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Review by runangolee 
Posted: 67 days ago
member for 67 days, 3 visits, last login: 38 days ago
 Ferndale,Whatcom,WA
 Business customer
 $42 per month
 "100% uptime since I have used it."
 "Extremely slow at times, as bad as dial-up."
 "They've got too many people drinking out of the same straw."
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I am very frustrated with this service.
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Review by pcme2000
UPDATED: 68 days ago
member for 1.8 years, 641 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Bangor,Penobscot,ME
$22 per month (12 month contract)
 about 5 days
"Have had it for a couple of years now"
"It takes a long long time to have upgraded."
"I would get it again"
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My experiance was and has been good!! Once they got it upgraded from 3.0 to 7.1 it has been working good. Knock on wood.
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Review by lisapie777
Posted: 68 days ago
member for 68 days, 0 visits, last login: 68 days ago
Long Beach,Los Angeles,CA
$17 per month (12 month contract)
about 15 days
 Verizon
"Low price"
"Lousy customer svc"
"If you have other options, take them"
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Ordered high speed dsl on 9-01, with a go date of 9-04. They got my address wrong, so my phone svc was turned on at someone else's house, my modem got delivered to still another address, and they sent two repairmen out with my name on both their orders, but with two different addresses, neither of them mine. To fix the problem, after 350 cell phone minutes wasted and various clueless employees spoken to, they said they had to cancel my order and treat me as a new customer. New service was started on the 12th and activated on the 16th. They sent me another modem (still in its box) and finally got me online. But my username and password wouldn't work, so I spent another hour and a half trying to get that fixed. They never said what my speed would be, but my speed test said 406kb/s download and 364kb/s upload. Good or bad, I have no clue. But my videos don't sync, and it sometimes freezes. I'm very disapointed.
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 Review by Smith6612
UPDATED: 68 days ago
member for 1.8 years, 981 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
North Tonawanda,Niagara,NY
$20 per month (12 month contract)
about 10 days
"Consistent Speeds, Very low pings, fast considering speed."
"None that I can think of..."
"Is a great service to use. Period"
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UPDATE Sept. 19, 2009: Service is just fine. Still waiting for FiOS to retire this line 
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Well I decided to change my entire review since I felt that it was a bit messy, so here it is again! I have had Verizon DSL for four years now, and it has always worked the way it should, except for maybe the one or two days where I have had some problems. The service was installed within 10 days from the time we ordered it, a day early than what we were told. We were sent a self installation kit the day before and within 30 minutes, we were online, free of dial-up. The DSL has been the only high speed connection I have ever had in my home. Our package at the first time of order was the older 768kbps/128kbps tier. We were given a first generation Westell 6100.
I have had a few problems and outages with the service within these four years I've had it. The first problem took place two weeks after we first got the service due to a problem in the CO or the remote terminal. We ended up having no PPPoE connectivity which meant we had a red internet light, and ultimately no internet, and after calling tech support. The problem was resolved Monday night, with a call from the CO stating that they think they have found the problem and wanted to know if our connection was up again. Another outage we had was due to a severe snow storm that came by and destroyed services south of my home. While the service ran throughout the storm, as well as the phone, the Remote terminal and the CO were ultimately without power for a day. The day after the storm we ended up losing both DSL and phone at the same time for a day, which was when I needed the internet. I ended up using another connection that was working at a relative's home while the connection was down. The last issue we had again was with a CO problem. We were getting very high latency (600+ms to first hop) and half of our speed, and I Was the only person in my neighborhood having the issue (I was using Steam an awful amount that day, might have messed up something at the CO?). That was fixed the next morning without any call to them what so ever.
Recently I had called up Billing to change our service from the older 768kbps/128kbps plan to the 1Mbps/386kbps plan. All it took was two calls (one time the rep said it wasn't there, the second time the order was placed). I must say that the waiting times are really short. Once past the menu, it was about a 30 second wait. Otherwise, after the order was placed, my speed was turned up at 2AM in the morning, a day earlier than expected and has this speed been less of a killer to me, especially on the upload side. Being the gamer I am, I'm continuously using the line, anything from uploading full 1080p HD videos to downloading 1+GB files and more. My line stats are at the end of this review should anyone be interested to see how good they are.
I seemed to notice that from time to time, my connection at roughly 2AM will get flaky for exactly 8 minutes and then return to normal. This usually happens once every few months. I assume that they must have people at the CO fixing things up as it's normally right on time when it happens, and varies on when it ends. I'm typically gaming around 2AM (lol!) and I'll be able to feel when these "maintenance" windows come, simply because while I still pull down the full line speed consistently, my ping oddly shoots to the 2000's range and gets a lot of packet loss. But yet again it only lasts for 8 minutes and I've only seen it happen twice out of the whole time I've had the service, and it's around 2AM when this happens, I can't complain!
Overall, Verizon DSL is a great service to use. Sure, if your phone lines are long or are degraded, or there's CO issues you may not have as good of an experience as I have, but Verizon has lived up to it's promises for me. Loads of other people around my area have even had good experiences with the service too, who I've asked personally. I'm going to be going to FiOS once it is rolled out in my area sometime hopefully this year because of how Verizon has been in our area.
Transceiver Revision: 4.2.0.11
Vendor ID Code: 4
Line Mode: G.DMT Mode
Data Path: Fast
Transceiver Information Down Stream Path Up Stream Path
DSL Speed (Kbits/Sec) 1184 448
Margin (dB) 22.0 21.0
Line Attenuation (dB) 44.5 22.5
Transmit Power (dBm) 5.1 9.3
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Review by jasg
Posted: 68 days ago
member for 348 days, 162 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Seattle,King,WA
$37 per month (12 month contract)
Verizon
"Meets rated speed, no problems starting service at all."
"none"
"Glad I changed"
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Should have left Speakeasy long ago, my bill is less than half and download speed up by 10x
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Review by dave
UPDATED: 69 days ago
member for 9.5 years, 5053 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Littleton,Middlesex,MA
$30 per month
Verizon
"It works and it's cheap enough"
"The five year delay for FiOS"
"Mostly harmless"
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Verizon Online, 1500K/384K Westel DSL modem, dynamic IP, PPPoE. Located in Littleton, Mass. Connected to LAN via Linksys cable/DSL router.
I have absolutely nothing to say, really. The notion of reviewing my ISP now seems about as interesting as reviewing my phone company. In both cases, the service works pretty much as advertised, it's generally reliable, the company is as impersonal as a slab of concrete, and I assume you'll get pretty much the same thing wherever you go.
(Historical note: I signed up with Bell Atlantic for 640/90 service, in early 2000, and DSL was much more of an adventure back then).
I'd rather wish they'd run fibre to my street. It's not the distance holding them back, it's the fact that all lines are underground here.
2006-12-15: Still no FIOS.
2008-03-19: Still no FIOS.
2008-09-22: Hey, guess what? Still no FIOS.
2009-03-24: Rumours of FIOS have reached the neighborhood. Maybe summer.
2009-04-11: The fibre is coming, the fibre is coming!
2009-08-16: Fibre's in the street, my installation is next month.
2009-09-08: There's conduit under my lawn...
2009-09-12: The FIOS truck is parked in my driveway...
2009-09-12: There is light at the end of the tunnel: FIOS is up
2009-09-14: .. and the DSL service is now switched off. Bye!
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Review by titan568
UPDATED: 70 days ago
member for 72 days, 4 visits, last login: 66 days ago
College Station,Brazos,TX
$42 per month (12 month contract)
"Took 3 weeks for them to connect. Had major slowdown after the first day."
"I wouldn't recommend using Verizon in College Station."
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I ordered my dsl on Aug 27, 2009 and right now its Sept 15, 2009 and its still not connected. They first told me the date of connection was Sept 3. Then I got a call that they changed it to Sept 16th. Its been 2 weeks since fall semester has started and I still have to go to school just to use the internet. I'm very disappointed.
Update: They actually connected on the second date of connection that they gave me. It still took too long in my opinion. It was fast when I started. Getting about 5mbps. But a day later it was down to 1mbps. I'm going to call Verizon tomorrow to see if I can get it fixed.
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 Review by DaHen
UPDATED: 71 days ago
member for 7 years, 3821 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Brockton,Plymouth,MA
Contract price not specified.
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Review by allquixotic
UPDATED: 73 days ago
member for 122 days, 8 visits, last login: 73 days ago
Pasadena,Anne Arundel,MD
$42 per month (12 month contract)
about 14 days
Verizon
"Half-way decent when it works"
"Extremely unreliable; careless customer"
"Go with cable or fiber; Verizon doesn't care about its DSL customers"
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There are two and a half options for broadband internet in my area: Comcast, Verizon DSL, and Verizon EvDO.
Our first broadband was Comcast. There were a few stability problems with Comcast, but they were uncommon. We switched back and forth between Comcast and Verizon about every year or so until 2005 -- we've been steady Verizon customers since then. We got rid of Comcast because we didn't want to also pay for Cable TV, not being a TV household.
That's what we get for saving money, I guess. Ever since we subscribed to DSL in 2005, Verizon's service has been miserable, and a constant point of frustration in our daily lives. Every 3 - 6 months, we go through a cycle something like the following (and we are ALWAYS on Interleaved, before you ask):
1. One sunny day, when the internet seems to be working just great, all of a sudden the DSL modem decides to lose sync with the local box. This only happens for a minute or two and goes unnoticed.
2. The next day, it happens again. Or maybe it happens twice in one day. Hmm. Concerning, but easily overlooked.
3. The next day, it happens some more. Maybe three or four times, and outages lasting up to 5 minutes.
4. This trend continues until, a few weeks later, we start to see outages more than we see uptime. Any substantial traffic over the line pushes the modem immediately out of sync.
5. Soon, we notice a trend: any sort of weather, even light rain without wind, produces substantial disruptions in service. The "DSL light" on the modem just flashes endlessly from being out of sync, or on the verge of being so at all times. Transfer speeds, when connected, are sub-par.
6. After a point we decide that we can't take the disruptions any longer, and decide to call Verizon and spend an hour pressing 1, 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, 4, 1, 2, 2, 2, .... until we get to a representative who tells us to reboot everything ad nauseum.
7. If we get really lucky, we run into a CSR who can correctly diagnose a line issue. Since 2005, we have had cause to replace or repair the following equipment, which in some cases fixed the problem and in some cases did not:
1 instance of replacing Ethernet cables connecting the modem to computers (didn't help)
4 instances of replacing the DSL modem (only helped once)
1 instance of replacing all interior phone wiring and buying new DSL filters (helped a lot)
8 instances of having technicians service wiring exterior to the home -- either our house's phone box, or wires/devices further upstream (usually helps)
Now that our ethernet and phone wiring is all very new (2008), our current and future problems will likely be due to the exterior wiring or the DSL modem - i.e., Verizon's fault.
Note that each one of these listed "instances" was only arrived at as a solution after many hours of being on the phone with Verizon, and often having a technician visit the house. They also assessed a very large bill for replacing our phone wiring. We did the ethernet ourselves.
Overall, Verizon DSL has been a nightmare of constant problems. The whole system seems cheaply put together and very fragile. Their modems weigh almost nothing and their hard-coded firmware software is usually buggy and feature-deprived (e.g. only four MAC addresses for WiFi). The filter they installed on our phone basically stopped filtering after about a year, so we had to replace it.
I have hard disks from notoriously quality-challenged companies such as Maxtor that have run since before we even had Verizon DSL. So it is a wonder to me that all of this internet equipment, which contains no moving parts, keeps breaking time and time again. I think we should not have gone the cheaper route with Verizon; cable was more reliable. And these days the advertised speeds of Comcast cable are way higher than Verizon DSL, even at the low end.
Price isn't so much a problem. I am a software engineer by trade, and the internet is my source of information and the means of my collaboration. Without rock-solid, very high-end internet, my work, hobbies and daily activities are severely disrupted. I am willing to pay a premium for it ($100+/month) IF the service will *just work*.
I am also a PC gamer. But I can't get enough upstream on Verizon DSL to stream a live 640x480 video stream of my game, even if it's encoded in H264 (a very efficient codec). This is a long shot from HD, but DSL just can't keep up.
I get the distinct impression that Verizon just does not care about their DSL customers. There is FiOS service available less than a mile away from me. I almost feel like my neighborhood is being singled out for some reason, because we were told back in April that FiOS was "weeks" away. Well, it has been over two dozen "weeks" since April now, and they are still telling me that FiOS is unavailable. If FiOS were available, I would get it immediately. I've been waiting with bated breath ever since the fliers came around in 2006.
But all Verizon can eek out for us is mediocre DSL at 5883 Kbps down, 863 Kbps up.
I am also signed up to Verizon EvDO for when I go on road trips, or just need to access Google Maps while downtown. EvDO is rock solid if you are in a coverage area -- I have not once been unable to access EvDO in an area where I expected coverage. The transfer speeds are as advertised. The only downside is that it's still too slow for my uses (but good enough for surfing the web), and pings are too high. That, and I'm limited to 5GB per month. I probably use about 1GB per day on my home internet connection, so this is not a viable replacement for that reason alone.
At this point, I am thinking that enough is enough. I will probably go with Comcast's "Double Play" package: Phone and Internet (don't need the cable TV). I would only reconsider this decision if Verizon can give me a firm date on when FiOS will be available. I'm pretty confident that the more modern physical layer of FiOS (fiber, of course) would benefit uptime and make transfer speeds more symmetrical, so I would choose that over cable. But it just isn't getting here fast enough.
Anyway, enough with the off-topic. For years, Verizon DSL "seemed like" the economical choice due to its price and equal/superior speed to cable. But cable has pushed back with increased transfer speeds, and price isn't such a concern for me now. Most of all, I can't abide the fact that so many pieces of my DSL service keep silently breaking, and it takes days or weeks to pinpoint the problem -- only to repeat the cycle again less than a year later.
If you can help it, avoid this deprecated technology and its poorly-informed peddlers like the plague.
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Review by denitta
UPDATED: 78 days ago
member for 83 days, 12 visits, last login: 73 days ago
Sicklerville,Camden,NJ
$80 per month (12 month contract)
Verizon
"None, I had to flex muscle to even get a ticket escalated."
"Not told of commitment to new service, Dry loop not working, New loop not working, overall just bad experience"
"Day 10 + of NO DSL service...."
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I called Verizon to change my voice provider and consolidate my bill. I was told that i had to create a new account to do so, and I agreed to it with the caveat that we'd have no downtime. The rep I spoke with told me that it was possible. Tech came and wired the house (we had a dry loop in place for DSL, but they had to provision a line for ANI service and the loop as well). Order completed per Verizon on 9/3. Since 9/3 my dry loop gets about 40 KBPs if we are lucky, the "new" service doesn't connect to anything. We have had three tickets open, i had to call to escalate over and over and over. We were told a dispatch would happen today (9/10) but it will not, now, as the tech has to be (RE)dispatched to the CO to check cable pairs (which should have been done the LAST TIME THEY DISPATCHED IN TO CO AND FOUND THAT THERE WAS NO TROUBLE FOUND).
I am at my wit's end. It's disheartening again, since we HAD verizon service wth our DSL which was non-problematic, I basically upgraded, adding service to my account and now we are FUBAR'ed....so sad. I would tell anyone considering verizon to run away, run far far far away.
Followup comments:  edco1
join:2009-09-13
Metuchen, NJ
|  I dumped Verizon for Optimum Online and couldnt be happier
Now I have an office that I use the Triple Play phone support for, and not the "house" phone just because we'd have to give everyone we know the new number, and there is too much going on right now to deal with that.
But the quality of the phone, Online and cable service is great for less than I was paying for telephone service alone. And it's been about 3 weeks and no problems at all, and no ugly Dishes on my roof or garage, plus the HD is free. I am a bit puzzled by certain channels being IN the plan and certain being out, but I usually watched the ones that I'm getting 90% of the time when I had full HBO, SHO, etc packages which I dropped to save money. I also get one converter box free for a year.
WARNING: I have heard that the rates go up SIGNIFICANTLY at the end of 12 months. If that happens, FIOS should be in the area, and I'll switch again.
Until then, I'm a happy lad..with a happy wife and a happy kid.
ED in Metuchen, NJ | |
| | denitta
join:2009-09-05
Sicklerville, NJ | Re: I dumped Verizon for Optimum Online and couldnt be happier Thanks Ed, I do not believe Optimum Online is available in southern NJ, but thank you for the info  I appreciate it. | |
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