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Review by mvbill 
Posted: 79 days ago
member for 7.5 years, 87 visits, last login: 17 days ago
 Edgartown,Dukes,MA
 $30 per month
 Verizon
 "Cheap"
 "Cheap"
 "Verizon servers and internet connections are sporadic"
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Verizon must cycle its servers every morning between 5 and 8 am because the internet hardly works at all during this time - they just don't know how to run a system - it's pathetic.
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Review by acharlwood
UPDATED: 82 days ago
member for 2.1 years, 2 visits, last login: 82 days ago
Cambridge,Middlesex,MA
$35 per month (12 month contract)
 about 21 days
"Once it's up and running, it's pretty reliable; no usage caps; great newsgroups"
"Speed relatively slow unless you are close to a DSLAM"
"No usage caps. Reliable. No fast bursts like cable, but steady."
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I'd used Verizon DSL when living two blocks down the road in Davis Square in Somerville and had a consistent, clean 3.0 mbps sustained connection with some minor hiccups in the hookup. Now, a block from Porter Square in Cambridge, I barely get 1.5 mbps and should really be provisioned only for 768 kbps because I'm much further from the DSLAM. DSL didn't work at first since the phone line hadn't been used in a few years; it took several hours going through their CD's goofy automated troubleshooting tests and then another half hour on the phone to a call center in India to get to the point where Verizon would send a line tech to come out and resolve the problem, which was that the local telco lost track of which pairs went to my apartment since they'd been unused for a few years. Nice. Verizon subcontracts out its services to local union workers and would only give me a window that the tech would come out sometime between 8 am and 8 pm. Yes, a 12 hour window, I can't even work from home without Internet access, so there's a day's work lost (in terms of wages, this cost more than the entire year's expense for the DSL service to begin with).
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Now, almost two years later, the DSL speed is increasingly inconsistent. Yesterday I was getting 1.6mbps/768kbps; now I'm only at 608kbps/408kbps. I've called Verizon's tech support five times and wasted as many hours explaining the problem to them and following their tech's scripted instructions and responses with no resolution. Every time I call I have to follow the same useless instructions despite telling them that I've already done this. They keep closing my technical support tickets without confirming that the speed problems have been fixed. The service was reliable and connection speeds were consistent until about two months ago, since then, getting the speed issues resolved has been impossible.
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 Review by titanium
UPDATED: 84 days ago
member for 9.5 years, 1286 visits, last login: 64 days ago
West Richland,Benton,WA
$25 per month (12 month contract)
about 23 days
"Best thing available"
"Feels like 1999 again with 1.5Mbps lol"
"If you are in West Richland, WA and know of better, please let me know"
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West Richland, WA does not really have a great choice for options of HSI.
Clearwire, Suddenlink Cable (if they can possibly find our address, and you want to take the chance with them), or Verizon.
I have heard nothing but horror stories about Suddenlink and Clearwire so I opted to give Verizon a chance.
I ordered the Dry Loop 1.5Mbps/384Kbps package as this was the best available to me (Would have been the same from the other companies).
I initially ordered the service on 8/11/2009, thinking the service would be ready before my move in date of new house of 8/31/2009. It was close, but not near as bad as some people have had it from what I have read.
My initial SRD (Service Ready Date) was 9/1/2009 - Well, that day came and went with no connection, was given the ever popular, wait until 6PM, and then call back the next day routine.
9/2/2009 - Connection was still dead, called Verizon again and when they began to tell me the 6PM / next day routine I just said to get me to the cancellation department.
-- Cancellation dept/ retention department offered me 30 days free if I would give them until the end of the day to get the line up and running, she assured me after speaking to a tier 3 tech that they were working on my line as we speak. I said what the heck, if it doesn't work ill just cancel tomorrow, if it does, free 30 days.
9/2/2009 - Connection came on RIGHT AT 6PM. However, the speeds were extremely slow, ~23Kb/s down and ~ 40Kb/s up, with LOTS of packet loss. Called support, and got put through to dispatch after they ran the tests on my lines and they said a tech would be out the next day. (Was really surprised at that)
9/3/2009 - Tech showed up sometime before 11AM (no phone call, and text message Verizon sends was a bit late on when a tech was going to be dispatched, but oh well - he showed). He did what he needed to do around the neighborhood, and the connection is showing 1792 down now and 448 up I believe it said.
Speed tests are pretty much spot on to the speed that I am supposed to be getting. So after the tech came out I really have no complaints about the connection.
I rated the Connection Reliability as a 3 because its only been solid for a day, will probably update in the future.
Tech support rating has no reflection on field tech, he was great. But the phone support is horrid. Menu after menu to take you in circles to occasionally hang up on you before you get in queue. (Just hit 0 a bunch of times, saves time)
The modem that you get shipped is really fickle if you are trying to use a Wireless Router. It works fine standalone, but getting the Westell 6100G to work is an art. This is why I say the tech support is horrible: After trying for almost a full day (read all the posts on this site, and others) to get Westell to work with my router I opted for the paid "Premium" Verizon tech support. They supposedly help you with problems with other hardware, etc. Don't buy into it, save yourself the money and time as I got nowhere with them, and ended up having to contact the manufacturer of the router and get FREE support from them, and got the device working properly (after getting rid of all the WRONG configurations that Verizon gave me).
If my experience with the connection keeps going the way its going, I'd say its only going to get better over time? One can only hope the worst is behind me 
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 Review by Blackbird
UPDATED: 85 days ago
member for 4.8 years, 1383 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Fort Wayne,Allen,IN
$15 per month (24 month contract)
about 7 days
Verizon (ex GTE)
"Excellent field-service techs"
"Reliable, inexpensive service thus far (22 months)"
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Ordered 768Kbps/128Kbps for $14.99/month - lifetime rate
Excellent on-phone tech response to pre-buy technical questions I had; field-tech arrived within 3 days to check line and was extremely helpful in answering some additional questions I had, modem/router equipment arrived 4 days later. Install went perfectly the first time.
In the time since installation, DSL service has generally been quite reliable apart from a few interruptions mainly related to copper-wire issues involving the POTS. The recent appearance of an infrequent and intermittent DSL drop-out problem bears some watching; tech support during these events was excellent, though the intermittent nature defied their ability to identify the specific cause. They did verify the problem, and it has since cleared itself up for now.
Verizon-supplied Westell 6100 modem/router.
Still no bad points thus far, other than discovering that internet-time update services would not pass through the initially-installed router's firewall in anything other than 'low' security mode. Updates to the router software pushed by Verizon have since provided a service option that allows a user to successfully resolve that problem, at least for some of the time services out there.
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Review by robo606
Posted: 85 days ago
member for 94 days, 54 visits, last login: 32 days ago
Gaithersburg,Montgomery,MD
$39 per month
Verizon
"Great speed in the morning"
"Speed bogs down during the night when I want to use it after work!"
"Totally useless for home connection since I only use it afterwork."
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I have great speed in the morning (>2,5M bps), but bogs down to less than 100K bps after 6pm just when I got home from work. Please see my post, "My DSL is slower than the Dial-up" for details.
In addition, last time when I lost connection, I called the technical support, spent more than an hour, including resetting my modem (thus lost all the information I store there), resetting my password, and finally was told that their network was down, and I just had to wait till it came back on.
If the network is down, why not tell me first, instead of wasting all those time? Worse, they reset my password, so even if the network comes back on, I won't be able to use it. They told me I would just have to call them to reset the password when the network is back on, but they don't know when. All in all, I would be better off not to call them in the first place, at least I would be automatically reconnected when the network is back)!
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Review by dneu
UPDATED: 86 days ago
member for 1.8 years, 14 visits, last login: 86 days ago
Pottsville,Schuylkill,PA
$40 per month
Verizon
"none"
"absolutely unreliable speed - paying for 3Mb download, often having a few hundred kb"
"not enough competition here, therefore lousy monopoly"
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only other option here is a cable Comcast
I ordered 3 Mb upload, 768 kb upload for $ 73.00 including a land line telephone.
Speed is very un-steady. Very often my download speed is lower than upload. Today morning download 140kb, upload 227kb.
Overpriced, unreliable service, incompetent support technicians always claiming that on "their" side is everything OK
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 Review by CableGei
UPDATED: 88 days ago
member for 5.5 years, 1571 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Brookville,Montgomery,OH
$30 per month (24 month contract)
about 60 days
Verizon (ex GTE)
"Helpful Verizon Zone Tech got my loop length down to 16500 ft."
"$30/month is pretty expensive for the speeds I receive."
"768Kbps @ 16500ft from CO"
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Update 8/30/2009:
After having 5 techs out this year to check out my intermittent problem, my issues with Verizon DSL are still unresolved. My connection drops out about 5 times per week where modems will not sync up. I live in a rural area that Verizon doesn't want to put money into and they are selling it to Frontier Communications. I don't have any faith in Frontier wanting to do many network upgrades any time soon either. As soon as I get out of this contract, I will discontinue this service.
Update 1/21/2009:
Verizon DSL has been very problematic for me. The connection has been very intermittent and I have tried multiple modems. My modem loses sync a few times a week and my speeds have decreased to the point where I am lucky to obtain 768kbps. When the service goes out, power cycling the modem doesn't help... I just have to wait it out and it will sync up again when line conditions become acceptable for it to do so. Time Warner Cable's Road Runner is not available to me at this address, and wireless service is spotty in my area. Despite my problems, I am thankful to not rely on dial up.
Original Review:
After being spoiled by 15Mbps Road Runner, due to moving, I was forced to use 26.4kbps dial up for a while, now I've finally got Verizon DSL and it's performing at about 1Mbps for downloads.
I had to call tech support when I first had the modem shipped to me because it would not sync. The first time I called, a person named "Mark" who barely spoke English insisted it was because my computer wasn't connected to the modem. As soon as he started to blame that, I quickly ended the conversation and called in again. The second person I spoke with took care of something on their end and it started working.
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 Review by TamaraB
UPDATED: 90 days ago
member for 9 years, 3113 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Brooklyn,Kings,NY
$20 per month (12 month contract)
about 10 days
Verizon
"Naked DSL (Dry Loop) 1MBPS $19.99/Mo"
"Repair, tech support, and billing is a joke"
"Rather OK as long as there is no problem, then you are in serious trouble."
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I contacted VZ sales shortly before Christmas and ordered Dry Loop Service. It was a call center in upstate NY. I was essentially "upgrading" from voice/DSL to Naked DSL service. They took my order, and processed it. I received a confirmation email and phone call the next day setting Jan. 2 as the service ready date.
Here it is Jan 2, 2009, and my new DSL service is doing what it is advertised to do. Better than expected actually, as my measured speeds on DSLR are 960/370 Kbps See: »/testhistory/237285/47d46. This is about twice as fast as my old service.
At $19.99/Mo this is a bargain. I had one small billing error, they charged me for some movie Service I did not order at something like $5.00, got an instant charge-back, and all is well since.
So far, so good! I am happy with the service.
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UPDATE
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After a service call it took VZ one whole week to respond to a bad outside wire issue. They missed 4 appointments, each time claiming there was no one home. A lie!
Then I attempted to increase my speed from 1M to 1-3M. It did not work because of the quality of their wire, but the BILLING worked, and I had to fight to get the partial month of high-speed service which I never received refunded. WORSE yet, when they returned my service level back to 1M, they said the $19.99 rate was no longer available!!! They wanted to charge me more now. I had to spend several hours on the phone with billing to get that rate reinstated. As of yet, they still owe me money!!
These people are CROOKS! Their tech support, billing, and repair service is atrocious! The service from a technical perspective is solid, but EVERYTHING else is a joke.
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Review by mcb318
Posted: 90 days ago
member for 8.9 years, 1246 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Herndon,Fairfax,VA
$30 per month (12 month contract)
about 10 days
"Reliable"
"None"
"Excellent value for spped and dependability"
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I have had Verizon DSL for 5 years and switched from cable due to the cable constantly going out. As soon as Fios is available in my area I will upgrade. The speeds are consistent and the DSL has been as reliable as my old POTS line. There are some early morning maintenance window outages but if I am impacted I can usually reconnect my modem to a backup route.Very solid service.
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Review by Gaenjin
UPDATED: 91 days ago
member for 7.4 years, 106 visits, last login: 22 days ago
Bothell,Snohomish,WA
$80 per month (12 month contract)
about 14 days
Verizon
"Connectivity is good, not many burps or outages, but actual speed is lower than advertised making large downloads painful."
"God help your immortal soul if you ever have to call Billing or Tech Support. Paying online often double-dips a charge."
"Honestly not worth it for the speed. I should have stuck with cable for internet and will be switching back."
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We wanted DirecTV and we thought we were getting a fantastic bundled deal from Verizon, but its been nothing but hassle since the Order button was clicked, not to mention actually costing me more than my old Comcast bundle in the long run. They couldn't get the order straight, double charged me for a few things. I was spammed with order change emails, even though I was not changing my order and they continued to make changes to my order for 4-5 months after it was installed and active. Calling anyone transfers you directly to an outsourced call-center in India, there is no way to contact any representatives in the U.S.A. We were also baited into ordering Verizon with the promise of "FIOS soon" and an easy switch from High Speed DSL to FIOS, but its been almost a year, and FIOS is still not available to me. Yet they've been spamming my mailbox with ads offering great deals to switch for the last 14-18 months.
When my contract is up, I am switching back to cable for internet and phone, and keeping DirecTV for my TV. (its much better than Comcast)
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