breeze. Overall, I would rate them a good service provider. One must understand though they do not really have any last mile infrastructure and are at the mercy of the incumbent CLEC or LEC for that last mile connection. Usually, Megapaths customers are put on a separate circuit which makes all the difference in the world.
Edited: Fixed spelling errors.
Comments:
 | next review in page (previous review)
Review by agarillon
member for 11.5 years, 25 visits, last login: 17 days ago
lodged 17 days ago
- Washington,District Of Columbia,DC
- Contract price not specified.
- "Hate these people...destroyed speakeasy"
- "the worst ISP/inept customer service"
| |
They can't solve problems when given the answers. They won't let seasoned IT talk with people who can understand them. Instead the useless tier 1 people have to run through useless scripts and tell me what's wrong...3 hours later, they still can't fix what I know the issues are.
Even a call to the Presidents office yielded broken promises by top executives. FAIL in the worst way.
Comments:
 | | Reply to MegaPath Review Hello,
We are sorry to hear you are experiencing frustration with MegaPath customer service and we would like address the issues you're experiencing. Please email us at connectme@megapath.com with your account information and contact details. We will work with the service team to properly assist you. | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by aphor
member for 7.3 years, 36 visits, last login: 88 days ago
updated 88 days ago
- Chicago,Cook,IL
- $91 per month
- (24 month contract)
 about 10 days- "Used to be Speakeasy"
- "Not anything materially like Speakeasy any more"
- "Why should you pay premium price for their substandard service offerings?"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I used to rely heavily on Speakeasy to provide rock solid uptimes for my outbound and inbound VPN access and inbound remote data access. Their support had been legendary. That was a long time ago. AT&T and Verizon have been aggressively rolling out VRADs, locking CLECs out of the high speed DSL market, and Speakeasy was forced to hunker down under Covad's umbrella. That arrangement was a step down from what I'd expected from years of Speakeasy DSL. Now things are getting leaner. Megapath is an also-ran brand, and the service outages I've suffered in the last month since they started pushing for contract renewals smell like desperation to me. They want to sell me higher speed service, but they can't compete with cable or short-loop VRAD terminated DSL. I'm now evaluating alternatives.
One year on, and problems with my local loop seem to have stabilized, but the main complaint most people will have is that unless you are just lucky: that you live close to a CO, and that you have a short loop, you will not be able to get decent speeds. Recently Covad started shutting down all of the old Speakeasy account infrastructure, like hosted email, and probably other stuff. 2012 was the year MegaPath killed off the remaining vestiges of the Speakeasy brand. Since they have no chance of building out VRADs or reselling short VRAD loop ADSL, 2013 is time for me to drop MegaPath.
Comments:
Reviews:
 ·AT&T U-Verse
 ·MegaPath
| Problems What type of problems have you had with MegaPath recently? I represent them (along with 15+ other CLECs) and are not aware of any problems except that they heavily rely on a company called Global Capacity in over 90% of their serviced areas since they pretty much gutted the COVAD/Speakeasy networks. GC is basically a wholesale company they place orders through and are again, resold to companies such as Qwest(CentLink), AT&T, and about 100+ other companies. So your uptime/downtime could depend on those companies and who they partnered with. | |
| | | | Re: Problems They can't keep their lines up or with even the same level of quality any more and their now surly support staff don't have any interest in pushing the LEC's to improve their lines like Speakeasy used to. Also, their accounts payable department is a disaster. They regularly took more than 30 days to register a payment that the bank confirmed was delivered, they "lost" multiple monthly payments ... although they "found" them as soon as I had my lawyer (at $300/hr) send them notices, and once I terminated my service with them, they sent no final bill and sent the account to collections before the bill would even have been due, then after another round with my lawyer, they admitted that they owed me for over a months billing due to their unbelievably bad accounting. | |
| | | Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
·MegaPath
| Re: Problems as far as network goes, as I've stated. The old network is pretty much gone. Now its resold and using various partners that is just backhauled to the MP data center in DFW. The old Speakeasy and COVAD days are long gone as those networks are gone. Very little of them are still around. This is even the network ELink was using for ADSL2+ and New Edge Networks, all gone.
I can't speak for the billing department as I've never had any contact with them, but I can comment on the rest of the company- as far as support and network. | |
|
| | | I too am very concerned about the poor performance of Megapath. I was a happy Speakeasy customer for several years. I am now paying over $80 a month for a less than dial-up quality service. My speeds used to be fairly fast for our location. For example it took over 20 minutes to download Firefox yesterday evening. There were no other devices on my network at the time. I also can't find anything if there are any guarantees about upload/download speeds. It seems after I signed a 2 year contract is when the problem started. | |
|
| | Megapath Rips You Off During AND After I was so proud of myself a few years ago when I switched from AT&T to Megapath and brought my invoices down from $700 to $450 per month. Their installation seemed to go well at first, but a couple of months after installation our outgoing internet stopped working. I discovered the reason was that, even though they had installed all their equipment, I had still been hooked up to AT&T for sending. I know this doesn't seem to make sense, but it was when AT&T finally got wise and shut us off that our sending stopped working. That was our first experience with getting Megapath to admit something was their problem.
Phone and internet companies control many of the strings to business success. So, how do they expect their customers to do well when all the onus of chasing down a problem is put on the customer, so that the customer cannot pay attention to business and instead has to sit on hold or running test after test (all the same tests over and over again) just so that Megapath can avoid responsibility. It only follows that either their customer will have to end service or go out of business because we can't receive emails and phone calls. I do not know how it profits Megapath to treat customers this way, in the long run.
Things with the T1 line were fairly good for a couple of years (after they finally fixed the initial AT&T service mix-up), except the service was slower than advertised.
Then, last year, the bill went up $200 a month. This was due to "new taxes," so maybe I can't blame them for this, but still it seems like they should have done something to compensate or compromise to insulate the shock. Sticking on a new tax we weren't warned about and expecting us to just keep paying seems looney-tunes.
When we fell behind in paying this year, they had an internal collector call us. When we received that call, we had just been in a bad car accident. We were dealing with police and insurance and getting all three of the injured to a doctor. The collector was so humane that he gave us two hours to call back and make a payment. I understand his job is to collect, and our problems are not his problems. However, what kind of a person does it take to give people in a physical crisis two hours instead of, say, 24? I hate them.
In the last month our service failed completely. This failure had nothing to do with the payment issue. We would call and every time they would try to make us run the same internal test. They obfuscated and delayed sending someone out with a new device, or to even move the problem up the ladder. In an entire month, we were on the phone (mobile phone) almost every day for over an hour. Finally they told us they had people in the field working side by side with AT&T (those guys again?) and, when they finally told us everything was working, it wasn't. I hate them. I ended service with them and am not only going to refuse to pay my last two months of service, I am sending them an invoice for all the hours we spent on the phone listening to red herrings. | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by jsciiijd
member for 116 days, 0 visits, last login: 116 days ago
lodged 116 days ago
- Petersburg,Petersburg City,VA
- Contract price not specified.
- "No Mail Forwarding When You Leave"
| Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
Megapath just didn't have the fresh enthusiasm it had when it was Speakeasy, so I couldn't justify the high cost.
But when I went to switch, I asked how many months of e-mail forwarding I had. I think that almost every company gives you several months of forwarding your e-mail from your old address to a new address.
BUT, NOT MEGAPATH. It stops the moment you quit, so don't give out that e-mail address to anybody you want to keep receiving e-mail from.
Comments:
| | How Long Have I Been a member? I see that DSLreports warned that I am a new member.
Actually I've been a member for over 10 years, but my old account got frozen because i haven't signed in for several years. | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by goblin_dust
member for 140 days, 0 visits, last login: 140 days ago
updated 140 days ago
- Brooklyn,Kings,NY
- $94 per month
- Verizon
- "Low Cost"
- "Unreliable"
- "Poor residential service"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I used to be a happy Speakeasy residential customer for almost 10 years. Everything turned around after Megapath took over. In my memory of 10 years service I cant recall a single outage, except for some problems with VoIP which Speakeasy tech support was able to help me with over the phone.
Megapath is a whole different animal. Last summer of 2012 Jun-Jul period I had two service outages, both times I called Megapath tech support and both times they were unable to determine the problem. Nor they ever acknowledged the problem. Both times they left me extremely frustrated, and both times the service was restored next day without them ever contacting me or giving any explanation.
I did not switch the provider back then only because they maintained static IP for me, and all other providers only offer static IP to business customers, which service costs significantly more.
After storm Sandy (I live in NYC) the service was out for about 10 days, which is understandable and I dont complain.
However, several days after the service was restored and NYC came back to live I started experiencing same problems as past summer - intermittent outages which Megapath was unable to resolve nor acknowledge. That was the last drop, in November I signed up for business account with Verizon Fios and cancelled my service at Megapath. To cancel I filled out the form online where instructed to cancel my service starting next billing period (Dec 2), yet on Nov 27 they charged my credit card again for the period of 12/02 - 01/02. Imagine that! I called billing department where the lady on the phone told me that for some reasons they were unable to cancel my service until Dec 11. So, today I received last final invoice from Megapath where they refund me $64 out of $93 paid. As far as I am concerned they are just a bunch of incompetent crooks who stole $29 from me.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by evincent001
member for 6.8 years, 12 visits, last login: 142 days ago
updated 142 days ago
- Los Angeles,Los Angeles,CA
- $120 per month
- AT&T
- "Reliable service"
- "Very expensive and poor speed"
- "DSL speed has gotten slower instead of faster and very expensive"
| Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I was originally with Covad, which was bought out by MegaPath. The good thing is the service is very reliable with outages only every six months or so and they don't last too long. The bad part is that my line speed is getting worse over time, not better. I currently get 1.2 down and .3 up. A few years ago with Covad I was getting 2.8 down and .7 up. I can't really blame the provider - the issue is that the service is coming through 40-50 year old copper phone lines that are decomposing more and more every year. The other issue is the cost - I pay $120 a month for this service. I have tried Clear wireless but they are just as bad (if not worse) because they throttle your service after a few months. Verizon FIOS isn't available in my neighborhood. All of this is amazing because I live in Los Angeles, not in some rural location. I've checked AT&T DSL but the only level they can offer to my address is .8 down (again due to ancient phone lines).
I'm about to try TWC cable for internet service. Will update this review to report on how that goes.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by TBusiness
member for 210 days, 189 visits, last login: 1 days ago
lodged 143 days ago
- Toledo,Lucas,OH
 Business customer- $578 per month
- (36 month contract)
- about 30 days
- Ameritech
- "Company responds when filling out survey"
- "Company does NOT communicate nor care."
- "look else where."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
|
I WAS a MegaPath Partner. I ordered a T1 for personal/business use in my home as the local cable company did not offer business services/static IPs to anyone wishing to install in a residence/residential address (this includes apartment complex offices as well).
So I went and ordered the service with my Account Team and everything was on the roll. Little did I find out prior to ordering. MegaPath actually contracts and RESELLS services from CenturyLink and a company called Global Capacity (a telcom broker). Communication stopped there. NOBODY knew anything at any time. I had one install date issued by MegaPath that was totally wrong and if it wasn't for AT&T calling to confirm an install date I would have never known.
It took countless calls to MP to get that figured out and still to this date they never realized they were wrong. It was all AT&T's fault.
When installed, the router was shipped NON-PROGRAMMED and they wanted to dispatch AT&T to come out AGAIN to program the router MP sent- 2 weeks later. Or ship a new router out and hope it was configured. I managed to get someone to do it by remote.
Tech support is HORRIBLE. They're rude, hang up on you, and put hostile comments about you in their notes- which are available ONLINE for YOU to see in your account. Management does NOT care. I ordered more IPs for my network as I was using static for everything, they informed me I would have to reprogram EVERYTHING on my network and wait up 72hours before anyone would configure the router, I had to email others to get this done ahead of time.
Bottom line is; still 60 days later, and no commission check either for this line that I should have received by now. Also going to Qwest/CentLink and purchasing directly through them, as MP has my T1 connected to LA instead of Chicago. My ping times are 90+ on average and even YouTube is unusable at times, even on a T1.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by saradon
member for 12.1 years, 492 visits, last login: 6 days ago
updated 158 days ago
- Bethesda,Montgomery,MD
- $77 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 30 days
- Verizon
- "Always on, always available, it just works."
- "Company can be inflexible."
- "If they have what you are looking for at the right price, fine, otherwise sales is indifferent, though retention is better.."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I have had DSL service with Megapath for approximately two and a half years, and it has been the same price the entire time. When I joined it was prior to their acquisition of Covad (or merger, or whatever they call it) and I joined when Megapath, in my area, MD, was using the facilities of DSL.net which they had previously acquired. (DSL.net as I understand it was a primarily-business ISP specializing in SDSL circuits, which is what I have.)
I compared Megapath's offer of 1.0 Mbps with a 90% circuit speed throughput guarantee with Covad's (then a competing provider) of 1.5/786 best effort service and chose Megapath because of the 16 hour service restoration mean time SLA. They were approximately the same price. I would have had Megapath 1.5/90% except I am just a bit too far from the CO (approx. 8k ft) for it to work reliably - they tried at installation time, and the signal is not strong enough (around 8 dB).
The documentation varies (either saying 1.0 / 90% or 1.1 / 80%) but the actual data throughput received, which I have documented regularly on DSLRs speed tests and just ran again and pasted below has ranged between approximately 920 Kbps to 1.1 Mbps) month-in, month-out, steadily and consistently over this entire period of time. Only two outages that I can recall over the past 2.5 years, and only one was for more than a day. Technician arrived the next business day and it turned out to be a routing problem related to changes they were making at the back end not being updated properly in my DSL router (which they configure and maintain, as opposed to the Watchguard WiFi/Firewall, which I configure and maintain.)
Field technicians are good, as is second-level tech support. First - well, I suppose you need to start somewhere. And they are better than many I have dealt with too, to be fair, though it can vary a bit.
I'm month-to-month now (after contract signing or renewal is for a 1-year minimum term and the agreement is actually in writing, you sign the quote - not just a promise over the telephone). I also paid for the equipment (Netopia 4652) and installation up front, now I believe they may prefer to do a higher monthly cost with lower or no up-front cost, so that is still amortizing. Also, upon renewal for another year they give a free month (but you still pay the taxes and nebulous 'fees' of a few dollars that month).
The speed - since I actually get all the baud (remember that word?) rate I'm supposed to, peak-times or off-peak times - reliably and without fail, no fluctuation, no sharing, no 'up to' is fully adequate. Does it buffer a bit? Sure, but nothing waiting a bit doesn't cure, and then not often, and only when streaming videos. I've used it to watch HBO GO and Cinemax GO movies on this connection using Wifi (have a WatchGuard XTM-21W I think is the model). I think they may adjust for the speed, but the picture quality I received was fine, and no buffering pauses once it got started. So a + for the connection's consistency in peak times. (And just FYI, I re-watched Steven Spielberg's movie Duel, which was still as good as I remembered it.)
Would I be fine forever with 80% of 1.5 instead of 1.0? Sure, and if I was 7k feet from the CO instead of 8k feet, maybe I would have it. I also get 1 Mbps upstream, which though I don't use it much (I'm not hosting a server in my home office) makes VOIP or gaming very reliable. To get a guaranteed upstream better than this, I think you'd have to get a T-1, which is probably why it is more expensive ($225 or so I believe on special), since if consistent upstream speed (as opposed to overall reliability and consistent adequate throughput, which is what I was after) is what you're looking for -- short of a T-1, SDSL is your best bet. I believe it also travels further than comparable ADSL. They don't market SDSL much, and they call it other names (Ethernet over Copper, as I understand it, is actually 2 or 3 bonded SDSL pair with a mission-critical repair priority, and the same circuit speed throughput guarantee. I'd get it if I could afford it.) I also get the satisfaction of supporting CLECs, and if I can have fully adequate internet service without supporting attempts to promote fiber loops on which ILECs don't have to sell UNEs to CLEC providers, I feel better about myself until UNE issues on fiber loops are resolved by those states that even try to ensure there are alternatives.
The other advantage is my reliable internet is independent of coax; so I can go from promotion to promotion with Cable TV (or drop it entirely) without having it affect my connectivity and be able to tell them I am stopping without worrying about anything else.
»www.pingtest.net/result/74004488.png
»www.pingtest.net/result/74004576.png
»www.speedtest.net/result/2376366582.png
»www.speedtest.net/result/2376545304.png
I hope this was helpful. I'm a longtime user of DSL reports, though mostly a lurker, and thought it deserved a review from my area.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by richbrown
member for 284 days, 1 visits, last login: 240 days ago
lodged 284 days ago
- Eugene,Lane,OR
- Business customer
- $1400 per month
- (36 month contract)
- about 160 days
- Qwest
- "Good technology and voice quality with WAN connectivity to all of my sites"
- "Paperwork was bit of a pain."
- "Great product for the price..."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
|
Megapath has provided by service for almost a year now and I love what love provided! I have 22 locations and they were able to build me a private IP network with phones/voice to all locations with 4 digit dialing and no long distance charges when dialing those locations. I love the portal and the mobile voice product that is on my smart phone. I would certainly recommend Megapath to other mulit-location users.
Comments:
| next page (previous review)
Review by kmhargan
member for 284 days, 0 visits, last login: 284 days ago
updated 284 days ago
- Oakland,Alameda,CA
- Contract price not specified.
- "Horrible customer service; undependable connectivity; has no interest in residential customers."
- "If you are looking for residential service and customer support, look elsewhere."
| Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
|
I began as a Speakeasy customer with dialup when Speakeasy was out of a little cafe in Belltown, Seattle WA. As soon as DSL was available in my area (Oakland, CA) I switched to DSL and VoIP. This spans a decade, and was hands-down the best customer service ever experienced. Trouble tickets were done online, and customers could follow the progress, and always had a way to contact the tech handling the issue. First red flag was the sale to Best Buy; customer service deteriorated some, but still maintained the Speakeasy "brand." The last couple of years saw a merger with Covad and finally Megapath. The focus is exclusively on business service, and residential customers are out of luck. In the month of June, I spent 265 minutes on my cell phone (and exceeded my monthly minutes) trying to get my VoIP service back, which had been down since the first of June. In one service call, which lasted 109 minutes, the tech actually told me "I know nothing about residential service." He proved his words to be true. The online ticket service has been done away with and it is as far from Speakeasy as could be. It is more than disappointing that a small company allows itself to be totally consumed by a behemoth and lose all identity that kept customers loyal for years.
Comments:
|
|
